Friday, August 07, 2009

binned, cupboard, remote


Bouquet in a bin.
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A metal vase of some kind is employed as a wastepaper basket in a room not always in use in our house. I had not noticed it for some time. I think to myself, when I see it empty today, that I would like to put something in it, anything. It contains an inviting space. In the same mode, I think to myself, show me a cupboard and I will show you something to put in it.
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The gate which I have to go through to reach the vegetable garden is remotely operated by means of a code. On my way back to day, I see that someone has just been through it and it is beginning to close behind them. As it clicks to, I punch in the code, and here's the point, I feel a twinge of guilt at making the gate swing open again, when it is just settled down into its customary closed state. Will I ever learn to be completely at ease with machines?

2 comments:

Lucy said...

Before I was born my family moved into a house with a Rayburn stove for heating, with an oven. My mother was unable to see a hot oven without putting a cake in it, and she got through 'a stone of flour' in one month making cakes.

Roderick Robinson said...

Well there was a time when you were comfortable with narrow-aisle order pickers, pantograph reach trucks and powered pallet trucks. I even attended the launch of a book you wrote on the topic. Was it at The Savoy? Somebody asked a searching (ie, unpleasant) question and I was interested to see how you operated on the other side of the fence. A languid put-down, and nicely judged.

Compulsive cake-making? Now there's a Jungian condition.