A superabundance of soul

What a dismal day it's been here! A horribly dark morning, with rain; an even wetter midday; a wind that blew the rain about all afternoon. Now it's dry, but it's coming up to midnight - what use is that?

That said, we had a jolly morning in our separate ways; my Pilates class was moved ten minutes earlier to accommodate the growing clientèle being moved onto the next class, which is the one Himself and a few more chaps had started going to. I hope some other people were as creaky as I was - having missed class at the end of term, then having two weeks off with a great deal of sitting around (and eating) - all this conspired to make me feel I'd never stretched a sciatic nerve in my life. Felt much better afterwards, though I think I'll be suffering in the morning.

And that was that. I didn't go out again. I did, however, change the bed in anticipation of a dry day tomorrow so that I can hang out the sheets. It's quite a workout, changing a king-sized duvet single handed; my method involves standing on the bed and shaking it ... And I tried to find somewhere to accommodate Hamnet, which I've had sitting on my bedside table but which having thoroughly enjoyed (I loved the last part in the theatre, and the wife's realisation) I needed a bit of shelf for it. 

That's where the blip came from. Our house is overflowing with books and music, the latter on sheets, in collections, in manuscript; neither of us is keen on chucking away things we might want to read/sing/play/study again. Quite some time ago I had a joiner make me bookshelves to fill most of an inside wall in the spare bedroom (living in an end terrace with a potentially damp gable wall has its drawbacks) and that is where I tried. You will see, the eagle-eyed among you, that my lovely hardback Hamnet is too tall to fit upright on the shelf; the more sensible will also notice that there's no room anyway. The fastidious will remark that it's a very odd collection on this bit of shelf, and you'd be correct - there was an alphabetical system in place for the fiction, but that was then. And the practical will ask what's wrong with the shelf above, and therein lies another rub. I like the shelf above. The things on it all have associations for me, and my house is bereft of clear surfaces on which they might decoratively sit. I have a problem.

But at least I've found a bit of space, and I know I will be able to find the book again. And then I did my Italian, and came across this sentence to translate, in the "Spiritual" category: A room without books is like a body without a soul.


Hence my title ...