chief exports

On Friday evening I drew up a small list of things I wished to achieve by the end of the weekend and Post-It-ed them on the side of a kitchen cupboard. When I attempted to complete one of them this afternoon I found a shut shop where there should have been a shop open until 17:00, which will now unfortunately use up at least one lunchtime next week. None of them have to be completed tomorrow but it would be good if at least a couple more could be, though Nicky's additional and vague mention of tidying might take up some time. I have recently created a couple of piles of stuff on the spare sofa but only because I've recently put both small rucksacks through the wash in order to get them to not smell, emptying them of all the built-up random clutter they've accumulated during use. The smaller of the two piles contains the stuff I removed from the first bag to be washed (the largest and most-bepocketed) and is effectively the only stuff from the larger mass considered to be vital to take up bag-space and drag to and from work everyday, so the rest can probably be moved to a box on a shelf in the wardrobe containing all the stuff I removed from my work-bag at the beginning of May, before I recommenced cycling to work and when I emptied all irrelevant crap out of my bag to be able to transport things to or from the hospital. It might also comprise some stuff emptied out of various rucksacks prior to going on holiday last October in order to ensure that I wouldn't inadvertently attempt to take something prosecutable through airport security. As well as the last bunch of stuff salvaged from the flat there's now a small pile of extra stuff which has been sitting in Nicky's parents' loft for about ten years which Nicky's mum made her bring back through yesterday. It'll all fit up into the loft but it'll soon start reaching the point where there's too much stuff up there to be able to see each box clearly and know what's in each, much like with the cupboards in the flat where everything had to be taken out to get anything open.

A few years ago a friend's child developed a weirdness whereby whenever it was concentrating on something, rather than sticking its tongue out of the side of its mouth it would make a sort of slanted ellipse with its lips as if it was demonstrating a freeze-frame of someone who'd been punched in the cheek half a second previously. I managed to avoid laughing at it until one of its parents described the mouth-shape as sphincterlike. Edgar's latest trick (not pictured) is to form his mouth into a sort of parroty beak-shape with his upper lip protruding over the lower before attempting to communicate using only the 'b' sound for minutes at a time. Voice artist Enn Reitel once demonstrated a 'man trapped in cupboard' voice on some sort of chat show of which I was reminded by the sound. I think he's doing it in order to build up a mouthful of spit which he'll eventually release over his collar or allow to run down his chin and neck, something it would be useful for him to not do if he's wanting to be outside at all during the autumn and winter, especially in the facing-forward configuration, especially as it's difficult to crane sufficiently far forward over the top of his head to be able to see his chin to know if it needs to be wiped in order to prevent his chin becoming unpleasantly cold and passers-by tutting.