The Things You Don’t See On Instagram

Although I’ve called this post ‘Week in Pictures‘, I actually started writing it just over a week ago, with the intention of it being one of my usual, diary-style posts.

Then the tragic attack in Manchester happened, and now it feels a bit odd to me to be writing about all of the trivial little things which have made up my week, when all the time there’s been one HUGE thing dominating the news, and my thoughts – a thing so huge I can’t even find the right words to talk about it.

I’m never really sure how to approach this kind of thing on the blog/social media: on the one hand, I don’t want to be accused of trying to make it all about ME, but on the other hand, it just feels so odd to continue with business as usual, as if nothing has happened. Also, there never really seems to be a right time or way to address these subjects, so I generally end up saying nothing, and then feeling like crap because of it. I’ve actually written a much longer post on the subject of how social media deals with tragedy, which I may or may not publish at some point, but for now all I’ll say is that the world, once again, feels like a very dark and scary place right now, and my heart breaks for the people who lost their lives, and for those who loved them. It’s absolutely incomprehensible to me to think of those poor people going out to a concert, and then never coming home, and so although I’m now going to awkwardly segue into “business as usual” mode, it really didn’t feel right to not mention it. Here’s that awkward segue…

Ladies and gentlemen, I present my marriage, summed up in one photo:

You’ll never guess whose desk is whose, will you?

This photo is not remotely staged, by the way: when I took it, last Saturday morning, I looked at it and thought, “Yeah, everyone’s going to assume I tied my desk before I tool this, or that Terry deliberately messed his up,” but nope, that’s what our home office actually looks like right now – and a lot of other times, really. And, to be fair, Terry’s desk is particularly messy at the moment because he’s been spending all of his time working on the kitchen/living room reno, so tidying his desk has been the last thing on his mind (I’d do it for him, but I’m NOT ALLOWED to touch The Desk…), but… yeah. This is why you only ever see MY desk on my new Instagram account…

(I should add here that I’m not posting this to Terry-shame – it was actually his suggestion – or to suggest that I’m in any way superior because I keep things neat. I know it’s just as hard it is to live with a neat-freak as it is for me to live with someone who ISN’T one: I just thought it was a funny visual representation of how totally different we are. And yeah, that IS a loo roll on his desk, by the way. I haven’t asked…)

(Oh, and this reminds me, actually: I did buy some of the chair glides someone recommended on this post, and they finally allowed me to get rid of the horrible carpet protector! They don”t leave any marks on the carpet, either, and although they do make the chair a little harder to move in and out, I can totally live with it. Terry, on the other hand, totally can’t live with it, so he still has his plastic mat and chair-on-wheels. I’ve had to resign myself to only half of the office being even remotely Instagramable at any given time…)

In other news, because we have a super-glamorous life, this week Terry and I took a quick trip to the local recycling centre, to offload some of the many huge pieces of cardboard and other packaging that came with our new kitchen, and as we were leaving, I saw something that chilled me to the very bone:

ROADSIDE TEDDIES, people. ABANDONED BEARS. It seems that some people – and quite a lot of them, too, by the looks of things – had actually THROWN AWAY their beloved soft toys, thus resigning them to a life on the street: well, at the recycling centre, where it seems the workers have gathered them together to create this sad little display. Well, you all know how I feel about this kind of thing, don’t you? And yes, I DID ask Terry if we could stop the car and collect them all, to give them a safe and loving home but, surprisingly enough, he really wasn’t down with that idea, so I had to resign myself to being just one more passer-by, who looked at their smiling faces, and then just drove on by. I hate myself right now.

Also, do you see it?

That doll is totally going to come and try to kill us all in our sleep, isn’t it? If I were the person who tried to throw her out on the street, I’d be veeeerrrry worried right now…

In other news:

Our front door has this silly little spy hole in it, which is completely and utterly redundant, because the top half of the door is made of glass. Sometimes when people come to visit, I like to make a big show of looking through the spy hole, even although they’re standing right there in front of me, because it’s just THAT stupid. (I mean, I guess it’s maybe there for times when you have the blind pulled down over the glass? We never do, though, so I stand by my original assessment here…) Anyway, last week Terry made this cute little frame to go over it, just to keep the joke going. If you’re a Friends fan (and we are), you’ll probably have recognised this from the show: it’s based on the one that hung on the door of Monica’s apartment, and Terry made it all by himself, from clay: isn’t he clever? Say he is clever: it’ll help make up for that photo of the desk…

Also, just to prove how very, very exciting my life has been lately…

I went to the library. Because the thrills never end round here, let me tell you.

I actually used to go the library almost every week, but ever since I got my Kindle, a few years ago, I’ve just been downloading all of my books to that, so there hasn’t been any need. Lately I’ve been reading quite a lot, though, and, well, it was getting a little bit expensive, so I decided to go all old skool and re-join the library. Our local library isn’t particularly great, to be honest – they have something like two full shelves worth of Jackie Collins novels, and then a pretty random selection from other authors (mostly chick lit of what they describe as “family sagas” – so I came away with a bit of a mixed bag, really. I can already highly recommend the Lisa Jewell novel, though, which I read in almost one sitting: as for the rest, I’ll report back soon!