... and Bristol Fashion

Things are very calm and quiet chez moi at the moment.  Over the last few weeks, as I've reported here, one aspect after another of my life is being tidied up.  After the advent of the new cleaner and the re-shaping of the bedroom, this week saw something of a spring-clean of (at least part of) the kitchen.  The dresser that I so fortunately got on Freecycle a year or so ago, disguised as a small bookcase, was beginning to look dusty.

The action of unloading it onto the dining table reminded me of an occasion in my childhood, when - I suppose I was about seven or eight - I was engaged to help my mother by clearing things from the pantry onto the kitchen table for just such an exercise ... although today we seldom have a walk-in pantry, and many kitchens are far too small to accommodate a table! However, once the whole worktop on which the dresser stands had been cleared, cleaned and replaced, a number of small items were found to have taken lodging there without purpose, and have now been Freecycled away.

The desk too, metaphorically at least, is getting clear.  Earlier this year, after my completion of the twin family trees for my cousin's golden wedding present, I had some 500 new people to enter properly to my genealogy database; this number, if not in single figures, is now at least below 20, and - as I reported recently - the transcription exercise I had been working on for FreeCen was completed after eleven months.

As the new term starts at schools and universities, my decks are clear for new tasks and challenges.  Some, like the next district of the FreeCen transcription, have already started.  The men's breakfast at church began on Monday - that 6.0 alarm was familiar, but not really welcome - and there's also a plan to organise the distribution of the church Christmas cards across the parish, which I'm working on with a colleague.  To this end, I've possibly aroused some suspicion as I've been walking the streets with notebook in hand, locating an amazing quantity of missing house numbers.  I'm surprised how many numbers have not been used in our streets.  The odd 13 is often absent for superstitious reasons, but these are sequences sometimes of 20 or more, including one where no. 73 is followed by no. 111!

I can't help thinking this week of calm is preparing me for something different, and I confess to being excited to find out what it is.

You might be puzzled by my title this week.  Like many of our sayings, it has a nautical origin, and the first part of this one is more familiar: 'Ship shape', meaning all neat and tidy.  The connection with the sea is not out of place this week.  Pictures of the devastation left by hurricane Irma look like something out of this world.  The thought of 95% of an island country wrecked is almost beyond imagining.  I looked around my 'neat and tidy' realm this morning and wondered how I would cope if such devastation were to hit my home.  In our fair and pleasant land, it's hard to think how this could happen, but ... Grenfall happened!