Kite Flying

We went down to London at the weekend, to visit some friends who have just moved to Black Heath. It was a wonderful, lazy time, incorporating roast lamb, pub lunches, good wine and kite flying - as you can see (just about) from the photo.

My husband keeps a kite in our car at all times, just in case the perfect kite-flying opportunity should occur, as it did on Sunday. It's a great kite for such a thing - you just toss it up there, and it flies. No fancy string work, no running starts, no hassle. It's like taking a bird for a walk on a lead. And it has a very pretty tail.

I, on the other hand, keep a notebook on standby at all times, in case the perfect idea arises, or I see something interesting, or I want to look busy so that the woman sitting next to me on the train doesn't try to start a conversation. It comes in handy a little more often than the kite.

The only problem, really, is that it's not just one notebook. It's dozens. And many of them have a few pages of scrawled notes, then lots and lots of blank pages. Or shopping lists.

I am currently spring cleaning the study. This includes emptying the filing cabinet of the piles and files of paper that have been dumped in there, randomly, over the last year, and sorting them all out into a coherent system. I'm almost done with the household stuff, but there's still a vast pile of paper on the sofa.

That's right. Writing notes. Reams of them.

Notecards, pads, paper scraps, receipts, notebooks, pages torn from notebooks, pages of diaries, things torn from magazines, photocopies, folders, envelopes (backs of), files, printouts, charts, family trees, and pages and pages of A4.

I have hanging folders. I have square cut folders. I have plastic wallets. I am (normally) very good at organising things.

I will find a way to make sense of the madness.



And then I'll start on the computer files.