Rather than spending the entire weekend cramming my sweaty, tired body into cars and trains and onto beaches alongside the unwashed masses in pursuit of "a good time", I have spent most of the Bank Holiday following the other great British tradition: that of staying at home and making a half-hearted attempt to tackle the mountain of outstanding domestic chores.

Inept amateur DIY is, of course, the canonical leisure activity for the Bank Holiday Brit; but I didn't even get that far. Instead I did four clothes washes (black, white, brown, and pink); sorted through piles of paperwork (about a quarter of which made it into the filing cabinet, while the other three-quarters was mercifully resigned to the circular file); tidied the bedroom (hence vast quantities of clothes washing); organised vast piles of clothes (and small piles of books) to sell or give away; and tidied various other bits of house in a somewhat desultory fashion.

And the worst of it is that even though the Useful Things I did today were mostly a method of distracting myself from feelings of guilt for failing to get to London to see monkeyhands, barnacle and the JunkList crowd ... yes, despite that, I found myself thinking that the day's endeavours had been productive. This, then, is progress: the endless process of sifting and cataloguing the past. The grains of sand. And the only future I can see is the inevitable continuation of the present.

Current Mood: slow, black
Now playing: Placebo: "Without You I'm Nothing"