Jewel Box

Maybe I’m just becoming a very paranoid and suspicious young man but there is certainly something slightly disconcerting about a man turning up at your door clutching a messy pile of yellow fliers saying that he is going around the neighbourhood asking whether anyone’s got any jewellery (‘such as gold or silver’, he says, clearly unconvinced I know what jewellery is) that he could valuate. More concerning would be if anyone then followed his request by presenting him with a box full of diamond necklaces and gold rings, eagerly determined to find out whether they might be able to get a couple of quid after all. I mean, how’s anyone supposed to sell anything these days unless someone turns up at their door anyway?

Needless to say, I insisted in an overly-assertive tone (which probably sounded a little suspicious, come to think of it) that we in fact have very little jewellery in the house. So little jewellery that I’m actually waiting for the guy who buys paper clips and elastic bands to come round later that morning so that I can afford to buy a couple of necklaces for my poor, deprived wife.

In other news, I came across an interesting article by Sam Leith earlier (which Nick Page pointed people to on Twitter) and so I wanted to show you a paragraph from it here as it touches upon some of the things I’ve mentioned from time to time and sums up my general approach to my days recently…

A large number of literate westerners spend most of their waking hours at computers, and those computers are connected to the web. The characteristic activity on such a computer has been given the pleasing name "wilfing", adapted from the acronym WWILF, or "What was I looking for?" You work a bit. You check if it's your move in Facebook Scrabble. You get an email. You answer it. You get a text. You answer it. Since your phone's in your hand, you play Angry Birds for five minutes. You work a bit. You go online to check something, get distracted by a link, forget what you were looking for, stumble on a picture of a duck that looks like Hitler, share it on Twitter, rinse and repeat.

The debate he then gets into is whether this proliferation of activities reflects the fact that we are cleverer than we used to be, since we can balance so many things at once, or whether we’re less capable then we used to be because we can’t maintain our focus on any one thing for that long at all. Since I’m a pretty big wilfer, I’m going to support the ‘we are cleverer’ argument…

In writing news, I’m now just one monologue away from having the collection ready to go and so my main focus is now on trying to find someone who can draw me a front cover. So, blog readers, is there anyone out there who would be up for drawing a few cartoon people, a cartoon snake and a cartoon tree? This is a genuine offer of stardom – well, the opportunity to appear on Amazon at least. Any takers?

I hope you’ve enjoyed having a browse of my websites. Lots keeps getting added and so do check back if you haven’t seen them for a few days – particularly the Contemporary Christian Drama one. Recently, I’ve been recording audio versions of the monologues, which has been good fun – if only for making me feel like I’m having a brief stint as a recording artist, seeing my name come up on Windows Media Player, fulfilling in a very roundabout and not really accurate way my long-held ambition to be a rock-star. OK, so there may be no guitars, drums or singing, but it’s a start at least.

Right, time to get the washing in before it rains and I have an awkward conversation with my wife on her return from work. It does mean I’ll be away from the front door for a few minutes – hope I don’t miss anyone coming round to buy any spare dust from our hoover (unluckily for them, if so, I managed to spill most of it on the kitchen floor yesterday)…