One of my greatest challenges, other than horrible diseases and difficult other people, is focus.
There are always a large number of things I want to do, as a result of which I have stockpiled dolls house kits, card making essentials, dies, art materials, notebooks, fabric and a hundred other things that I will do someday. I know this problem is common among miniaturists, who are all multi-talented. In fact I would class the hobby as the natural home of the multi-talented because you need knowledge and diverse skills to build and furnish a miniature dwelling. If you buy the house ready made and simply collect, you still need knowledge, imagination and sourcing skills.
I buy, create, collect and invent; there simply aren’t enough hours in a day. I do not have a mobile phone and would not dare to get a smart phone, nothing would get done, ever.
After a request I did think about making a paper catalogue again. They were very home made, competitive (because there was only one of each thing photographed) and quite popular. I am still thinking about reviving the online store but that requires the major assistance of the S&H, who might be about to get a new job which will involve travel overseas, in which case the shop would be impossible. I am still entertaining the ambition of putting a thousand hand-made miniatures on the table in spring at the Min, if I can get enough space (the Spring show is growing, space is at a premium.) I had a quick count in a lull in the autumn and found I had put out 825 individually hand made items. No wonder I’m always the last exhibitor to leave.
Then I had a couple of poorly days. I am still struggling with my digestion and back to the hospital this week with my intestines. Well, I have to be really, it would be tricky to leave them behind. Long term readers will recall that I had five surgical keyhole explorations, each of which, after twenty months of agony, the right scan revealed, had left a string of scar tissue behind it, tying my intestines in knots. I think they are slowly getting better, it is now a couple of months since I was last languishing in hospital, vomiting blood.
Anyway, the awfulness reminded me of what I had wanted so badly to do during all the years I cared for my demented mother and what I wanted after the cancer diagnosis. There is a song, I think, about not dying with your song unsung. My song is comic novels. After the fiasco of the fake agency I picked myself up, reported the scam to the police, turned myself round, looked up publishers again and sent the extract off into the darkness with a covering letter.
Then I got distracted by miniatures, builders, phone chats, family stuff, rain in the downstairs toilet, shopping channels and all the rest of it, easily. Not like turning a tanker with tugs, more like gifting a schoolboy a catapult.
I only had to turn up to my writer’s group twice with nothing to read to realise I wasn’t getting on with it. The essence of writing a novel, encapsulated by Mark Twain, is to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and not separate the two until the job is done.
So I am off to do just that, and not faffing around rearranging the bookcase, tallest on the left, shortest on the right. No eyebrow plucking. No organising winter shoes. No counting plastic propelling pencils.
There still does have to be builder’s tea, three hourly.
You do still have to eat and drink (though after bad intestines, that’s best kept to a minimum.) And you do still need to sleep. Sleep is helpful, close your eyes pondering a problem, wake with the solution. (I used to do this with dolls house building difficulties, fall asleep with a tricky roof, wake up with dormers. Now I’m doing it in one scale.)
If you requested pictures or dolls, they will still be on the way.
In a chapter or two.
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