“The furniture style of the second half of the nineteenth century has received its only adequate description, and analysis, in a certain type of detective novel at the dynamic centre of which stands the horror of apartments. The arrangement of the furniture is at the same time this site plan of deadly traps, and the suite of rooms prescribes the fleeing victim’s path. That this kind of detective novel begins with Poe – at a time when such accommodation hardly yet existed – is no counter-argument. For without exception the great writers perform their combinations in a world that comes after them, just as the Paris streets of Baudelaire’s poems, as well as Dostoyevsky’s characters, only existed after 1900. The bourgeois interior of the 1860s to the 1890s, with its gigantic sideboards distended with carvings, the sunless corners where palms stand, the balcony embattled behind its balustrade, and the long corridors with their singing gas flames, fittingly houses only the corpse. “On this sofa the aunt cannot but be murdered.” The soulless luxuriance of the furnishings becomes true comfort only in the presence of a dead body. Far more interesting than the Oriental landscapes in detective novels is that rank Orient inhabiting their interiors: The Persian carpet and the Ottoman, the hanging lamp and the genuine Caucasian dagger. Behind the heavy, gathered Khilim tapestries The master of the house has orgies with his share certificates, feels himself the eastern merchant, the indolent Pasha in the caravanserai of otiose enchantment, until that dagger in its silver sling above the divan puts an end, one fine afternoon, to his siesta and himself. This character of the bourgeois apartment, tremulously awaiting the nameless murderer like a lascivious old lady her gallants, has been penetrated by a number of authors who, as writers of “detective stories” – and perhaps also because in their works part of the bourgeois pandemonium is exhibited – have been denied the reputation they deserve. The quality in question has been captured in isolated writings by Conan Doyle and in a major production by A. K. Green; and with The Phantom of the Opera, one of the great novels about the 19th century, Gaston Leroux has brought the genre to its apotheosis.”

‘Manorially Furnished Ten-Room Apartment’ in ‘One Way Street’, Walter Benjamin, written 1925-26

The rest of my stay in Plymouth was delightful, but entirely without incident. In one respect perfect for what I wanted: have a bit of space, wander around, drink tea, look at things and take pictures of them, rest; but less good in terms of coming up with a story. Except…

My sister’s fridge has one of the most interesting personalities of any item of white goods I’ve ever come across. Don’t get me wrong, it does a great job of keeping things at the temperature they are supposed to be, the doors and the lights inside work well enough. What else can you say about a fridge? Well quite a lot as it turns out. Some mornings I’d get up and be making tea while listening to the sounds of the countryside, before realising that Oreston is not exactly ‘country’, more a quiet suburb, and the sounds of cattle lowing, or that of a particularly suggestive chicken scratching in the dirt, were actually being made by the fridge.

I suspect I’m anthropomorphising but given that so many modern appliances now have computer chips that regulate their functions, is there not at least a tiny possibility that one of them has begun to develop a rudimentary degree of consciousness, and alongside this it’s own language to comment on the job in hand? No matter that the task is boring and extremely repetitive, if your sole reason for existence is to keep your insides at a certain temperature, then your world view is going to be centred on this one aspect of material existence and you’re going to think it’s pretty damned important. Indeed important enough to want to comment on it endlessly. Furthermore, I think the fridge has at least a rudimentary degree of awareness of ‘other’. After all, if you’re of even a limited philosophical disposition, it’s only going to be a matter of time before you start asking why your doors are sometimes opened, your insides periodically filled and then slowly emptied again. These events will interfere with your primary function and therefore wellbeing. Depending on your outlook you will see these events as either a challenge, or a discomfort and, eventually, you are going to wonder whether there is something else out there doing these things to you.

Once you’ve got to this stage, self-consciousness has arisen, which may be why it has taken me a year to get an even half decent recording of it in full voice.

Up until now, every time I have become aware of it’s chattering and clucking, and managed to get my recording gear out, things have gone deathly quiet, and carried on this way for long enough for me to abandon the session. It cannot be a coincidence that this keeps happening; the bloody thing has self-awareness and does not like the proximity of other devices, or entities (i.e. me). In the end, like some hunter in the forest, I had to sit patiently for about an hour, pretending to do something else, before I could get even this rather bad recording, but it gives you an idea. Please listen to the whole recording, there are gaps of pregnant silence, but these only serve to make the utterances more powerful when they do happen, and do play the recording at full volume so you don’t miss any of the nuances.

Why do we say that we see things out of the corners of our eyes, when we all know our eyes are spherical? Yet I cannot think of a better way of describing the things we see… well… out of the corners of our eyes.

One of the delights about running a blog for an extended period of time, is that you can then look at what happened this time last year and note any seasonal variations. For instance: despite the weather being nowhere near as good as it was in March 2015, the seafront carousel is being assembled several days earlier. This is probably because we are having an early Easter this year, and the carousel boys will need to make sure everything works before the approaching holiday weekend.

To be honest though, observations like these are rather obvious. Much more interesting are the dates of this year’s mattress dumping season. For months it has been quiet on the abandoned bedding front but, as noted before (Weds 28th Jan 2015) as soon as the sun comes out properly, so do all the mattresses! Today’s example has not been the first I’ve seen on the streets; they’ve been appearing for a few weeks now (something I perhaps should have recorded, but I’d rather felt I’d ‘done’ that last year). However, while this means this seasonal event is running about a month late in purely calendar terms, it confirms that the phenomenon is directly linked to the amount of direct sunlight present on a number of given days, i.e. as soon as it gets sunnier, the rate of this activity rises. This is not dissimilar to the breeding habits of pigeons who, while remaining sexually active throughout the year, show a marked increase in ‘interest’ as the days get longer. Therefore I am confident that the human nesting season has begun; a sure sign that the new spring is on its way!

“Wabi-sabi is ambivalent about separating beauty from non-beauty or ugliness. The beauty of wabi-sabi is in one respect, the condition of coming to terms with what you consider ugly. Wabi-sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else. Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view. Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.”

Leonard Koren, ‘Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers’