Comic Cuts - 24 December 2010

I've spent the whole week in one of three states: in front of the computer, clearing up the living room or asleep. I've left the house twice, once to do some shopping and once to clear the drive of snow but despite the rushing around I'm feeling completely relaxed and looking forward to a few days off.

I'm pleased to say that what was Box Mountain has become Box Pile now. For newcomers, we moved house a few months ago and I've been trying to sort out the collected ephemera of thirty-five years; before that, Mum had a marvelous system which involved giving things away or putting them out for the dustman, a habit I never picked up. I had some serious misgivings about moving to a smaller house and trying to cram everything in but it actually seems to be working. The unpacking has taken months (for reasons explained in past columns); during the early days it was really just a case of wrangling shelves into place and throwing books onto them and it was only a few weeks ago that I really started to get to grips where everything was going to fit. A bit like a house-sized 3-D jigsaw puzzle.

Box Mountain

So now I'm left with the Box Pile which still needs some work before the day is out but is now down to a size where we can actually see the mantelpiece. Incidentally, its a blank wall behind the boxes as the mantelpiece is purely decorative.

Box Pile

And that's how things are going to stay until I can afford some more proper magazine boxes. There's also the back end of the lounge which was also piled high. Here's what it looked like a few weeks ago:

And here's where we're at as of last night.

Still some improvements to be made so we can get the table in (at the moment it's in the kitchen) but it's starting to look less like a lock-up and more like a home. Once I get things a little more sorted I'll post some shelf porn for those of you who like that sort of thing. (No, it's not rude... it's basically offering people a chance to take a nose at your shelves. Here, for instance, is Neil Gaiman's shelf porn. Oh, to have fitted shelves! But as we've always rented it's something we've never had. Nice to see he has to double stack everything, too!)

I'm going to wrap this up as time is creeping on and I still have things to do. It's the wee hours of Christmas Eve and I still have a couple of things to wrap... I don't usually leave these things to the last minute, honest!

Today's random scan is a bit of a cheat: it's the latest issue of Dodgem Logic (issue 7), which arrived in the post yesterday. My little contribution to this issue is a look at the books of T. Lobsang Rampa, Tibetan lama, a.k.a. Cyril Hoskin, former surgical goods salesman. There's some better and funnier articles as well (and I'm glad I wasn't the only one to ignore the brief to write something Christmassy). The thing I originally planned to post I'll post during the week.

(* Dodgem Logic © Mad Love Publishing. Cover by Kevin O'Neill.)