Decluttering: a quandary

Just for a moment there, I had an access of utter fugue: standing in the half-stripped cupboard under the stairs (floor cleared, shelves still stacked) staring about me in a sort of vacant panic, I don't know what to doooo...!

Then I thought I might as well just carry on taking things out, looking at what they are, making judgements or else postponing same; so I did that.

Only now we have a new issue: in brief, best-before and use-by dates.

See, I know more or less how I feel about these, and it varies from product to product. On chutneys? Ridiculous: they're full of vinegar and sugar, they only mature, they get better with age. Like people, more or less. On beer? Not so much.

So: how's about catfood? Specifically, a semi-soft semi-dry product that comes in sachets. The girls used to love this stuff, and I just uncovered half a boxful. Dated "Best if used by 2005." Which is, um, a while ago. If it were me, I'd try it anyway, unless it seemed bad to nose or eye; but can I trust the boys to reject it if it's gone off? Should I just sling it as a precaution? What harm is it liable to do them? Etc etc. I am Chaz; see me dither.

In other news, I may never write again.

Other newses

Of course my cats can read. I offer evidence, irrefutable:

The clock on my computer is fifteen minutes fast, and getting faster. (I would fix this, if I could. I used to have a line of code that I typed at the prompt, that would slide off to a URL and look at what the time actually was and correct the clock accordingly. Tragically, I have lost the line of code, and the guy I had it from can no longer remember what it was.) Around this time of night - viz, rising six o'clock - the boys take turns to leap onto the desk and peer exaggeratedly at the clock in the corner of the screen, just to draw my attention to the fact that it says it's teatime. In fact it isn't, and I refer them to other timepieces in proof of this. They just keep coming back to the screen-clock, scattering my thoughts and my manuscripts and my desk-toys in equal profusion.

At the moment, I have my blue-light cheer-up-Chaz device on the same side of the keyboard as I have always had my working manuscript. This is proving sub-optimal; I've had to turn the light off, or I kept blinding myself with after-images from every glance at the paper.

Now I have a Barry sitting on the paper. "Chaz, it's teatime you'll do your eyes a mischief; let me help."

Talking of Barry: when he came, he came with his very own cushion. Big ugly brown thing, but the vets said he was ultimately attached to it, wouldn't sleep on anything else. I installed it in the warmest corner of the house, and he never went near it: instead he slept progressively on the landing, at the foot of the bed, at the head of the bed, on me.

So eventually it got stowed in the Dread Cupboard, which I am currently unpacking. I found it, thought about throwing it, postponed the decision, left it lying around in the dining-room.

Where Barry is now sleeping on it.

*shrugs helplessly*