I dunked my malted milk a little bit too long and en route to my mouth, it landed with a splat, in my pen pot. Saturday mornings in bed with my laptop – summed up in one FFS moment.
I woke up with an urgency to write today. Which is awesome. I made a coffee, grabbed a haul of inspirational prompt books which sit on my bookshelf and dived back into bed with a stack of biscuits and a determination to get 500 words down on the page.
What started out as a desire to create, it slowly turning into a procrastination exercise to avoid having to clean my pen pot. All my good pens, the ones I keep from the kids, the hotel pens my boyfriend has swiped from hotels when he travels with work, and all the ace freebies, now coated in a thick layer of malted milk and coffee.
Is it considered old school to still write with pen and paper? To put a blog post live I obviously have to transcribe my writing into digital format, but it feels more personal and real to write a first draft on paper.
I got a tonne of photos printed out yesterday too. Is that old school now? I’ve reverted back to my teens and stuck a load up on my wall above my desk. Pics of the kids, the dog, the boyfriend, snaps I took in Paris a few weeks back. The woman in the photo shop explained that people rarely print now unless its to go straight in a frame on the wall. Or in a cute keyring, snow globe or Valentine’s Day gift (yep, it’s almost that time again), but more on that later.
Playing board games, that’s old school. ALthough I heard yesterday there’s now a 10 minute game of Monopoly available. Probably because no one can afford to buy anything and they’ve swapped out Jail for moving back in with you folks.
Speaking of board games, I took the kids to see Jumanji: The Next Level, at the flicks last weekend. Since watching the original and first instalment reboot featuring Karen Gillan, The Rock and Jack Black, they’re been obsessed. I found myself saying “You know it started out as a board game, right?” quite a lot, as the digital SNES looking game in the film, brought the story up to the modern day expectations. Still, at age 5, 8 and 14 it was a refreshing change to find a film we all wanted to see.
SPOILER ALERT: Danny Devito and Danny Glover are in the latest film and make it a must see if you’ve followed the franchise.
Back to the old school. Tell you what else I absolutely love doing, hold on to your hats here people, it’s about to get raucous. I love doing Sudoku in the free Metro paper you get on the buses and trains. My commute into town seems to go much quicker while I’m wracking my brain trying to get the squares lined up with the correct digit. It’s probably the only time of the day I’m not talking, or listening to music. I’m fully engaged, kicking myself for not trying harder in GCSE Maths and wondering if the woman next to me is silently screaming out ‘YOU’VE F*CKED UP THE TOP RIGHT HAND BOX, YOU TIT.
I dabbled a bit in Brain Training on the DS when I could be arsed remembering to charge it. But providing I’ve got a pen, which come on, who hasn’t got a random biro in their bag? I’m good to go, even if it needs a wipe clean first. Malted Milk, FFS.
Kate Reilly James 