Concentration

Musings on writing (or not writing!)

Concentration. It’s the single most important requirement for an author. And an absence of distractions. I say this to my wife whenever she remarks that the dishwasher needs emptying, the carpet needs vacuuming, or the dog looks like she needs a walk. Last week’s distraction was a parcel leaning against the wall in our hall. I say parcel. It was as tall as she is and resembled a monolith, a standing stone reminiscent of those found on Salisbury Plain or on Orkney.

‘Shoe rack’s arrived.’

‘I thought we already had one.’ I was in my office, staring hopelessly at a blank sheet of paper that needed to be filled with 800 words for the Portable Magic blog.

‘It’s a new one. And it needs building.’

I tapped my pen against an empty coffee mug that I thought would, rather cleverly, give the impression of deep thought while subliminally suggesting a refill might be welcome.

She didn’t react to either. ‘It won’t build itself.’

There was no alternative other than to engage. ‘Why do we need a shoe rack? We’ve already got one.’

‘Look at the place. Shoes strewn everywhere. So I’ve bought a bigger one. And it has doors, so it’ll look much neater.’

It was true. My shoes, boots and slippers were discarded across the hall, the kitchen, indeed across floors all around the house, although this was less to do with a dearth of storage space than convenience, left where I’d taken them off and handily placed for putting them back on.

‘But a flatpack?’ I have history with any kind of DIY. ‘Doesn’t John Lewis have shoe racks that don’t come in a flatpack?’

I’d hoped that after my last encounter with a flatpack – an IKEA bookshelf – she’d have consigned the wielding of Alun keys and blankly staring at impenetrable diagrams to the part of her brain labelled ‘distant memories’, alongside skinny dipping and going to bed after 10pm.

‘Well, it’s blocking the hall, so if you can tear yourself away from whatever it is you’re doing….’ she was easing past it towards the front door. ‘…I’m off. It’s my charity shop volunteering day. See you this evening.’ It was said with the expectation that the rack would be built by the time she returned.

 I won’t detail how the day unfolded, but suffice it to say, the only words used in the instructions, ‘Approximated Assembly Time -1 hour,’ turned out to be inaccurate by a factor of five. And having overcome chipping the veneer, snapping some doweling and re-constructing sections that I’d assembled back-to-front, it was still incomplete by the time she returned.

I went straight on the defensive. ‘I know it’s not finished. But it’s not my fault. I was almost there but four vital screws are missing. So I couldn’t do it.’

‘I’ll see about that.’ Without hesitation, she was on to customer services, who miraculously answered and promised to supply the missing pieces. When they arrived, they were delivered in a deceptively large package for just four screws. In fact, it resembled a monolith, a standing stone reminiscent of those found on Salisbury Plain or on Orkney. We’d been sent a completely new shoe rack, although this one came with a different veneer.

‘Looks like we’d better start again,’ my wife said cheerfully, ‘and this time, I’ll help you. We don’t share enough quality time together these days.’

I hoped she was being ironic, but it didn’t turn out as appallingly as I initially feared. In two hours it was done, with only three serious fallings out, two cups of tea needed to calm ourselves, and just the once when we had to dismantle a section and rebuild it the right way up.

The old rack was slid away, and I proudly eased the new one into position. I had to admit it looked to be an improvement.

It was only as my wife was loading her boots that we made a discovery. They stuck out, meaning the rack’s doors only partially closed. It was worse with my size elevens. The doors wouldn’t close at all. Some judicious swivelling and wedging were met with partial success, but only after displacing other pairs. With different configurations and shoe combinations, we eventually filled the rack and managed to ram the doors shut. But that left a mountain of shoes on the floor that we couldn’t squeeze in.

There was no getting away from it. The new rack was too small.

‘There’s only one thing for it.’ My wife converted deep despair into decisiveness. ‘We don’t need all these shoes.’  

And so began a cull. Any shoes rarely worn or almost worn out were banished into a black bin bag. Yet it still left more than would fit into the new rack. The answer was staring us in the face.

With heavy heart, we restored the old rack and reloaded it with the remaining shoes. And now we’d binned so many unwanted pairs, there was shelf space to spare. So, job done.

I didn’t dare ask why we couldn’t have just made the cull and stayed with the old rack, without having to go through the agony and frustration of assembling two new racks that we will never use.

But at least I can get back to writing. What’s more, I now have something to write about!

Author: Richard Smith

I'm a writer and storyteller and for much if my life produced sponsored films and commercials. Subjects were as varied as bananas in Cameroon, oil from the North Sea, fighting organised crime and caring for older people. Their aim was always to make a positive difference, but, worryingly, two commercials I worked on featured in a British Library exhibition, ‘Propaganda’. View all posts by Richard Smith