Tag: storage

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The Tour That Didn’t Tour

On Saturday just gone, I was supposed to go on a tour behind the scenes at Dundee Central Library. The visit was organised by Creative Dundee and was only open to members of its Amps network, making it a rare opportunity, especially as their events often happen on weekdays when I’m working.

Fate had something to say about this rare opportunity, in the form of plumbing problems that forced the library to close for the day.

I’ve been to that section a couple of times before, and I subscribe to the city archives blog, so I have some idea of what they do there. Still, making the information available digitally requires thousands of volunteer hours, so I look forward to seeing that aspect when the tour is rescheduled.

So instead of coffee after the tour, that became the main event, with around a dozen attendees descending on an accommodating cafe nearby. This proved to be a time for fruitful discussion and not even necessarily about our creative work.

After a conversation about where we’d travelled last year and our plans for this year – in my case, the Millennium Bridges tour – I possibly have another project brewing which stems directly from that.

Either way, I look forward to the next Amps outing.

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A Look Inside the Writing Boxes

When you’re a writer, people sometimes think stationery would make a great gift. In general, this is a thoughtful gesture. However, I now have too much of it.

My stationery lives in two plastic boxes on my bookshelf. Put together, they have roughly the total volume of a medium-sized cabin bag.

The upper box contains mainly pens, pencils, erasers, Tipp-Ex, glue sticks and similar items, plus my Dymo label-maker. The lower box is a store for paper, notepads and envelopes.

Despite most of my work beginning as pencil on paper, I find I don’t use very much of it at any one time, so it largely sits there untouched. I’m also not one of those writers who doesn’t want to spoil a new notebook by writing in it. If it’s in the box, it’s there to be used. Envelopes are especially a problem. I sometimes find I need just one in a particular size, but I can only find multi-packs, so there are spares left over.

I have given away bits and pieces to pals over time, but the amount I have never seems to diminish. However, I don’t want to give away the whole lot because it’s handy to have around when I do need it.