Every evening they swim to the top right corner of their tank awaiting a few flakes of fish food and without fail we provide them. Twinkles has hardly grown since we bought her home from the local ‘Pets at Home’ depot, she swims about back and forth avoiding Rory and looks forward to the evenings and the flakes. Rory forages, sucks the cluches of food that have escaped the filter and spits them back out again. He swims at the gush of water sprayed out of the filter but every evening he is there at the top of the tank awaiting the delivery of tidbits. He’s a fat fish.

When you get your payslip this month take a moment to think about what is going on outside of your fish-tank.

My collaboration with Quentin Blake(’s book entitled Drawing for the Artisically Undiscovered!)

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” I have a new understanding to this belief (let’s call it Morelle’s Interpretation) simply goes “stuff expands as much as it can”.

I discovered this when confronted my the shambolic state of my garden shed. Overflowing with tools, pots, children’s toys…stuff. It was unworkable, unsightly, unmanageable and irritating. The shed sits to the side of the house not doing very much but if you ever wanted a light bulb, screwdriver or lawn mower you’d have to clamber over half filled paint pots, bang your knee on the edge of a rusty old bar-b-que and probably hit your head on a mop bucket daringly hanging from a nail. Its just something small like a screw driver, did it require a big tidy up? The mess in the shed was an irritation. Small things make a big difference.

Our loft was creaking with more stuff. Old schoolbooks, baby toys we won’t be needing again. Remnants of fabric. Records that haven’t been played for 5 years (I sold my turntables 2 years ago!) and more, and more and more….stuff accumulated from 30 years of my life and inherited from my own parents loft.

Just a few bits and bobs from our loft

Our loft was full because that’s how much space we had to fill. A friend recently said to me ‘if it goes in the loft, it means you don’t need it’ I had to pause and think. Its true, if you don’t use it you don’t need it. Someone else can use it. The only value would be sentimental. Mental attachment to inanimate objects.

To the lounge. Probably over 700 compact discs gathering dust, unplayed. We use iTunes. Even my 6 year old Ella knows how to search for music using iTunes. We don’t need the CD’s and the space they take up unbalanced the room in a way we never realised until they were gone. What were they on display anyway?

The dining room. We had a nice old upright piano that our neighbours gave us for ‘free’ when they moved. It was good to begin with, we got some value from it but the cost was a low level amount of irritation – the piano had to accommodate the only space our bookcase the bookcase was meant to be. Any sound noise including traffic sounds would resonate and that monster was brewing decades of dust inside. So the bookcase went in to my bedroom.

The book cases and some other stuff…

I think a bedroom should be a place to relax. Under the bed we had a table, an ironing board and some other unused junk. Stuff that we ‘might’ have used one day. First off, the ironing board is a work tool, I think work tools should be banished from a place of rest. Stuff that we might use is the problem. You hear yourself saying ‘I could use this one day – keep it’. Before you know it your house is crammed with junk you might use one day, if, when that day comes about you actually remember where you put it! Your head is filled with remembering you’ve got this junk some place. A bookcase along one wall. An Ottoman at the end of the bed – that I would always walk in to in the dark. Low-level irritants.

Removing hooks on the back of doors was surprisingly a major breakthrough overcoming clutter. Those little buggers attract much more that they were intended for. ‘In the wardrobe! You can’t expect me to put my dressing gown in the wardrobe!’ said my wife Susannah. Moments later she was in hysterics after realising what she had said. The hooks are gone and funnily enough the stuff has gone with them.

We moved in to our house 4 years ago with the contents from a 1 bedroomflat. Our stuff expanded to fill the space available.

The problem as I see it is that people get seduced by storage. ‘Storage Solutions’ IKEA call them. I say that storage is the problem . Remove the storage and the stuff has to dissipate to another storage receptacle. Preferably a charity shop or a dustbin.

Look at all this shit!

Throwing stuff in the dustbin gives a good sense of closure, the mind can focus on the present and future. I realised I had become the family archivist carrying a tonne of baggage and that was weighing me down.

We overcame the hoarding and scarcity mindsets we’ve inherited from our parents (who lived through rationing) we became like bulldozers. Piano gone, skip filled, 700 CD’s given to Barnardo’s disc drive, friends with children or expecting, or neighbours who are grandparents gratefully accepted our stuff – to them its gold. To us, its just stuff. They wanted to give us other stuff in reciprocation but we politely refused.

I tried this new philosophy of removing the storage on the micro level of my desk. I got rid of the pen tubs and shelving from my desk and the stuff had to find somewhere else to live. Like Parkinson’s Law states I had to distil what was essential and clear away all the useless pap. Ultimately I intend to get rid of my desk and just have a comfortable chair.

Its the small irritants that cause the greatest aggravation, drip drip, like Chinese water torture until its unbearable. Now there is a sense of calmness in our house which is very unusual especially with two young children.

Of course, all our bins are filled to the brim, they always are. Why don’t you check your pockets now? Are they filled with stuff? Will you really use all that stuff today?

Why not spend a couple of days getting rid of your mosquitoes? We shape the world around us, from then on it shapes us.

]]> http://www.danmorelle.com/2008/04/storage-the-problem-not-the-solution/feed/ 0 http://www.danmorelle.com/2007/10/school-childrens-book-awards/ http://www.danmorelle.com/2007/10/school-childrens-book-awards/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:22:02 +0000 Dan Morelle http://www.danmorelle.com/blog/?p=25 I’ve always been a bit cynical about awards. From my days working at !K7 records I learned that just to be considered for the nominations cost thousands of pounds and once you got through that stage the label signed up to more expense. When I saw Michael Rosen on teachers.tv ranting about book awards my ears twitched and the hairs on my neck stood up. Rosen wasn’t ranting about there being too many awards, the opposite – that there weren’t enough! They should have them in Community Centres, Libraries and Schools. Its the schools bit that piqued my attention. Rosen ended his rant by saying ‘if there was a book awards ceremony at your school, i know i’d be there…’. Well. What can i say. To me that was an open invitation, and I decided to put Michael to the test.

I’m a Governor at Ella’s school in Newark and I approached the Head Teacher and tabled the idea of a book awards ceremony as a good opportunity to talk about books and have an assembly some time in the future – a mock ‘Oscars’ type ceremony with envelopes and speeches. It was a pretty vague idea but he liked it and asked me to come up with a proposal. Which I did and he got enthusiastic about the idea. Then it was the summer holiday. So I had a phone and made a few calls.

Over the next few weeks the idea evolved in to something that excited me more and more. I grew more cynical about other so-called book awards that were ’substantially’ selected by children. I spoke to children’s librarians who indicated to me that an award winner did not necessaerily mean a popular book. The idea evolved. What about an award selected by school children. Shortlisted by school children. From ANY book ever published. Not just ones a publisher wants to push – there’s enough of those already. I wanted to get 3 authors or illustrators at the school but they are very busy people and Newark not a great destination to get to for these metrocentric artisans. A plan. How about a video. A video that I could share with other local schools. Quentin Blake liked that and I was invited to his studio in London on August 7th at 2pm.

I met the alchemist and he created a magic picture for the school and recorded a wonderful video. This picture really did have magical properties – it opened doors. Its not quite so simple but over the next four weeks I got another two videos from Nick Sharratt and Michael Rosen(which was infinately more difficult since he was made the Children’s Laureate)! Yes. All incredibly warm and generous people

I asked WHSmiths to give 10% of childrens books in Newark – which they did and the independent book shop Strays gave 10% of the nominated books and a further 50% off an additional purchase by a nominated author.

Equipment was all favours from friends and editing facilities from a wonderful company I met in Manchester two days before the ceremony. The strange coincidence there was that on the delayed train home that night some lovely people sat opposite me – it turned out they were from teachers.tv – I showed them the video and the camera man I met will help me collect future videos. Its fate.

The Friday assembly came around and everyone at the school was dressed as their favourite book characters. One as a Wally and we played real life ‘Where’s Wally’! I had to give a 10 minute talk about how I got the videos (simply persistence and a little experimentation). I’ve never spoken to 400 people before. But dressed as Cat in the Hat it was a lot of fun. The children saw the video and gasped at the giants from their stories, and I squeezed in some Mozart in to the soundtrack for good measure.

Children cheered for their favourite books.

So after so much excitement what happens next? Well. We intend to run a pilot School Children’s Book Awards with 50 schools in March 2008 with a website that shares video content, guideline lesson plans for a themed week of events preceeding the big day – put together by a leading educationalist. The website will also be used as a hub for children to review books, upload video reviews and enter their votes. Teachers can also use the sites admin centre to process votes and produce ready formated certificates and there will be resources for parents to help the with exiting their children about reading and books. And its all free.

I believe the whole awards thing ticks a few curriculum boxes but really I hope it can all help to ignite and nourish a passion for books. There are so many ideas. And all it costs is a few phonecalls, a bit of time and some train tickets.

I’m asking Jacqueline Wilson and other luminaries of Childnren’s Literature to give half an hour to record a video. And in October 2008 or March 2009 we can have a national awards ceremony that collates all the votes from all the schools around the country!

We did it in Newark, the authors loved it, the kids loved it, the teachers loved it and the shops loved it. Rosen was right, let’s do something about it. www.schoolchildrensbookawards.org

Check this awesome lady out, she’s got a big idea – I hope it goes round the world:

Oh, and for those who don’t know – this is the Michael Rosen, Poet, Writer, Performer and Childnren’s Laureate.

Last Thursday I decided that I must quit caffeine. That’s how easy it was. But it wasn’t really. Cold turkey is tough. Headaches, sweats, restlessness and a really bad attitude – did I mention the headaches? But I was committed to get to the other side without imbibing one drop of the black stuff. However many times it was waved under my nose.

I used to quaff several cups of coffee a day but after an episode of pneumonia a few years back I decide to cut back. I switched to Tea and after try several brands I settled on very strongly brewed PG Tips, no milk. Mmm, those lovely pyramid teabags – a wonder of an invention, spinning around in my mug creating a creamy foam in the top – anti-oxidants (they call them flavinoids) removing toxins from my body and the caffeine introducing a new sense of alertness to my brain.

Unfortunately, like most drugs the effects wore off. I had to up the dosage to get the same buzz. 1 cup at breakfast, then another mid-morning, then one after lunch and eventually one in the evening. It’s no wonder I woke in the morning feeling tired and ratty. I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms every night whilst not dosing up.

Now I am on the other side I don’t know why I didn’t go caffeine free earlier. The benefits after 5 days of cold turkey are a revelation.

1. Alertness
Now my brain chemistry is not being altered I am thinking more clearly and my eyesight is clearer. I have an astigmatism but that’s a story for another day.

2. Focus
No more scatterbrain. I found it difficult to focus on one task and juggled many. Too many windows open on my PC and not very much being achieved – what was being achieved was not very good.

3. Creativity
Given the nature of my work it’s important to think in a non-linear fashion but on caffeine this is nigh on impossible. Scatterbrain doing but linear thinking. 3 dimensionsional was a real struggle. It’s not that way now. I can call on all parts of my brain and am not suffering from the dreaded ‘tip of the tongue‘ disease.

4. Sleep
No midnight withdrawal. A rested Dan is a happy Dan.

5. Getting things done
Simply focusing on a task and seeing it through – and quite a lot quicker than I expected too!

6. More patience
My children appreciate this and it has an enormous impact on the morale in the Morelle house. Being in control of my emotions and being able to consider problems in a breath is much more useful than snapping with those caffeinated jaws.

7. More energy
I am certain that drinking caffeinated drinks has a bad effect on my digestion and the diuretic effects aren’t too clever either. Being permanently dehydrated and malnourished is eventually going to take its toll. Without tea and coffee a stroll in to town is what it is, not a schlep.

Do yourself a huge favour and quit today. Don’t cut down, cut it out – it’s worth it in the end. I should cocoa.

My new friend, Drew Anderson (Millions of Hundred Dollar Ideas) is opening a gallery to sell 1 x 1 inch pieces of art in his hometown of Portland, Oregon (USA). He is pimping his sketchbook (at http://www.buymysketchbook.com/) to raise funds to fit out the gallery. Yesterday I decided to help him by working on my own sketch book and donating it for auction.

So this evening I found myself at the Institute, near Russell Square in London.

At the end of the engaging and educational lecture I humbly joined the que for autographs. I read Quentin Blake’s pictures as a child and read them now with my children – Roly Poly Birds, Vermicious Knids – the whole kit and caboodle. Quentin was wearing very cool white shoes, I was amazed how clean they were and complimented him on them. A real dude!

I didn’t have a book for him to sign (most people had a Roald Dahl one of some form or other) but asked for a doodle for my Moleskine – he was happy for me to offer it to Drew’s cause.

Here it is. Its a beautiful picture. One of a kind. And I am giving it away! There are 99 pages left in the book for me to fill and I have a ridiculously high standard to reach. Maybe I will just give it to Drew as it is…

At five to nine Monday on BBC Radio 4 a full frontal assault on user-generated content was made by the new self-styled (user-generated?) ‘anti-christ of silicon valley’.

Andrew Keen has written a book entitled ‘Cult of the Amateur‘, he discussed his belief that “the Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy”.
Maybe he is right, are either of his conclusions a bad thing?

Andrew said that the traditional editor is being undermined (read: not paid). Music business is in free fall by corrupt user generated content. What? The music industry in free fall? Oh dear. People losing jobs? I’m so sad. No really, I am. But (and yes, I can start a sentence with ‘but’ if I want – the only editor here is me) isn’t it about time for the music industry to tear itself up and start again. Even Alan McGee thinks pimping artists copyright is disingenuous in a digital age.

User generated content is not in a ‘novelty phase’ as Appleyard, the other interviewee describes it, its in an emergent phase. Its going to get bigger. If businesses can’t figure out ways to make money from it then they don’t deserve to be in business. Some kids will soon come along and make billions from their ideas because music industry 1.0 is too busy wondering what the hell is going on. iTunes is for selling iPods not music.

Content is more accessible and its swelling. This is the most creatively inspired and revolutionary periods in history. Mankind is becoming more interconnected than ever. Everything is in flux. The people that figure out how the future will look will make a lot of money but in the future I don’t think money will be so important, I think it will be more about what you create and contribute. I haven’t seen any hard facts that user-generated content is damaging the economy but perhaps its just redistributing it more evenly? New big business will be small.

Keen describes this period in time as ‘a pretty stupid – temporary phase.’ He finds user generated content an ‘enormous threat – especially bloggery’, which is ‘potentially its destroying all forms of authority’. He also argues that we are creating a media illiterate culture. He goes on to say that ‘giving laptops to kids is stupid’. Finally, calling blogs an ‘absurd kind of media’. Controversial statements like these are great for drawing attention to yourself. Polarizing opinion is a great marketing tool, especially for selling books.

Instead of complaining that there aren’t ways for journalists to make money (except for bitching in provocative books like this). They should join the revolution and start looking for and inventing ways. If they create relevant and compelling content the audience will find them and if its what your after: the money will follow.

You can read more about Keen and his ideas, ironically, on his blog, or can listen to the programme here.