Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for giving me a real brass IAE nameplate, modelled exactly on the graphic device at the top of this page. I finally got round to putting it up today. For some reason Mrs H. wouldn’t let me fix it to the front door* so it now graces the door to the den where this rubbish gets written, a small room in a Victorian terraced house, piled high with stacks of paper, old beige computer equipment, scribbled notes with important numbers on them, dusty gadgets and adaptors of one kind and another. (All surfaces seem to have acquired an alluvial sediment of bits of paper, obsolete technology or gewgaws and personal effects left behind by customers at Candlelight Club events.** There is really only one small area, the corner of a shelf, that offers enough horizontal space for a mug of tea.)
* A courier once came to deliver a sample, addressed to “The Institute for Alcoholic Experimentation”. I don’t know what he expected to find, but Mrs H. clearly heard him through the front door, on the phone to his boss, saying, “…But it’s just a house!”
** Of course I do message them all asking who is missing this bit of jewellery, or that hat, or this set of house keys, or that small black cardigan, but they very seldom claim these items. The larger things get taken to the charity shop while the rest sit in a number of shoeboxes. Some were probably only bought as costume or props for the occasion, but other items—such as a single high-heeled shoe—one might have expected the owner to want back. One day I shall make an artwork by laying them all out together in a room…
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