Distracted Creativity

I read somewhere, quite recently, that easily distracted people are more - oh, there's my passport! - creative than focussed people. I'm not sure how much truth there is to this but I thought - nails need cutting - it's true that I spend a lot of time starting one thing and not finishing it because - mmm, coffee - I suddenly feel the urge to draw pirates, cartoon toilets, and invisible kangaroos (surprisingly easy to sketch).


There should definitely be some way of accurately recording a person's stream of consciousness because the results would be fascinating, delightful, bizarre, potentially scary, and certainly humorous in a stratified mesh of thoughts, ideas, memories, and fantasies.

My own mind wanders from intergalactic ponderings to offended grammatical sensibilities with no clue as to how one thought is attached to another, like a drunken bloke on a stag do with no recollection of how he got from Devon to Glasgow with a defibrilator and a Latvian phrasebook. For example, I spent most of last night attempting to finish a book of critical analysis yet ending up imagining what sort of cars Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley would each own in accordance with their situation and character had Jane Austen written Pride and Prejudice today and set the story in modern day Derbyshire. Which led on to Top Gear, fleetingly, thence to singing the Catalan national anthem with my own lyrics, and then back to a conversation I once had during which the purpose was to debate which chocolate bar you'd least like to be mugged by.

Admittedly, this is more likely to be viewed as simply imagination, since nothing was physically created. Bingley would definitely have a Bentley Continental; very comfort orientated, I feel. But I do write a lot of stories (and blogs) when I should be doing something more useful - what are we having for tea tonight?

The problem is I get distracted while being distracted which is the whole premise of the stream of consciousness - shut up, clock! Gong elsewhere! - and so really it's no surprise that it's like one of Salvador Dalí's paintings up here: ideas spawn ideas - ideaspawn; hm, jelly - and sometimes I have to break off what I'm writing (having previously been distracted) to jot down....

And of course, it's all very well if one is sat in a safety cushioned room - Darcy would have an Aston DB5...no, Vanquish - where you're no threat to others, but it is terrifying to think that people like me could be and are actually in charge of operating machinery and knives and knitting needles. Many a croissant has fallen in battle after Captain Creative has gone off to faff with flowers in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement - I think he'd have a Land Rover as well. And a Jag. How are we allowed to drive unsupervised and remain in control of the remote when we are those most at risk of channel-hopping or not even concentrating on what it is oooo! Wispas would be sneaky; it'd be a silent snatch and run job but then they are full of holes (though not quite like an Aero) so maybe a Yorkie mugging would hurt more...but then why would it mug one in the first place?

I Am a Mole, and I Have a Digging Problem

'Moles are small cylindrical mammals adapted to a subterranean lifestyle.'

So begins Wikipedia's article on moles. The choice of the word 'cylindrical' has conjured up unfortunate images of several moles aligned nose to tail in a Smarties tube, and the phrase 'a subterranean lifestyle' might as well just be synonymous with 'a cellar generously stocked with Bordeaux and smoked ham', in my mind.

But moles. It is mating season here (so I am told), and molehills have started popping up; little brown mounds of earth only hinting at the terrors below. I'm sure my dad didn't believe me at first when I told him there was a molehill. He asked: "Are you sure?"
"Quite sure," I replied. "Unless there's an enormously confused submarine with a curious periscope buried out there."
I'm not sure I expected a response to this.

Of course, digging is what moles do. Come hell or high...won't high water flood them out?
What they should do is set up a mole syndicate, something to ease them off the destructive effects of tunnelling. Diggers Anonymous.

"Hello, I'm a mole...and I have a digging problem. I  dug twenty metres yesterday. My paws hurt and are dirty all the time but I can't stop." Other moles could lend a friendly (tiny) ear, suport them to quit.

The alternative is worse: mole traps or deterrents. Which is precisely what my furious papa purchased to declare subterranean war on those velvety lawn-wreckers. It is, in fact, called the 'sonic mole repeller' - meaning it either only repels those pesky sonic moles, or it refers to the high-pitched whine it makes. I suppose it's sort of like Dr Who's sonic screwdriver but way less cool, more static, and (I am truly desolate about this) no alien in a bow tie. Just a distinctly irked father testing out his new mole deterrent toy in the dining room.