Anarres: Extended Edition

Now that we’ve passed another milestone or two, it’s high time we made another post.

Now that the holidays are out the way, our biggest news that we’ve yet to shut up about, is that the extension work on the house’s lower decks is near complete! Well, other than the (insert long list of annoying loose ends here).

But “no rest for the chaotic good”, as they doubtless say somewhere, so we’ve been moving straight on to exploring the strange new worlds of decorating. Today, carpet purchasing, tomorrow replacing the boiler, Saturday we launch the next stage of our war on house mould, but next week – the stars! Oh, and returning the garden to a sense of order. After all (repeat after me), “Anarchy is Order”. The excitement is so palpable, you can cut it with a spoon. Thankfully, that’s not yet the case with the mould.

Seriously, though, the garden’s a bit of a tip right now.

But what’s it all for, you might ask? Referring to the extension, of course. Is it just to redistribute tens of thousands of Radical Routes money loan to the private coffers of our builder and co?

No, of course not! The new rooms are allowing us to bring in new co-op members (and their precious, precious rents) to help make the Anarres project more long-term feasible. By the time this goes to print, two new members will have joined us, though we’re expecting another member to move out some time in the next month or so.

Now for toddlerwatch: when not tearing up and down the corridors at speed, the pickle is learning new words, prodding at books and phones, spinning in circles, and chatting – English, occasional Welsh, and plenty of their own private language. Signing courses seem to have really helped their language skills, so we’re tottering closer to our dream of bringing them in on debating the finer points of political allegory in fantasy and science fiction. Apples, bears, chickens, cows, sharks, and the word “bach” are all trending this winter.

Sadly, our dreams of instilling an entire back catalogue of rebel folk and other decent music in their brain have faltered, and we’ve instead been reduced to singing them nursery rhymes. Endlessly. So repetitive, so insidious, I can barely remember what music I used to listen to! Though every now and again, we find ourselves rewriting the damn things, to try and make them a little less patriarchal, capitalistic, and all round naff. “How much is that doggy in the window?” Should we really be desensitising our youth to speciesist slavery? Hmm.

And that’s about it for now…