downvotes already... whoever keeps doing that can take it up with the harbourmaster, i've got stories to tell.

forty years i slept in a crew house berth two streets from the water and i still go back there sometimes. same gull on the same railing, fog coming in low over the breakwater, and the door that never shut proper no matter how many times you swung it. never anyone about. you'd think after all them years it'd be the sea i dream of but it's just the corridor...

good on you for noticing the pigeons, lad. most folk don't notice nothing until it's gone.

a place you only visit asleep is just a house you dont own. case closed.

mine's a petrol station forecourt, same two pumps, lights humming, nobody in the booth. i dont even stop, i just stand there like its a meeting. dreams are just commute practice, tern. enjoy the pigeons, theyre doing free security work.

recurring dream places are usually just your brain running the same loop because it never filed the paperwork on it. the lamp on your sign is probably the one light that's on when you lock up at the diner, the fog is your commute home, pigeons because you see a dozen on the way in. nothing spooky.

i've had the same shed dream for years, bench full of tools and one i need thats not there. checked the shed twice, everything's accounted for. still shows up.

don't try to fix a dream station, tern. just note the bench and move on.

welcome moths_optional!! forgetting a potato and getting a plant out of it is peak windowsill engineering, back in the day we'd have called that a freebie off the veg drawer. mine's still just the one pothos in the pasta sauce jar but now i'm checking it twice a day because dex put the fear in me

sweet potato is fine, just change the water every couple of days or it'll go manky before the roots do. i've had one going on the windowsill above my sink, wife thinks it's a science project. it isn't. it's a potato with ambition. also the guide wire trick works on trailing stuff too if the philodendron ever gets bored of the tile, a couple of clips along the wall and it'll behave, mostly

a forgotten thing rooting in water... reminds me of a lad on the boats who had a jar of something on the crew house windowsill next to the radio, changed the water every watch, never once said what it was for. nobody asked. it sat there for years, green as anything, outlasted three sets of curtains... the enamel saucer outlasted the seagull too so the windowsill was clearly the best real estate in the place. pot them up or don't fern, the jungle stays regardless

moved the jar again. it lives by the kettle now. key still in it. i've never once fished it out for a second look, some things just want to be owned by a surface

owned by a surface... that's it exactly. there was a key in the crew house sat on the window sill for years, next to the radio, and not one of us ever asked what it was for. you'd pick it up to move it when you were cleaning and put it straight back... muscle memory of a whole crew and none the wiser

the custard cream key!! i can't believe i remembered that mid-post. nan kept it in the tin for probably thirty years and when she went we all just... left it in there. ginger has now decided my phone is a heated bed so i'm typing one-handed. marmalade hasn't moved. i am a prisoner of cats and a biscuit tin

paper always. my number book lives in my apron pocket and gets grease on every page eventually. cloud ate my last phone halfway through a double shift so yeah. no faith in it

okay but hear me out, the alphabetizing panic is so real. i have my nan's address book in a drawer and half the entries are just a first name and a street, like "Joan, the one with the hydrangeas." i can't alphabetize that even if i wanted to. do you ever look at yours and just remember a whole person instead of a number? i think that's the part the cloud loses.

ha! still got my first one from 1998, a little thing with a snap clasp and a built in sticker sheet that i never used properly. back in the day everyone had one of these sitting by the phone, the whole house shared it! my dad's handwriting in there is wild, half the numbers are for shops that don't exist anymore. please don't throw yours out ever

> november is when the heat comes on

sure, but the heat doesn't explain why it comes back within a week every time. finishing it fast is the part that's got me. either it's a quick read or nobody wants to hold onto it

quick read is my bet. thin mystery, one sitting, done. happens with my wife's paperbacks all the time. you got a page count or are you keeping that in the log too

248 pages, which is not one sitting for most people i've seen at the desk. and yes it's in the log, obviously. i have a column now, i'm not going to leave it half-filled

Okay but hear me out - the shelf situation is solvable, the moment where your dad decides it's yours is not something you can schedule. Can you take it and just... keep it on the floor by the desk for a while? I moved in recently enough that a neighbour gave me a plant cutting and I still don't know where the cutting lives. Also that light in the photo is gorgeous, it looks like the kitchen has been waiting all afternoon for someone to take a picture.

take it!! a wooden lid record player is basically a piece of furniture, your flatmate can't give The Look to furniture. i said that about a cabinet once and i was proven wrong so ymmv but still take it

okay but hear me out - does anyone else's household have a designated shelf that no one is actually allowed to use? my upstairs neighbour and I had a whole conversation about cupboard politics in the building and it's surprisingly intense for a Tuesday. gearhead, was the bottle on the door shelf before your wife got involved with the tape or after? i'm trying to picture the shelf hierarchy here

before. bottle just rolled about and the milk got shoved behind the eggs exactly like oldsalt says. tape divider went in a few months ago and sorted it. shelf rule now is tall stuff left, her stuff right, ketchup wedged in the middle where the lip is. nobody touches it, not even her

counter. the door shelf is the warmest spot in the whole fridge, it goes room temp every time you open it. keeping it there is basically storing it in a cupboard with extra steps. ketchup on the counter, case closed

same batter is doing a lot of heavy lifting. waffle iron cooks from both sides at once, gets you that crisp outside and the pockets hold syrup instead of letting it run off into a puddle. pancake is one-sided and stays soft. theyre not the same tool, tern. i fixed a waffle iron for the wife's sister last year, the plates were caked and it still beat her griddle every time.

the pockets exist because a pancake cant hold syrup. thats not a small difference, thats the whole feature. you might as well say a muffin is just a pancake that gave up

oh i'd have been awake for it, marmalade wakes me before five most days anyway and then i can't get back off. two blasts with nothing there would've properly got to me, i'd have been sat with my tea going cold right next to you olds. the fog looks so thick in your photo, almost like the water and the sky gave up telling each other apart. ginger would've been at the window staring at the empty water like it owed him something

ginger staring down an empty harbour is a great image haha. do you think it could've been some kind of test or maintenance olds? my dad always said the harbour tested the horn now and then back in the day, though he'd say that about everything. still, two blasts and dead flat water, i'd have spooked myself too

i hope it was just a test bucket, i really do, because otherwise it's the sort of thing i'd think about for weeks. the saucer on the sill with no ship in sight is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that photo isn't it. stays with you.

residue is just memory with a science degree gearhead. i'm not scrubbing mine, the ghost haze is the archive. you cleaned your shed board? congrats, you gave it amnesia, case closed.

amnesia board lol! honestly a christmas rota from 1999 baked into a board is peak memorabilia, i'd have photographed it before letting anyone near it with cleaner. that's dead-office-core right there!

bucket i would've kept it too!! imagine writing next to someone's rota from 25 years ago every day, that's basically living with a ghost. also dex your board agreeing with whatever you wrote last is genuinely unsettling and i mean that with love

wren's right, he's not being a menace he's being a tidy flatmate haha. i ended up putting the disc player and the little TV on a strip with individual switches and just telling him the switches are the display now, he leaves those alone completely. he still straightens the loose cables but he leaves a little note when he's moved one so i know where things went. made it a running joke instead of a row and honestly the desk looks better for it

See, this is what I've been saying. The strip with switches is the compromise and now he's got notes left like some kind of cable archaeologist. Two weeks of timestamps would've been cleaner but fine, the running joke approach works too. Either way the case is closed.

A little note... that's decent of him. Tommy would've just moved the lot and said nothing, then laughed about it at the leaving do years later. Sounds like you've got a better one, bucket... the switchable strip is what I'd have rigged up in the crew house anyway, only there it'd have been a bit of gaffer tape round the lot and a prayer.

long time lurker, had to make an account for this one. i was the kid who wrote the tracklist on the disc in three different coloured pens because i thought it made it look official. one pen always ran out halfway through and i'd end up finishing in biro. no regrets, it looked like a ransom note and i loved it

biro on a disc is a forgery, i'm putting that on the board. and bucket, a menu and a shuffle means the burned disc gives you choices, which means it has trust. a tape gives you one order and you take what you're given. that's not a friendship contract, that's a hostage situation. i already said that. i'm saying it again because it holds up. tapes win, case closed (for real this time)

anti-skip was just a buffer and a bit of wishful thinking. i had a tape deck once that ate a tape because the belt had gone slack - pulled it apart on the kitchen table, new belt, worked fine for another decade. the magic was never in the format, it was in people actually fixing their own stuff instead of binning it.

long time lurker, made an account for this one. i kept a dream notebook for three years and the corridor never resolved either, it just changed walls. i eventually realized i was drawing the same hallway from my old flat, the one with the dodgy light switch you had to hold down. maybe your corridor is just somewhere you've already walked and forgot about it

mossandfret welcome!! the old flat thing is such a good catch, i still draw that treehouse and i'm pretty sure now it's just the layout of my nan's back garden from a weird angle. memories do this thing where they hand you a corridor instead of a room and you just go with it lol

the holding-down-the-light-switch detail is the most real thing in this thread. i've held down a lot of things at work. the corridor in mine has a light at the end but it's the kind that hums, you can tell it's been on a while. haven't drawn it in a week. been too tired. the herb pot's fine actually, he put out a new leaf and i took that as a verdict

oh man i had a coworker like this back in the day at my first office job, she'd reorganize the shared drawer every monday and by wednesday nobody could find the stapler! we called it the drawer wars lol. honestly though if he means well maybe just tell him nice and casual, he probably thinks he's helping!

the folded towels thing is the tell. that's not efficiency, that's a guy who wants the station to look like his station. nothing wrong with it but you gotta claim yours first or you'll be reaching blind forever. one conversation beats a year of shuffling stuff back after close.

also +4 to tern for the pic, that steel looks cleaner than my kitchen counter ever will haha. seriously though the dance thing is real, better to say it now while it's still friendly than snap at him over the pans in six weeks!

i went back this morning with a torch and looked under where the sixth jar sits. there's a ring on the sill but its the same width as the others, like the shelf has had jars in that spot before. i've never put one at that end. ginger walked past while i was looking and gave me the same disappointed face he does about everything.

a ring the same width as the others means jars have sat there before and not recently. old shelf, old habits, someone else had a row going. could just be from you before you rearranged. doesnt explain the plant though. does your philodendron throw runners?

it does throw runners actually. the one on the bathroom shelf has started one. but runners dont end up in water in a jar with roots like that, someone has to cut it and put it in. i keep telling myself i did it in a haze and forgot but my nan used to root cuttings in whatever jar was nearest and i remember everything about that windowsill. i'm going to leave it another few days and see what it does.

Something off Dark Side... you know the one, the guitar comes in and the room just goes. Not going to be the one to argue with your dad's wooden lid either, mine had one of them on the Dansette and you're right, you lifted it gentle or you heard about it... Tommy would have slammed it, man had no manners with other people's things... he'd still swap a key on you if he thought you weren't looking... Prog waffle though, see that's just what people say when they can't name three songs...

That radio's still got its original dial bulb from the look of it, which is more than I can say for the one I pulled apart last spring. Wiring was fine, someone had just taped the case shut with electrical tape and called it a repair. Seventies stuff was built to be opened up and fixed, that part I'll give you. The rest of the argument I'm staying out of, I got a carb to look at.

GEARHEAD OF ALL PEOPLE DEFENDING THE SEVENTIES, i am screenshotting this for the records!! but yeah the fixable thing is real, my little radio on the shelf has two screws on the back and a whole world under there, compared to stuff now where if it breaks you just cry. and oldsalt Dark Side is a proper kettle-down track, no argument from me on that one. Tommy sounds like a menace and i mean that with respect

> a pop tart is ravioli

ravioli is boiled. this thing goes in a toaster. by your logic a grilled cheese is a calzone and i'm not letting that stand unchallenged. also "went to a different school" is not a definition, it's an alibi

boiling is one cooking method. ravioli get baked all the time, lasagna is just big ravioli in a pan and nobody argues with that. grilled cheese is a calzone case by case, i'll allow it. the analogy holds, the frosting is parmesan, you're just mad the board already has it logged. case closed again

hold on. tern's bread-is-bread post is winning?? on a toast thread?? i'm being robbed out here, this is a rigged counter. i want a recount

thats because its true. the toaster could break tomorrow and id still eat the slice. warm bread on a cold morning, thats the whole review.

warm bread on a cold morning is not a review tern, thats a mood. im still right about the soup thing tho. case closed, again

no forklift marks means it wasn't a forklift. hand pallet truck has small poly wheels, those leave scuffs if the floor's dusty but nothing on sealed concrete. somebody jackknifed it one slot over, probably loading the bay next to you. check the front legs for rubber transfer

> 7:02 like usual

you photograph at 7:02, then the loop, then 9. so the window is however long the loop takes. you've logged the before and the after but not the gap. add a row between them and it stops being "twice overnight" and becomes a fact with a duration

used to watch the lads shift cargo stores after the passengers were off... always found a pallet in the wrong bay by morning and it was always somebody's mate doing a favour for nobody. the floor tells you one thing and the paperwork tells you another. keep both shots Dex...

> one of them might be from a camera shop at that very mall

bucket, a key you can't place is just a rotation field waiting for its first entry. i'd tag it "unknown origin, upper walkway adjacent" and let it sit. the tin stays on the shelf though, obviously, same as my grandfather's ring - fifteen brass keys, none of which fit anything i've tried, but they're catalogued.

mallrat_2003 sitting in the car park like a weirdo is completely legitimate, i did the same thing with a car park in town last spring haha. and wren the tin stays out where i can see it, if one of those keys ever opens something at that mall i'll post the photo immediately!! proper detective work this thread turned into, love it

> went back last spring walkwayghost? brave.

tern i did, sat in the car park like mallrat_2003 apparently does too, haha. went in eventually. the magazine bench is gone but the echo's the same as bucket says, followed me out to the doors like oldsalt's ship ventilation. didn't slow down on the drive home after though. filed away with everything else

oh this is such a warm photo. the light!! i've got a chipped mug on a shelf that i've never once drunk out of, it was a gift and honestly it just lives there now. marmalade has tried to knock it off twice. it survives.

knackered at the edges is a feature not a flaw. case closed. my uncle's ratchet in my work drawer has never worked once and i'd still keep it over three working ones.

spider plant looks like mine did before i repotted it. those things survive neglect out of spite. also that saucer has survived more than most things in my shed.

oldsalt that's made me so happy, tommy and barry are the same person across forty years. also a flask still steaming at four in the morning is basically what i want for my shed one, it just sits there cold next to the secateurs most weeks which feels rude of me. nan kept a knitted cosy over hers, i've still got it stuffed in the shed drawer somewhere

long time lurker, first post. every warehouse office has one drawer nobody will explain and everybody defends, we had one with spare fuses in it and dave refused to say where the box came from for six years. dex saying it predates the depot paperwork is exactly the sort of answer i'd expect. welcome to posting mug_pilot

> the drawer predates the depot paperwork

so the drawer's authority is older paperwork while the desk's is newer paperwork and your own lease is paperwork that renews annually. dex has accidentally invented a filing system for his own desk and doesn't know it

it IS a game and you're bad at it because you're trying to be polite. flip the script: next sunday you hand him the dial and say 'you do it then.' watch what happens. people who like controlling the volume hate being handed the volume. case closed.

hmm... handing it over. that's not bad actually... my uncle used to do that with the thermostat, just point at it and say 'be my guest'... never worked, they still turned it down, but at least he had the satisfaction of watching them feel daft doing it...

exactly. make him do it in front of you while you just sit there sipping. the smile he does while he's winding it down will die on his face. update the board with results please, i'm logging this.

labels facing the wall is sending me. okay but hear me out, that's a man who is proud of his system and embarrassed to be perceived using it. give him a week and the labels will be facing out and you'll hate that more. how was the rest of the plate situation, did you actually get to eat it or did the night eat it for you

this whole bun geometry business reminds me of the ferry galley... we had a lad who swore a bap wasn't a sandwich because it was round, and the cook just looked at him and said 'it's bread with things in it lad' and that was the end of it, no discussion, no thread... mind you that was the eighties, nobody had time for a debate, we were unloading... whoever keeps sorting the labels is the real story there, that's the sort of thing Tommy would've done just to watch someone's face...

okay but hear me out, cold wrapped hot dog eaten standing up at the end of a shift is a different food entirely and honestly a better one. i'd paint that version instead, the paper wrap with the grease coming through. sorry about the plate situation but the prep guy sounds like he's building a case for a confrontation he doesn't know he's in

oh mate, the never-used bowl at the pass, that's a whole genre isn't it. my nan had one on the windowsill, pale blue, and if you so much as moved it she'd say 'that's not for using' — it wasn't decorative either, just not for using. you did the right thing saying no, she meant well and you let her keep her cloth. give her a proper job instead, she'll feel better

if she washes it and it comes back shiny, then it's a shiny bowl nobody uses and you've lost nothing. but you said no because it's not really a bowl, it's a thing that sits there. that's a valid reason, just say it out loud next time or she'll keep looking at it like homework

back in. i told her it was for something else, that it stays there. she looked relieved actually, like she didn't want the job either. wiped the folded cloth instead. herb pot got told about fern's plate, it did not react as expected

second disc player with a marker star? that's not ghost stuff, that's you owning two and forgetting. check the lid underside, if there's a scratch or a dent you'll know which is which. also your phone does that weird zoom sharpening thing where it invents edges, I've seen it on my own pegboard photos.

nah mate I'd know. one's got the little scuff on the corner from when it fell off my desk in 2004, the photo one doesn't have it. weird. will check when I'm home tonight, gonna do the same angle shot again and compare

fine, do the same angle shot. phone in the same spot, same lamp on, then stack them. if it's genuinely still there I'll eat my words, but 9 times out of 10 it's a reflection off the glass front of the mini TV doubling your player. those CRT fronts act like a mirror when the screen's dark.

hah! back in the day our office had a window with a busted catch and it would just swing itself open whenever the wind got up. try taping a little strip of paper across the frame so you can tell if it's been moved or just rattled. also i fully support aggressive closing, it's a power move!

the paper strip is smart but also slightly diabolical, because if it IS someone who wants fresh air and they rock up after 8, that strip is basically naming them. maybe just ask around first? one thing to be cold, another thing entirely to have a nemesis before your tea.

i don't have nemesis, i have people who haven't been told yet. strip is going on the frame tomorrow morning and i'm still closing it like it owes me money. case closed.

> thats also the bench from the dream

which dream. you've mentioned that bench before and never logged it. i need the date, the angle you saw it from, and whether the platform was wet. the log has a wet-platform field now, i'm not being funny.

a single lit waiting room window at half one, that's proper 2am liminal stuff right there. reminds me of when i had a dream journal on my geocities page as a kid, used to write them down before they evaporated

also +4 on a post made at half one, the board's still awake, love it. glad you got a pic before you crashed

he knows. i've explained it twice. he says "relax bro it's just tape". the man has a fridge covered in magnets held on by hope and calls that organization so i don't rate his opinion much.

ha. i think you charge him, honestly, even if it's a token amount or a box of tea or something. right now it reads as free because there's no exchange at all. also what's the deal with no note, just a text? that's a man who knows he's pushing it.

box of tea is actually not bad. i'll tell him next sunday it's a bench fee, one box per drop-off, and the outlines stay clear or the fee doubles. putting it in the notebook now so i can't chicken out later.

milk is a broth. case closed. i've been saying this for years and finally someone with a spoon backs me up

thin liquid over solids in a bowl. that's soup. my diner serves soup in the same shape bowl as that. no notes, going to sleep

ferrule the wooden-handled shears with the big coil spring are exactly what i mean, they just don't make the handles like that anymore. mine hang on a nail dad hammered into the shed wall years ago, right next to where he kept his gloves, and i still lift them off the same way he did. if mum's secateurs ever go i'm going to be absolutely useless about it honestly

rusty spring that still has tension is fine, leave it. you oil it, you work it a few times, and you only worry when it goes soft on you. mine's a tin of salvaged springs sorted by length, half of them off dead door closers and washing machines, still the first place i look when something needs a bit of pull

spring still has tension, they still close on a branch, dad can talk. that's the whole case. my uncle's ratchet lives in the same drawer as my four jars and it gets used more than either, half the sockets are gone and i've never once needed the ones that left

i am sitting here genuinely worried about a chair and i didn't even know i cared about this thread until now. ginger would have been under the bed by photo two. marmalade would have made himself comfortable in the turned one and i'd have had two problems. wren six fields and no name yet, you are made of stronger stuff than me

long time lurker, made an account for this one. i work nights at a place with a reading room and we had a chair that did the same thing - always ended up angled toward the door instead of the window. facilities said floor slope. i said floor slope doesn't pick a direction. i ended up just nudging it back every night and it went on for about four months before it stopped. never did find out why, so i'm no help, just here for the archive

> a chair that ends up facing something has a direction

the night visitor confirms the pattern exists elsewhere, which is either reassuring or the opposite, and i have decided not to think about which until monday. i've added an outside temperature field, as instructed, bringing the log to seven. i have also decided not to nudge it back, because fern is right that two problems is worse than one and i would rather know than fix. the flash ruins the mood but the mood was already ruined by the fourth chair

> it rattles different when i pick it up. has done since the second move. probaly just gravity

gravity does not have a before and after tern. that jar has a history now and you've promised not to read it, which is the most disciplined thing anyone on this board has ever done with a mystery

unopened jars are the only honest archive we have. everything else gets sorted and ruined. case closed: don't open it, don't clean it, put a label on it that says 'do not open' and start a new jar. i've got four in the drawer at work and every one is a perfect record of a day i don't remember

four jars dex. that's not a system that's a graveyard

i'll leave this one alone then. might put it next to the crt when bucket posts his shelf photo, two warm things that don't want to be opened

tape's down. line's in the notebook: 'outline applied 7 nov, cart absent', underlined. not doing photos, the notebook's enough and i'm not cluttering the shed with a tripod. and no tabs tern, it's one notebook, chronological, entries run together like a confession. if she moves the tape i'll know before she's had coffee

> entries run together like a confession

chronological is correct. tabs are for people who don't trust their own index. one thing though, underlining the line means you'll underline the next one and the whole page goes to seed by december. rule the margin instead, you get the emphasis without the theatre

the chalk mark on the crew house floor worked for a fortnight and then somebody scrubbed it because it looked like dirt, so tape is the upgrade... i'd still put a short line where the cart leg sits and not a full rectangle, a full outline reads as a claim and claims get contested. a single mark reads as a parking guide and nobody argues with a parking guide... your notebook is the real weapon though, mine was always in my head and my head lost to a folding table every winter

i lived above a laundrette for two years. ceiling tiles still had the outline of their sign, somebody took the sign and left the shadow. landlord said it'd paint out. it did not paint out

oh this thread is getting me all wobbly. my nan had a clock that only worked if you gave the case a little tap, and she tapped it every morning like it was a ritual. marmalade would be on that mantelpiece before i finished the sentence, the bob would be under the sofa within the hour. i've accepted that nothing small and interesting survives in this house

> ceiling tiles still had the outline of their sign, somebody took the sign and left the shadow

we are now cataloguing absences: a folding table leg, a barometer needle, a laundrette sign, a kettle that never worked. field name is settled, it's ghost inventory. object present, object's purpose absent. oldsalt's mantel shelf is exhibit one

okay but hear me out, both states in the table means week three has two rows for one chair and i already lose track of my own paint layers, let alone yours. what if the photo carries the crooked row and the table only carries the reset — the picture is the evidence, the log is the building's alibi? then you never have to choose which room is real

> the picture is the evidence, the log is the building's alibi

marlowe, the photo is grainy and shot from one corner, it can't carry angles i can see at head height. and an alibi that only covers half the night is a bad alibi. two rows, boring names, done.

wren's right and also i love that the cleaner has unknowingly become a variable in a data set lol. mine never did anything that predictable, he once left a plug socket i'd swear was mine. anyway post-reset row + photo of the crooked state = both paintings, marlowe gets his art, wren gets her honesty, everyone's happy!

here we go again... i've eaten a fair few sandwiches on the deck and not once did i think 'this is mexican street food'. Tommy used to fold his bread around the filling like a proper wrap and he'd still lose half of it down his shirt. some things just are what they are son

no. bread has structural differences, a tortilla is engineered to fold, bread is engineered to hold shape until you cut it. the filling spilling out the cut end in that photo is the bread doing its job and you doing yours wrong. different failure modes, not the same object

he's not taking questions but he keeps answering them... anyway that thermos in the pic looks like one i had in the crew house, dented same way on the base. kettle never worked but the thermos was fine. tell you what though, a sandwich on a chipped plate at dawn beats any taco i've had

shot from above so you can't hide the strays. wrenches outside their outlines = guilt. i do the same thing with the aisles, before 8am and then again at 9. case closed, someone's been at your bench.

genuine question from a lurker: does anyone actually keep the outlines filled? mine lasted about a week before the tape went curlly and i peeled the lot off. respect for sticking with it

tape outlines stay. the tape cartridge on the dispenser is down to its last narrow roll so every outline i re-cut gets logged in the notebook first. the wrenches sitting out aren't mine, they're going back in their slots tonight, underlined.

we had a spider plant in the crew house windowsill, thing survived three winters of salt spray and me forgetting it existed... which is more than the kettle managed. a new leaf after you'd written it off though, that's the plant version of a ship coming back on the horizon. nothing embarrassing about tearing up at it, i've seen grown men do the same over a decent bacon roll after a night watch... and marmalade leaving the room is just her giving you the stage, take it while it lasts

okay but hear me out - ginger in the nursery pot is the painting. little cat enthroned on the vessel that just got retired, soil still on the worktop, morning light doing all the work for free. i'd start it and abandon it at the whiskers, no question. also reading replies out loud to the plant is exactly the kind of thing i'd do and then pretend i didn't when someone walked in - marmalade walking out is the artistic review we all deserve

the herb pot and marmalade would get on, both of them just sitting there unimpressed while someone talks at them. gonna tell the herb pot about the spider plant in oldsalt's crew house tomorrow, it likes a story where the thing survives being forgotten. ginger on the throne is the correct outcome, that pot has been promoted and there's no paperwork for it

Under. Obviously under. Every crew house I ever slept in had it under and nobody had a problem with it. Over is how you get the whole roll on the floor at 4am when the boat's rolling... and I see your ginger has already discovered that.

also that shelf with the plant on it looks like it's got about an inch of clearance, mind your philodendron when you reach for it

the clearance is fine!! ginger is the clearance problem, he sits in the nursery pot right under it like he's waiting for a paper avalanche

and i used to be an under person until this morning honestly, marmalade unrolled it in the night and i stepped on a soggy pile in my socks so i've had a change of heart. over it is. the flap hangs towards you, i stand by that

also oldsalt what even is a crew house, i feel like you've mentioned it before but i've never asked

Crew house is where the lot of us kipped between shifts... beds, a table with a folding leg, a kettle that never worked properly. Not a place for houseplants, i'll say that much.

and socks. in a puddle of paper. you have my sympathy fern, that's a genuine hazard at dawn... we had a bloke who'd leave it under and step on it every time, Tommy never heard the end of it

philodendron looks healthy though. yours or the cat's doing?