Wallflower

I think this is Erysimum cheiri, though the classification seems a little uncertain. But anyway, it's a wallflower - supposedly biennial, but in my garden it's a wandering short-lived perennial, flowering in vivid tones from yellow through orange to red. I love it, and as long as the young plants don't turn up somewhere terribly inconvenient I just let them do their thing. This one is growing on top of the garden wall, which made it a convenient subject on a day when I'd decided that not much time could be spent on photography.

When people ask my current occupation, for example when I'm getting an insurance quote, I say "administrator", because that describes my responsibilities reasonably well. But I always say it with a kind of sneer, because I'd hate anyone to think that I'm one of those organised people who like everything tidy, filed and categorised. Don't get me wrong - I can organise; in fact, I do it naturally and automatically to a certain level - but only to the extent necessary for life to tick over without descending into total chaos. Beyond that point it's my nature to be erratic and impulsive, to avoid lists and schedules, and to loathe paperwork in all its beastly forms - and I'm quite happy to be like that, which is why I object when someone assumes that "administrator" doesn't just describe my job, but defines my character.

A couple of lifetimes ago I worked in publishing - as an administrator actually, though my official job title was "book handler". One of the senior editors (a rather duchy woman, but with a nicely cynical sense of humour) had a removed the standard labels from her office filing trays and renamed them:

TOO DIFFICULT
TOO BORING
TOO LATE.

This amused me very much at the time, and thirty years later I still mentally categorise all administrative tasks in that way.

Sadly, today was the day when I had to acknowledge that the "TOO BORING" tray had reached the point at which it needed to be tackled, before it totally overflowed and something critical wound up in "TOO LATE". So like the lazy plate spinner that I am, I sighed theatrically, put down my interesting book, heaved myself reluctantly out of my armchair and strolled across the room to wobble a few sticks. As of this evening there are only nine emails in my inbox, of which a mere two are engendering actual guilt when I look at them, and I can see at least 40% of the surface of my desk.

Do I feel better for this burst of administrative activity? No, not especially, but I'm hoping that today's basic clearing of the decks might give me the emotional strength to tackle the "TOO DIFFICULT" list, which contains the following items (graded in ascending order of stressfulness):

1. Install a new WiFi adapter so that I can steal some bandwidth from CH (he now has fibre-optic broadband, while I still have a bit of old string).

2. Upgrade to PSE 13, which might just be able to read my raw files (PSE 11 can't).

3. Clean my camera sensor (gulp).

If anyone considers themselves proficient at number 3, and has any advice beyond "Read the manual, and follow its instructions", I'd be delighted to hear from you!