{"id":981,"date":"2008-08-15T23:30:17","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T22:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/?p=981"},"modified":"2008-08-15T23:31:47","modified_gmt":"2008-08-15T22:31:47","slug":"attention-surplus-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/attention-surplus-disorder\/","title":{"rendered":"Attention-Surplus Disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A slapstick start to the day, when I absent-mindedly confuse my breath freshener spray with my eau de toilette. The rest of Friday is thus spent tasting eau de toilette in my mouth &#8211; soapy, synthetic, unpleasant. Not the first time this has happened, either.<\/p>\n<p>It reminds me of the comedian Steven Wright&#8217;s line about mixing up his door key with his car key, and starting up his building.<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;ve always been like this. It&#8217;s not so much &#8216;losing it&#8217; as never quite having &#8216;it&#8217; in the first place. My mind is always wandering, but the thing is, it&#8217;s not out of idleness or lack of interest. It&#8217;s more a resistance to settling for one thing at a time. An awareness of the sheer sweetshop-ness of things to think about. Why choose when one can lunge for everything at once (and so miss out entirely)? What others label distraction, I call greed.<\/p>\n<p>Which is an excuse to put up a photo I rather like from a year or so ago. I&#8217;m enjoying afternoon tea at the Wolseley with Ms L (in the foreground) and company. I wonder what&#8217;s causing me to gaze out of frame so? Could be something. Probably everything.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/wolseley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"348\" height=\"306\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(photo by Tallulah Newton)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A slapstick start to the day, when I absent-mindedly confuse my breath freshener spray with my eau de toilette. The rest of Friday is thus spent tasting eau de toilette in my mouth &#8211; soapy, synthetic, unpleasant. Not the first time this has happened, either. It reminds me of the comedian Steven Wright&#8217;s line about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}