Stocktake/ˈstɒkteɪk/Learn to pronounce
noun: an assessment and record of the amount of stock held by a business.”a major annual stocktake”
verb: assess and record the amount of stock held by a business.”they were stocktaking on that day”

Meddle/ˈmɛd(ə)l/Learn to pronounce
Origin:

Designer and artist Laurene Leon Boym is playing with a lockdown series entitled Shelf Life, drawing everyday items from her cupboards. This kind of stocktake is not for inventory but to see and feel things in a different way.

We can overlook the obvious and the ordinary in our lives, missing the wonder of who we are and what our lives are crammed with, misled into believing and feeling we need more than we have. I’m thinking curiosities, interests, ideas, values, talents, dreams, knowledge, experiences.

Noticing these things in a deeper way – akin to Boym’s drawing of her cupboard contents – by writing them down and talking about them and, yes, drawing them – allows us to value the ordinary that is not as ordinary as we think. More significantly, it makes it possible to imagine and experiment by putting them together in different ways.

I encourage everyone to be meddlesome.

The “powers-that-be” want us to leave things as they are, but once we really notice them, we just can’t leave these things alone.

This experience of stocktaking and meddling is something I want to make available to those who have found themselves unemployed as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown. Please spread the word, especially to young people.

We have more in our lives than we know.