The calm after the storm

And just like that, I'm back.

I can't explain the reason behind this recent protracted absence. All I know is that one day, I was happily writing away at work, going to the gym and living a fairly standard existence. Then suddenly, I moved house, fell crazy in love, stopped exercising, started to overflow my waistbands, started falling asleep at my desk, started spending my lunchbreaks shopping for broom handles, electrical screws and light bulbs and simultaneously lost the ability to do anything in the evenings except potter about in my new abode sporting loungewear and slippers, rearranging small objects around on my shelves and smearing my kitchen counters with Danish wood oil.

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur, but this morning I went for a run in the beautiful, crisp sunshine, past St Paul's Cathedral, over the Millennium Bridge and back through the City and I felt springy as a gambolling lamb on crack. The pterodactyl wings need work and the combination of housewarming dinners and evenings out with a new boyf haven't been fantastic for my thigh girth, but I am filled with a sense that the dust is settling after a vigorous shake up and that, gradually, routine and normalcy might slink back in through the side door. Which, as a committed organiser / control freak, is something of a blessed relief.

The only slight blight on my otherwise calm horizon is my Amex bill, which looms ominously overhead like a meteor the size of the former USSR. It would all have been OK if I hadn't been absolutely, unarguably extravagant on Monday when I bought a heinously expensive bookshelf. Still, I think it may be the coolest thing I've ever seen and as soon as it arrives and I've erected it, I'll post a picture for your collective verdict. I'm not quite sure how I will pay off the debt but hey, it's not due for another six weeks and who knows what happy accident of financial joy may have occurred in the meantime? Admittedly, winning the lottery is unlikely given my distinct lack of lottery tickets but I am hoping for a council tax rebate and will be selling a few things on eBay in desperation so those combined incidents may between them raise several pence. From there I'll only need to generate another several hundred pounds or so... I feel an advertisement for a flatmate coming on...

Since I last wrote...

Friday - leave work at 4pm, race home, finish packing, await Paul's arrival with hire car, drive across London to Hackney to pick up his sister, drive from Hackney to Liverpool, arrive just before midnight, meet the parents, eat cheese, drink wine, chat until shortly before 2am, go to bed.

Saturday - wake up, have breakfast with in-laws, go into very windy and wet Liverpool via romantic viewpoint where Paul apparently took young impressionable Wirral lasses back in the day, sightsee around Liverpool including unnavigable Museum of Slavery, listen to graphic diary accounts by slave-owners about horrific treatment of runaway slaves, drive to meet Paul's old piano teacher, have tea with her and her husband and listen to assembled trio bitch/reminisce about local classical music scene. Eat more mini chocolate eggs than is perhaps polite. Drive back to in-laws' via Catholic Cathedral, get ready for evening out, go to dinner at delicious restaurant with fifteen intimate family and friends including grandmother and godmother, reapply make-up too late, return to family home, have more wine and stay up talking until 4am.

Sunday - wake up, have incredible home-cooked breakfast with local sausages and yet more family, drive with sister to Manchester to meet (wait for it) godmother's friend's nieces who are also part of extended posse, have tea with them, go to pub with them, drive back to Hackney, drop off sister, drive back home, collapse.

Monday - wake up before 7am on scheduled day off with early phonecall from moronic Tesco's delivery people who claim that once again I have entered my card details incorrectly when I DIDN'T. Give them correct details (again) and am assured that groceries are en route. Despite reassurance, I am surprised by arrival of groceries while Paul is returning hire car - approximately nine metric tons of produce spread across eighty five plastic crates containing enough frozen goods to fill a deep freeze and a box of washing powder that looked really big in the picture but will, in fact, probably only last me a week. Tesco delivery man refuses my offer of help carrying them upstairs and, over the course of several trips, becomes increasingly breathless to the point where I begin to worry that I may have to add 'paramedics' to list of people who are visiting this morning. Man from Virgin arrives to fit my TV and broadband supply although he leaves without giving me a cable for the TV or a password for the broadband and customer services are later so unhelpful that Paul starts swearing like an extra in a Tarantino movie. While Virgin man is doing his stuff and I am frantically unpacking groceries, Paul decides that his breakfast is now an urgent priority and begins to make porridge which involves asking me for various sized bowls and ingredients, oven gloves and measuring jugs while I, still unbreakfasted and weak, struggle to get past him as he continually stirs and adjusts his oats in the microwave. Just as Virgin man is leaving, washing machine arrives from Tesco Direct. Paul, replete after porridge, and I, still flimsy with hunger, manage to get it through the door of my 'utility room' (as opposed to the one I inherited with the flat which resoloutely refused to take its place inside the area I had designed for it at some expense). Despite fitting into its designated place, washing machine, however, cannot be connected as idiot builder has crucially not positioned the pipes in a way that means they can be used. Growl. Laundromat beckons. Perhaps I didn't need big box of washing powder after all. After a hurried lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, created as bread must be eaten since it won't fit in freezer, Paul and I take train to Barnes, put on load of washing, play with cats, collect my mother's car, drive it back to my flat (round trip: approx 1 hour), fill the car with rejected Ikea items which may or may not be eligible for a refund, drive to Croydon in disgusting traffic, manage to obtain a £361 refund (high five!) and then spend £250 on non-essentials in the store including sun loungers, hanging plant pots and a Lazy Susan that won't fit in my kitchen cupboard. Pah. Drive back to the flat, unload new purchases, drive to Barnes, drop off car, pick up wet washing, get train and bus back to flat, arrive at 8pm, cook dinner of chicken kiev, spaghetti hoops and frozen peas, watch bad TV, drink Oyster Bay, feel like death, sleep.

Tuesday - I am now officially the world's most exhausted person but since individually each element of my marathon three days was either very fun or very useful, I am not - for the record - actually complaining. I do slightly think I deserve a medal though. And for joining me yesterday and being unflinchingly perky throughout, Paul deserves a gen-u-ine Certificate of Insanity and a big virtual kiss.

Home Sweet Home

Apologies for the long delay in writing but it has all been rather busy and as the amount of material has piled up for me to recount, the momentum to sit and start typing has diminished proportionally.

Miraculously, though, I am here at last, bruised and battered but alive and, crucially, relocated. No longer a 30-year-old parent-dweller, I have successfully moved into my own flat and am pleased to report that it is even more satisfying and fun than I had hoped.

Here’s how it happened:

On Friday, Mr L’Atelier was so wonderful that disguising his identity no longer seems right or necessary. He is Paul. And he is amazing. Although we did start the day with my first strop in his presence when he missed the train he was meant to catch and, having waited on my own for half an hour at Clapham Junction, I joined him on a later service with a face like a smacked arse. Fortunately, he managed to distract me with a holiday brochure and we were soon back to our sickeningly giggly selves, eating our bacon rolls with merriment.

After an hour, we arrived in Wokingham, collected a gargantuan white van and drove to Oxfordshire for one of the most surreal incidents in my life. For reasons that it would not be interesting to divulge, the sofa that I owned when I lived with my ex, Henry, in 2001, was now in storage in Oxfordshire. It was my belief that we would meet the sofa guardian, drive to the storage facility, extract the sofa and be on our way. Instead, we ended up unpacking most of a sizeable metal container which was crying out to be the setting for a murder scene in a tacky drama series. Having moved about forty of someone else’s boxes, we eventually located the sofa frame and cushions – but not the covers. Our helper kindly offered to lend me ‘a couple of throws’ for the next few weeks while the sofa’s actual furnishings were identified but, appealing though this offer was, I had a minor sense of humour failure and continued to scour the container for the elusive fabric. Luckily I discovered the covers bunched up in a plastic bag before a real tantrum kicked in and we restacked the container and enjoyed an unexpected lunch of our host’s homemade baps filled with trout fillet and mayonnaise, made on the seat of his minibus and eaten while surveying the countryside in front of us. It was all rather unlikely.

Even though Friday had been earmarked as the primary ‘moving day’, we didn’t get back to London until after 4pm and then didn’t fill the van for another hour or so. Poor Paul continued his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants induction into my life by negotiating with my dad on the best way to stack my boxes in the back of the van, and was photographed for the family album as we struggled to carry a chair down the stairs. His unwavering chirpiness was incredible. We finally set off for the new flat at around dinner time, miraculously had the whole load upstairs by 9pm and were eating in a renowned local curry house by 9.45pm. Nothing had ever been so smooth – and no move has ever been more harmonious. Paul and I had continued to be unbearably happy even as we sweated our way up the stairs with all my millions of possessions – and he staggered me by claiming to find me attractive even when my skin was blotchy, my hair was stuck to my forehead, my eyeliner had slipped down to my cheeks and my T-shirt was soaked through. It must be love.

After our dinner out, a still-jetlagged Paul reclined gracefully on my bed while I had my inaugural bath in my bath in my flat. I lovingly cleaned it with Cif, lovingly showered it down with my amazing new shower, lovingly filled it with my lovely water, clambered in, reclined and relaxed. For about a minute. Suddenly there was a pounding and a yelping at the door. I was naked. Paul was half asleep but eventually made it to the letterbox where we were informed in no uncertain terms that there was a leak into the flat below. I leapt out of the bath, wrapped my brand new John Lewis ‘Hotel’ towel around my person, noticing that it smelt unexpectedly of menthol, and we hastily unscrewed the front panel of my stupid bath to look at my stupid draining system where, sure enough, my stupid overflow pipe was cracked. Not the best introduction to new neighbours. I wrote them a grovelling apology note and delivered it in my pyjamas.

Saturday was more house-moving fun but this time with the added excitement of an argument with the moronic staff in Comet. We’d reserved a fridge online to collect that afternoon – but of course, when we arrived, they didn’t have it in stock. Not only did they not have it in stock, they didn’t have a single white under-counter fridge in the entire ‘Superstore’. I was not impressed and lightly reprimanded the assistant who had taken nearly 30 minutes to tell us that he couldn’t be of any assistance to us or, I’d wager, any other human being were he given the next millennium to try. We left feeling mildly grumpy but pleased that we hadn't given such a useless establishment any of my hard-borrowed cash, and returned to the flat. After unloading the remainder of my stuff, we hotfooted it back to Wokingham to return the van before the 6pm deadline, had a Kronenburg on the train back to London and, while Paul picked up the Thai takeaway, I cobbled together a romantic candlelit set-up in my sitting room without any candles or cutlery.

Sunday morning I awoke and realised that the Sky man would have difficulty affixing the Sky dish to my flat given that merely walking down the short hallway required agility akin to that found in an Olympic gymnast. Jumping among the gaps between the piles of boxes like a frisky mountain goat, I eventually cleared a path through the debris – which was lucky because the Sky man had the fitness levels of an atrophied corpse and arrived panting like a Labrador in a furnace: stepping over a shoebox would have given him a heart attack so leaping between piles of middle class possessions would probably not have been high on his agenda. I had to open the window for him because his weirdly short arms were inadequate, and within twenty seconds, he’d decided he couldn’t do the job and was out of there. The afternoon was all about my choir rehearsal and the evening’s concert, which went unusually well and was followed by a pub gathering where Paul continued to surprise by mingling merrily with my extended family and choir friends and I was giggly and giddy and proud and generally over-excited.

Monday I was hungover and fractionally embarrassed having declared undying things to Paul over a midnight feast at Balans in Soho after the pub the night before – I beat a retreat to the flat and painted the bathroom ceiling to compensate. The evening was quiet and lovely as we enjoyed some microwaved soup with cutlery Paul had brought from his flat, accompanied by a crusty loaf and a bottle of Sauvignon blanc. Yesterday was frantic at work but the momentous occurrence was that, for better or worse, my builder has gone, job done. Now all I have to do is paint a hundred miles of skirting board and then I can get on with unpacking. I returned home a little tipsy after book club and spent about ten minutes standing agog in my bathroom, in love with the delicious wall colour and my new light fitting. Then I gambolled into the kitchen and giggled in delight as my dishwasher actually opens and shuts and I have a freezer and an oven hood with a light on it. It’s all too exciting.

I have always laughed in wonder at those people who leave the plastic covers on their sofas – but I have plastic sheets down on my carpet and a thin plastic film is covering the laminate cupboard doors in my kitchen and I am not in any hurry to take it off. The thought of my kitchen getting scratched or my carpet getting stained fills me with an emetic horror and I've realised that there is a very real temptation to leave the dust sheets down indefinitely. Obviously my desire to peel the film off my kitchen will win out eventually but there's no doubt that, as far as the creamy carpet goes, shoes will have to be left at the door like at an Indian temple. Red wine drinkers will be provided with a child's safety cup from which to sup. And fans of easily splattered foodstuffs in the bolognaise or salsa genre may as well forget their invitation to the housewarming immediately cos it ain’t going to happen. From now on, I’m going to have to exist on a diet of white wine, clear spirits and hooverable food such as biscuits and crisps. Who’d have thought that a new carpet could be such fun?

The Wrong Stuff

If anyone has a shortage of stuff, let me know. I think I have enough stuff to fill three to four cruise liners for a transantlantic voyage. I've been accruing it since birth and although I have made every effort to slow down over the past few years, my stuff count does not seem to have dropped.

There's nothing like moving house to freak one out. Where the hell am I going to put even a tenth of all this? I'm moving in to a small, purpose-built flat, not a sprawling stately home in Yorkshire. Space is limited. I am bewildered and dazed. I know I should throw half of it out but I don't feel sane enough to make reliable decisions at present, so instead I'm just packing everything and hoping that I'll turf most of it out on arrival. It's a stupid way to do things but I see no alternative.

Possessions are so annoying. I know they're, like, totally un-Zen, totally capitalist, totally wrong - but when I pick up the Winnie the Pooh folder that contains my 10 year old masterpiece about an alien who visits London, causes mischief and makes a getaway on a supermarket trolley, I just find it impossible to throw it away. I have several hundred pens in perfect working order and the idea of consigning them to the rubbish bin is thus fairly abhorrent. Giving them away would be fine but given the number of other things on my To Do List, donating second hand pens is not high up on my priorities. Of course, I should take most of this stuff around to the nearest primary school or charity shop but really, do they want a dusty David Beckham doll (circa 1999) or a Furby whose vocabulary is limited to 'Oooooh, big sound!' and 'Woah!'? Or some half-sharpened coloured pencils or some slightly uncomfortable shoes in size 10? I think not. Thus, embarrassed about my tattered and sentimental mountains of stuff, I pack them nonetheless and am clinging on to the thought that once I see how little room I have for this genre of junk at the new place, the discarding process will commence.

Tomorrow will be hectic, hopefully fun and, I think, slightly sweaty. On the upside, all the heavy lifting will compensate for the exemplary Moving House snacks I purchased in Marks & Spencer after work this evening, including chocolate cornflake clusters and hot cross buns. I am weak with excitement.