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Brighton

Right, so I went to Brighton yesterday (meaning Wednesday). That’s the moving situation. I’ve decided that, as Brighton is just 40 minutes away from London (the city centre) on the train, the air is a hell of a lot cleaner, and most importantly, you can rent quite nice places for about the same as you can get squalid dumps in most of London… that’s where I’m gonna relocate to.

The irony is that this is where mom and I planned to move to. We were still talking about this a year ago. It was roughly a year ago that mom started to show symptoms that led to a grim diagnosis and the end of her life. That’s been on my mind a fair bit, for obvious reasons, but I’m trying to not let it get me too down.

I do like Brighton, anyway. The seafront’s a major attraction, and as it’s not all that large, you’re never too far away from anything. I have to go into the city from here if, say, I want to browse a large music store… the only local option is a tiny HMV in Wimbledon. Yeah, Wimbledon turned out to be much smaller and less impressive than initial impressions suggested. :-/
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Freedom and Stuff

We had our fourth monthly London Comics meet yesterday, which was cool. With that and several people urging me to stay in the London area, I guess I’ll be looking for somewhere in this vicinity to move to. Where, I’m not sure. Last minute attempts to find a sharer here have failed to elicit any response per se, and I’m sick of being on my own in a place far too large/expensive for one person, so onwards we go.

Sarah, who was at the meet yesterday, has posted her page for the Freedom anthology, which I think is fabulous. Hope you agree.
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White Space

Let’s talk about ambience. It’s by way of a ‘sort-of’ criticism of this house. It’s not a major problem, but what interests me is how so many people appear to disagree with my viewpoint.

Most of the walls are white.

Worst of all, for me, is the living room being all-white. I’m countering it to some degree—I’m filling as much wall space as I can with original artwork and prints. It improves things a lot. (Okay, so I might move. But the new place will 95% probably have white walls too, and I’ll be dealing with it the same way.)

I hate white walls. To me, it lacks atmosphere—it creates a feeling of sterility. Some people call it neutral but I call it sterile. If I had the autonomy to repaint this place, the living room would be a subdued purple or a reddish-brown. Whatever you hang on a wall like that really pops out, pleasingly, and the backdrop is so much warmer and friendlier.
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To Move or Not?

Okay… one more stab before making a final decision on whether to move from here.

I’ve had problems finding someone to share this place. There were a couple of possibilities, but ultimately they wanted somewhere cheaper and nearer the city centre. (Bit of a contradiction in terms, that, unless you want to live in a complete dump. The centre is only a 25-min tube ride away anyway.) The other problem is that I’m a bit ‘funny’ about who I’d share with.

Absolutely no religious nutters, no crack addicts or hookers, no Nazis. Etc. I don’t suppose those objections are so unusual, thinking about it. 😉 But no doubt I can be cranky and eccentric sometimes, which isn’t to everyone’s liking. And I’m quite nocturnal more often than not.
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The Big Buzz

Oh, for the sake of balance: there is a huge, fuck-off Sainsbury’s round the corner. The clothes are rubbish and the Sound & Vision selection is about as tokenistic and paltry as you’d expect, but the food on offer (it is ostensibly a food store, after all) is nice and extensive.

And they sell Cote d’Or chocolate. *sigh* There goes the blood pressure again, but what the hell. I like it. It has a pretty little elephant on the wrapper (also embossed on the choc segments). The noir variety comes in 70% cocoa and nuclear-strength 86%. I’ve given in to temptation twice. I was awake for days.
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House Move Stuff

So, Wednesday last week (the 4th), I viewed the new home for a final time before the actual move. I snapped a bit of local scenery, including this shot from by the front path of the house:

View From New House October 4 2006

On the moving day itself, after the van was packed, we had some final snaps outside the old place. This is me, Paul and my former next-door neighbour Lawry (who helped with packing; if you’re reading this, hi!)…
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I’m Here! I’m Here!

Urgh. Right, well, yes, I really did move on Friday. Not a joke, not an imaginary story! And right now the general feeling is… tired.

In theory, someone is coming in to fix the kitchen sink in the morning. Yup, an almost-perfect home has to have a fatal flaw, and this time it was a totally fucked-up sink. Guess it could be worse, but it’s been a right nuisance!
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