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moving

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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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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Listen to This

On the other hand, I heart my sound & vision system. My new DVD/CD player came today from Richer Sounds. Like the amp/decoder (also from Mr. Richer’s emporium), it’s a Sony model. The whole system, including speakers, as it stands, cost 240 quid, which is a good deal.

Sony’s name speaks for itself, but what I like about their gear is that they’re so user-friendly, and the manuals (for once) are really comprehensive and helpful (rather than the usual badly-written sketches in several languages). For instance, the player was not automatically sending a 5.1 signal to my amp, but the manual pointed the way in seconds. I have so many issues with instruction manuals that this makes a big difference to me.

The new player is impressing me a fair bit. While the old player was perfectly acceptable, the Sony’s sound output has a definite edge. I am hearing things on my CDs I hadn’t heard before. The amp is not a powerful one (you couldn’t shake the walls with it, but in a residential setting, this isn’t a great idea anyway), but I love the complete ‘wall of sound’ I can get from the set-up, which includes a cheap-but-effective sub-woofer.
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Picture This

Well, second week as a Londonder has been… up and down.

On Monday, Paul and Mayko came over to watch X-Men 3. It was only upon her arrival that I discovered Mayko hadn’t seen the first two films! I think she enjoyed it okay anyway, though. She gave me as a gift some bonafide Japanese brush pens, which I look forward to experimenting with. (I haven’t done any drawing at all since the move… yet.)

Fred was his usual combo of cute and temperamental with the guests. We enjoyed a curry and some music before the film itself. A nice evening, though I wish the house was in a better state of organisation for entertaining guests. :-/
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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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Phew

Just back from London again. I know, I know, it all seemed sorted out last time I wrote, but the truth is, I put a holding deposit on the Streatham Common place out of something like desperation. On reflection, it became clear to me that I simply don’t like Streatham very much (it’s far too bloody similar to round here, if you want the truth) and the place itself was a wee bit minging. Not terrible, but not to my liking. The open-plan downstairs was a negative, for me, and we won’t mention the state of the mattress in one of the bedrooms… (No, really, don’t ask.)

Today, Paul and I looked at another place just round the corner from this one. It was actually a bit better, and slightly cheaper, but the advantages were negated by it being right on top of a primary school as well as having severe fencing problems in the back garden… and the bathroom was a fucking disgrace. *sigh*
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The Lost Weekend

During my absence I had a long weekend, June 30th-July 3rd, with Andy Luke of Livejournal Fame (or is that Andy Luke of YouTube fame?).

Andy was due here Friday afternoon. At noon that day, the guy next door very kindly took mom’s clothes in his car for me, to donate to a local charity shop. Four bags, plus a bag of clothes hangers. Sorting that out really did my head in. It’s like another door closing, you know? I was depressed and went back to bed for a while. Andy arrived around 4.15pm; I finally woke up (again!) at 4.30, called him and explained the situation, and all was well.
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Does a New Year Mean Anything?

I’m not sorry to see 2003 go. It was in some ways a significant year… we got the house move situation sorted out, finally, and I made the arguably foolish decision to kiss Der State Benefit System goodbye because I no longer felt my life was my own…

That said, I can no longer define a year as a unit as precisely as I felt I once could. Each year once appeared to have a particular ‘personality,’ which no longer seems to be the case (to me). Well, after all, a year is just an arbitrary unit of measurement, so the former impression was probably illusory.
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