All change!

I have just returned from my last late-night organ practice session as Motherchurch organ scholar. Tomorrow I am finished and must return my key. It is also my last service as organist at St Isidore's. In fact, a week tomorrow I leave Lancaster for good. I finish work on Thursday, and shall then be unemployed. I leave the country on 1st May.

I do have a plan. It is still tenuous, but I can't wait around forever for everything to fix itself. I have applied for an organ building job which has not yet come up (it still has a person in it, albeit a person who proposes to hand in his resignation in the next few months), and shall find out whether or not I am to be offered this position at some point after the person currently in post resigns. That is likely to be in July or August. In the meantime, I am off to Taize for a few months. I hope to find time to relax and get used to having mental space, so that when I return I am no longer such an ineffective person.

Obviously, I am in the midst of yet another house move. Some friends have very kindly agreed to take on key pieces of furniture, such as my chest of drawers and fake piano, and the rest goes to my parents' house. They are overjoyed. It gives them a purpose in life, and they relish having far too many things in the upper rooms of their house. My brother adores not being able to cross his room due to the amount of stuff in it, and only wishes that he still lived there, instead of just returning for holidays. The last two car-loads of stuff (for I only have two journeys there left) will be the icing on the cake. I know that my small bed-settee (smaller than the one I already have there) will be welcomed with open arms.

Once this has been accomplished, though, I should hopefully be nearing the end of my moving career. Of course, this organ job will come with the man of my dreams (how could it not?), who will help me to build my incredibly large house with straw walls and at least one organ, plus a large and well-equipped workshop. It will only take a few house moves (and a lot of hard work) before I am in this house, from where there will be no need to move for quite a few years. Or perhaps until the children put me in a retirement home. He can live there, too, and we will have lots of children, all of whom can be trusted not to hurt themselves when around tools (is that not the main thing one looks for in a child?), and who are good at choosing retirement homes.

Ha! If it works out like that I'll be amazed. Also pleased. Except for the retirement home thing.

Right now, though, I feel a little sad and overwhelmed. I don't like moving house, and I don't like to leave places. This house move is going quite well so far because I have been working on it for a few weeks, and transporting bulky items a few at a time, but the last load is always hard. The last church services tomorrow will be hard (I really don't want to leave either church, crappy organ scholar though I have been), as will the leaving do at work (they won't tell me when that is, but I can narrow it down to Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday during the day. It should include wine, as the Department has an accidental stock of bubbly).

Ah well. What would be productive now would be sleep. Having slept for far too many hours today I am not all that sleepy, but I will not thank myself in the morning if I stay up much longer.

Mmmmm

Well, I am happily settling into living alone. It is quite a revelation to have the whole house to myself all the time, and not to have anybody to complain if I don't clean the kitchen. Which, incidentally, I will be doing tomorrow afternoon, as I shall be leading a soapmaking workshop there, and don't want anyone to get the idea that I have no idea about kitchen hygiene. I am fairly sure that my theoretical knowledge, at least, is excellent!

Having given my bed away to a couple of friends, I am borrowing Serena's spare bed. I must take a photo of my new, improved bedroom, actually - there is an amazing amount of space in it. It is just the sort of bedroom I would like to have always. Such a pity that I shall be leaving this house in less than a month. The mattress is very comfortable, also, and I have a double duvet to go with it, despite the bed being a single bed.

I have also sent a lot of possessions home with Mother, and have offered to donate several pieces of furniture to some friends. The number of things that I own is slowly reducing. The house, of course, is not exactly tidy - the loss of my big bookcase has left the living room covered in books, and a search of my charity shop box for a shirt for Anne for Granddad's funeral has left the front room covered in the boxes that formerly resided on top of the charity shop box.

I am sure that this post was much more interesting than this in my head. It was also longer. Alas, my cognitive ability seems to be on holiday a little early (it's supposed to stay with me until tomorrow afternoon), and I therefore am having difficulty even making it to the end of this sentence. Perhaps that is my cue to give up and go to bed.

Saturday

Saturday is when it all happens. I play for a wedding and HWSNBN leaves me. There is also potential for sofa moving and drunkenness. As HWSNBN is taking the main sofa, I have decided to take advantage of the Manly Muscles (TM) of Will, who will be visiting Serena that weekend, to get a little help with getting my house back into a usable state. Sometimes it can be useful being able to sit in the sitting room!

I also just promised to give my bed to James and Ailsa. This could be interesting, as I have been known to use my bed to sleep on, but I am sure that Serena will lend me one for the remaining month that I shall be spending in this house. If she will not, I shall steal the mattress she keeps under her spare bed - she really should have chucked it out years ago, but it will do at a pinch.

I have also invited James and Ailsa over to look at the rest of my furniture and let me know if there is anything that they would like. I can find it quite hard to let go of things, but knowing that there are people who might otherwise be without furniture should help to melt my heart of stone. Or something. I think that I am exaggerating - I suspect that they do have the power to obtain various items of furniture for themselves, including a bed, but I may as well take advantage of someone else's difficult situation to make mine a little easier - the parents will no doubt be very relieved if I don't have much crap that I am requesting them to store,* and relieved parents can make for children being greeted with more enthusiasm!

In other news, life continues to go on. Camping trips are being planned, festival tickets have been paid for, socialising with friends is occurring, and most activities outside work have been put on hiatus for a while, to allow me to get back into this whole "being a well-balanced person" thing. The anxiety is mostly not a problem, although I have had to put actual work into that this past week; it certainly has not been easy simply to coast along as I would like. The drugs are good, though; I am very glad to have started to use anti-depressants, as they certainly seem to be enhancing my ability to cope with life.

Now I am off to do some organ practice (Pachelbel's Canon is not going well! I must not mess up during the signing of the register!) and then off out for dinner. It should be an enjoyable evening.



*OK, so not having much crap is a pipe-dream, really. I have a whole houseful of crap, and if I manage to reduce it to 1/4 of a houseful of crap I will be doing impressively well.

Itchy again

Ooh - over a week since my last post. How time flies!

We are making progress on the settling in front - we have a wardrobe in the bedroom, and I have a) realised that I have far more hangers than could be considered to be reasonable, and b) started to hang up some of my clothes. Today, for the first time since moving, I was able to locate and wear a skirt. This is excellent news, as my legs are amazingly itchy at the moment. They woke me up this morning at about 2.30, and are not really playing nicely at the moment. I kind of want to do something drastic and make the itching go away, but mostly I think that I should let it do its thing until I see a doctor on Monday (for something completely different) so that he can perhaps give me some insight into why they are so horrible. When I scratch them, they look like bad teenage boy pimple-face, but without the really nasty bits. But I think I just crossed some sort of boundary there, so I shall return to the subject about which I was trying to talk.

The other bit of progress we have made is that we have the other bed-settee. It is a bit too big for the room in which it is currently residing (the front room), but I don't think that it can go anywhere else, so it will just have to deal with that. It's a bit of a joke, really - as settees go, this one is quite tiny. I am in awe at how much stuff we actually managed to fit into the previous, smaller house. Of course, when everything is settled here it will seem a lot more spacious than the previous house. There will hopefully be an occasional bit of wall without furniture against it (although I shall be honest - so far I have always seen that as an excellent opportunity to acquire more furniture to help to store the crap which invariably covers my house. I aim to stop doing that now, and possibly even look at getting rid of a piece of furniture).

Yesterday evening I gave the bread maker to Serena, who will pass it on to her mother. I am glad to be rid of that! I only used it once, and have never had a space to allocate to it in the kitchen. The next step is to get rid of all of the rest of the crap that is earmarked for disposal. I foresee a couple of arduous charity shop trips this Saturday (arduous because what I shall be carrying will be bloody heavy, and possibly also quite unwieldy), followed by a fresh sense of awe at how much crap remains.

This evening, I shall have the evening off! No places to be, just a house to tidy and dinner to cook. Sounds relaxing, does it not? HWSNBN's mum and sister are coming round tomorrow evening, and so I feel that I should make the effort to make the house look like the sort of place where it might be nice to live. Yes, this will be a challenge, but just think how much fun it would be to have a house with usable rooms! I can't even remember the last time this really happened.

Actually, I can. Yesterday, while I was attempting to make my room look a bit better, I stumbled across a box full of old photos. Flicking through, I found loads of photos of my old student room. Ah - those were the days! It was a very large room, and had to serve a variety of purposes: bedroom, kitchen, dressing room, office, living room and menagerie. It had a load of guinea pig hutches and cages set up in the corner, with the occasional guinea pig allowed to run round the floor. I had forgotten how shiny the guinea pigs used to be! I would make an effort to scan in some photos and post them up except that a) I am too lazy, and b) the floor had a lot of sawdust on it, and I wouldn't want you to know about that. You would be able to see how slack I am capable of being around the house.

There were also photos of my baby sister when she was still tiny - they were very cute indeed. She really did look like my little sister then. Alas, with all of the looking at photos I got distracted and never did manage to finish sorting out the bookcase in my room, so that I could put some actual books on it. I did, however, manage to get some skirts and a dress put into my wardrobe, meaning that I got to wear a skirt today. A full-length one, of course; it's rare that I wear any other sort (if I am being honest, this is because they are all slightly smaller than I am thin at the moment - I'll get to wear them again one day, I am sure). This is great - it hides my hideous, itchy legs. Except when I hitch it up because the fabric is making my legs itch. Thinking about it is making my legs itch at the moment, though, so that's not really much of an achievement.

I am so tired. Apologies if none of this makes sense. Right now, I'd like to sleep for a long time.

Moving, part 4, plus beer and tiredness

The boring non-saga of settling into our new house continues. The settee is in its rightful position and orientation in the living room, and more floorspace has been unearthed. Yesterday evening we moved a desk, a bookcase and a cupboard; a good evening's work. If there had only been five minutes available, anyway. We are slowly getting rid of small amounts of crap (you would be amazed at how popular guinea pig cages are on Freecycle around here!), and HWSNBN has initiated a campaign to get rid of some of the out-of-date food we have lying around. It would be the out-of-date food we have in our cupboards, except that we don't have any cupboards for food. Perhaps we will reduce the scale of this problem over the weekend by putting up a large ugly metal shelf in our shambles of a kitchen, and putting the food on this, within boxes. I imagine that its top shelf would be an excellent place to store HWSNBN's large pasta container, which usually lives far too high-up for me to reach.

Tomorrow evening there will be a beer festival. Of course, as I can't really consume gluten, I shall not be drinking any beer. It's a pity that the day after the beer festival is a Sunday, really; I might be tempted to go for it anyway and justify any illness I end up with as being the price one pays for drinking beer. Nobody gets off scot-free.* As I shall be being a good girl, I can only hope that they have good cider.

It is excessively cruel** taking me to a beer festival and not allowing me to sample the wares. I love good beer, and the beer at a festival should often be better than most, although the cider at the cider festival I attended was not all the best (nor was HWSNBN's feeling of wellness afterwards, for that matter).

Before the beer festival, we are to have dinner at our favourite local Indian restaurant (our favourite Indian restaurant is a Bangladeshi one (did I just contradict myself? Alas, I have the geography knowledge of a successful beauty pageant entrant) near the previous house, but this one does sherbet!). Anyway, it promises to be a tasty meal. There will be severe penalties for those who do a reverse performance of dinner, so I am hoping that everyone is nice and moderate.

Last week, when I opined to HWSNBN that he should be careful not to get too drunk at this beer festival, I was treated to the information that beer festivals are fine; one does not really get drunk at them. Cider festivals, are the problem, apparently. I asked him if he had ever met himself, but he remained steadfast; one does not get drunk at a beer festival. We shall see whether or not this anti-logic is true. I mean, we already know that it is not, but we will be able to see this for ourselves tomorrow. By "we", I do not include you, of course. I will not be blogging on Saturday after the beer festival. I mean me, HWSNBN, Serena, and HWSNBN's friend and his girlfriend, should they decide to come with us.

Now I am tired. I want the house to be set up neatly, and for me to be able to go to sleep for a long time, but instead I must go home, tidy up, then go off to do more organ practice for a couple of hours, return home and re-arrange some more furniture. We may have guests staying on Saturday evening, so we have to have both space in which to put them, and bedding to keep them warm. A challenge indeed!


*Does anybody know the origin of that expression? Would they care to enlighten me? I am too lazy to look in Wikipedia, apparently.

**Crueler, even, than taking me to a chocolate eclair factory.

Moving, part 3, felt and choir practice

That previous post was very dull indeed. Sorry about that. Now it has been said, and hopefully I won't be moving again for a long, long time. I want to be here for a year!

Yesterday evening I managed to excavate my piano. There is also a space in the middle of the living room floor: my re-arranging skills are resulting in a great tessellation of furniture. You would no doubt be amazed (or perhaps bemused) at some of the corners I have created.

Paniceth not.* The landlord will be coming this evening to remove all of the furniture that belongs to him (with the exception of the Lovely Chest of Drawers, which is taking up too much place in our bedroom and may be evicted, should we be unable to find a suitable home for it. This may, however, simply end up in another room within the house), thus leaving space for us to arrange our own furniture in a more advantageous manner. Once this has happened I can move my piano into the front room and move the settee from its precarious position upright next to the bed and into the living room. There might then be space in the bedroom for a wardrobe, and I can then start to unpack my suitcases full of dresses.

On Saturday, I should be going into Town. I am teaching a feltmaking workshop on Monday and need to try to obtain enough foam pads to ensure that people are at a substantially reduced risk of stabbing their own legs repeatedly (although only the really stupid ones** are likely to stab themselves repeatedly, and they probably deserve it. Who doesn't learn from being stabbed and take steps to avoid it in future?) by inserting a big thick thing in between the needle and their legs, and I should also be able to take a load of old clothes to the charity shop which will also help the mess in the bedroom (or perhaps we will have moved the charity shop box to a different room by this point). *** While I am in town I shall, of course, have to obtain more stuff. Other than the foam pads, I also want wire so that people can make frames for their felt creatures. I think that I have enough wool to go round (I just ordered some in varying shades of brown, in case they want to make conventional animals. It has just occurred to me that I have no black and should probably try to get hold of some black wool and also some beads for eyes. Thank you, blog, for making me think), and I have also purchased enough needles for up to 20 people to make their own felt creations. I am a bit low on scissors, but that should be easy enough to sort out.

I am dreading letting the marauding hordes get their hands on my wool selection, though. Although I am generally a very untidy person indeed, I am ever so slightly obsessive about making sure that every single wool is back in the appropriate bag as soon as I have finished my felting session (unless I am working in a single colour - it is acceptable to have one small piece of one colour left out). I think that I will end up with lots of bitty pieces of wool put back in bags containing very similar shades, which just will not do. Having said that, hopefully most people will not be using very many different colours, and will be able to keep track of where their bag goes. I think that I have about 40 different colours now, and there are only about four sets of two colours which are very hard to tell apart from each other. Unless, of course, there are colour-blind people present.

Tonight is the first choir practice in which I am required to play the piano. The pieces I am learning are not ready. One of them cannot be ready in time, but I may be able to force the other one into shape between the end of work and the practice. I do hope so; otherwise it will be very embarrassing.


*Not really a smooth flow from one paragraph to another here. Also, is that the correct form of panic for a plural?

**I include myself in this number.

***Was that the worst and most confusing sentence I ever wrote? I do hope so, insofar as I hope that I have never written anything worse than that.

Moving, part 2

We are installed in our new house. The move went very well, considering. I sort of want to write a big long post containing everything that happened (I know that if this were a blog I read, I would feel cheated if the writer were to fail to do so for me; one day I expect I shall read this, and may be disappointed with the omission) but I am too tired. I shall write and see what comes out. The whole story may well do so... Additionally, I have told the story so many times that it bores me. But you have not heard it yet, and so you might not be bored by it.

So, the move started on Friday evening. Actually, it started on Friday lunchtime. I went round to the house and covered a couple of carpets with Shake & Vac (Neutradol edition) and hoovered (well, dysoned) one of them, before running out of time and getting stuck in the supermarket when somebody with many items beat me to the checkout and didn't offer to let me go first (which I totally would have done for her as I am perfect in every way, of course; my slight indignation is therefore perfectly well justified).

After work I went back to the house and covered all of the remaining carpets with Shake & Vac, and dysoned all but two of them. I then swept the kitchen and was working on finishing dysoning the living room (the penultimate carpet) when the parents, Robert and Anne arrived (HWSNBN was staying at the old house and packing, which was very kind of him). Mother put the dinner on, Anne and I went to Serena's house to acquire some chairs (it's so much fun having neighbours with chairs!), and then we had a tour of the house and started assigning curtains to rooms. Then, having failed to get any curtains up, we ate dinner. This was a beef casserole, with peas, fried new potatoes, peas, peas and peas, and was very tasty. As were the peas. I have learned that one bag of frozen peas is more than sufficient for feeding five people.

After dinner, the work really started. People started cleaning cupboards and walls, Mother did an amazing job of cleaning the grill, and I slunk upstairs to clean the bathroom. The magic vacuum cleaner came out and started vacuuming under the sink, and new and amazing discoveries were made in the kitchen cupboards. One of the back boards has rotted through completely, which is very yummy. HWSNBN has put the pans in that one now.

By 10.30 we were fed up. Robert and Father went back to the old house, and Mother, Anne and I went to pick up the van (I collected the keys for the van at 5.30, but didn't want to drive it any further than necessary, nor to park it on my new street). It was much better than the last van we hired from that place: it liked to go in straight lines.

When we got back HWSNBN and I loaded up boxes from the front room into the van, found bedspace for everyone and went to his mum's house to sleep in our bed settee, which currently resides in her spare room.

Wow. I have no idea whether or not this is boring you, but it is not exciting me. If you give up at this point, you are forgiven. If you gave up earlier you are forgiven, but you may never know without reading this bit...

Saturday morning happened next, as is its wont. We got up really early (for me for a Saturday morning, at least; not early by most non-students' standards), and were ready to start the move by 9. By 10 we had a vanload of stuff ready to go, so HWSNBN and I set off together in the van. We picked up German 1 on the way (although we had to leave behind his wife and baby due to lack of space), and had a quick run round the house to pick up curtains and move the landlord's furniture into one room for easy collection by him, before starting to bring the boxes into the appropriate rooms (we started off so well!). When that was done we returned home and started to load the van again. We were starting to get hungry and Mother was making lunch (bacon and mushroom butties) and cups of tea, so this took a long time. German Wife was wanting to walk to the new house with Baby, so I felt really bad about the time it was taking, especially as I had given an unrealistically optimistic estimate about how long we would be taking. We finally got the van loaded and put German 1, Robert and HWSNBN in it, then I went with Father to HWSNBN's mum's garage to collect a load of boxes in his estate car.

Now it occurs to me that this is getting extremely boring. Suffice to say it carried on a bit like this until 7.30, with Mother doing an excellent job of cleaning the old house and packing the occasional box while I tried to be useful and mostly just managed to be inefficient. At 7.30 we gave up for a bit and all went to the new house. Serena and I went out looking for dinner. The Chinese take-away we both adore was closed, so we had to go to the one we used to frequent the year after I graduated, when I lived in the centre of Town. I think that they eventually understood about making two of the dishes gluten-free (I had no gluten-type repercussions), and dinner was received enthusiastically. Mine was very hot. I don't think that I will have that exact dish again.

After dinner, the parents worked to make the new house ready for the night and HWSNBN, Robert and I went to move heavy things (such as the washing machine) from the old house to HWSNBN's mum's garage. By 11.30 we had finished this and loaded the van with a lot of the rest of the contents of the old house, including the fridge. By 12.30 we had returned the van and got to Serena's house - we stayed there overnight as she has a spare bed and we did not have enough space for beds for six people. Serena's mattress is very nice indeed; I want one like that!

On Sunday I did not have to go to church, so we went round to the old house and cleaned/emptied it. Mother and Father were amazing, and cleaned/moved massive amounts of stuff between them. I could only marvel at their efficiency (really, helping would have been more useful). After a while of ineffective helping, I went outside to get the garden ready. I emptied plant pots and planted bulbs, then sorted plant pots (well, delegated the task to Anne in the form of the "stack the plant pots in size order" game, with which she was not delighted), then swept the path repeatedly.

We also had lunch. Mother was delighted with her discovery that a pan lid makes a great emergency plate. Anne tried to spread butter with a fork. Much merriment was had by all. HWSNBN finished the ice cream, except for the really dodgy-looking bit at the bottom.

When that was mostly over, the parents, Robert and Anne went home. It was sad waving goodbye to them from the last time from that doorway. We loaded the car, then went ourselves; we were due at Serena's for dinner.

(Running out of steam here, you will be glad to hear.)

Serena cooked a lovely diner for us. We only had 30 minutes for dinner, as I had to be at Motherchurch for evensong and an organ lesson; it was very generous of Serena to cook for us under those circumstances.

Evensong was confusing. I didn't know what was going on, I lined up wrong, and I had to sight-sing some pieces during the service. Not really very easy! It will get better, though. One of the men in the choir was saying that he had just been thinking that the choir should get some female altos, so apparently my timing was good.

After that, I had my first organ lesson for nearly a decade. I have picked up some bad habits. The lesson went well, considering, but hopefully next week's will go better. I think that the main thing that I established was that I have to work on using my toes effectively and appropriately (the insides of the toes are fine to use, but the outsides are not), and on being able to find the pedal notes by feel, rather than relying on just knowing where they are. Being able to do that will improve my playing a lot, and should also make it a lot easier.

We started to look at a piece I got close to OK a few months ago. Apparently it is a hard piece. This made me feel a bit better - I thought that it was an easy piece but that I just wasn't very good. It turns out that the hardest bit is yet to come: I have to use the swell pedal!

Let me tell you about the swell pedal. Many organs are built with one section of pipes in a large box. This box is called the swell box, and the pipes are linked to one manual (normally the top one if the organ has three or fewer manuals); this is known as the swell organ. Shutters on the side of the box can be opened and closed to make the music louder or quieter by means of a large pedal in the middle of the piece of wood - it pivots, and when the top is closer to you the box is closed; when the top is away from you, the box is open.

Anyway, I have to be able to use one foot on the pedals, and one on the swell pedal: I have to operate the swell pedal while also moving the other foot around to play different notes. This is hard. Two hands and one foot each doing a unique thing involving much pressing is one thing, but when the second foot (and it varies which the second foot is, according to the music) has to do a different thing in a different place while the first foot carries on as normal that is a whole new matter. My co-ordination is terrible (although it is improving!), and so far I have not been able to do both actions at the same time. I think that I shall have to practise with just the pedals first. I need to be OK at this by Sunday, at which point I have another lesson. Hmm.

After my lesson I went home and worked on getting the house looking better. When I got back I saw that HWSNBN had made an excellent job of tidying the kitchen: some of the equipment had been put away and there was space down the middle of it. I was impressed. I worked on getting the bed ready (and failed at this - I got too cold in the night and nearly pushed HWSNBN out of bed by moving towards him to get the heat. Alas, he moved away from me, repeatedly, and then there was no bed left for him) and some clothes put away.

We got to bed late. I was very tired the next day and am still very tired now. It is hard to think, and I do not know when I will next be capable of doing anything useful other than unpacking. I'm not even doing well at that now - I need the landlord to come and get rid of all of his furniture so that I have an extra half-room with which to play.

So at the moment the house is a complete tip. The main settee frame is leaning against the wall next to the bed, there is no wardrobe to hang things so my dresses are still in suitcases around the bedroom, my room has a clearing, HWSNBN's room has a desk and a computer network (what can I say? He works fast), the living room is slowly being unearthed and the front room is full of unwanted furniture AND wanted furniture, books, DVDs, coats and other as yet unidentified boxes, plus a few plants thrown in for good measure. The curtains are closed today because there is no way I am making my way over that assault course before breakfast.

On the positive side, the bed is good and I have my underwear. I will soon have clean trousers in sizes that fit me, and bits of the kitchen are well-organised. The bathroom is not terrible (depending on where you look), and the bath fills up very quickly. Also, the house feels like home. I think that I will like living here. The bedroom feels like my sort of space, and the kitchen is growing on me (probably in the literal sense). I am happy to be here. Terrified about the playing I must do tomorrow evening (must unearth the piano to practise!), but pleased with how things are going. Yay!

Moving, part 1

We are SO not ready to move house tomorrow. We spent most of yesterday evening "packing" because I wasn't feeling well and he had to sort out some stuff for work. Pretty much all of my clothes (excluding coats) are now packed, but the loft still isn't empty. It's probably (hopefully, at least) mostly empty boxes, but I know that there is a rug, a candelabra and a suitcase, plus two fans still in there.

Most of my craft items are not packed. They live in two cupboards and I have this vague idea that I will probably transport them within their drawers. The same for the filing cabinet and its contents, even though I know that this is a stupid idea. I hope that HWSNBN will leave the craft items as they are and let me work on them while he drives the van to his mum's house to collect the boxes in her garage. Or that we will be able to leave a whole cabinet exactly as it is and simply wheel it into the van (I have removed the two boxes of oil and palm oil, so what remains is a lot lighter. One drawer is pretty much unspun wool alone).

I found the key to my bike lock yesterday, underneath the sink in a plastic cup. Why on earth didn't I think to look there earlier? Where else could it possibly have been? I am slightly disappointed, as I expected to find two keys together and I did not do so, but one is far better than none at all. I have put the key in the key cupboard (the place where I was initially confident that I would find it), so now all I need to be able to do is to find the key cupboard when we unpack and I will be sorted. I suppose that I could have put it on my key ring, but that would have been cheating.*

HWSNBN has been really weird these past few days. He has been slightly tetchy, but has not had any long-term shoutiness at all. I don't know who this unusual stranger is, but I would like to keep him. It is so refreshing getting in to bed at night after a stressful few hours to find this friendly person, rather than a resentful seethe-monster, there waiting to hug me. If this new patience lasts, I just got me a wonderful new boyfriend! Hooray!

So I have an interesting evening ahead of me. HWSNBN will stay at home and pack more boxes, and I will go to the new house with my parents, Robert and Anne (Serena might also turn up) and clean enthusiastically. I have the shake & vac (but the super-strong stuff) which I shall be using first, and then we wash a lot. If we are fast, we might get home at a suitable sort of time. Whether or not we are fast, the new house should be ready for us to move in to tomorrow. By the end of tomorrow evening, we will be installed!

Then we must clean the old house.


*In other words, I am so tired that this did not occur to me.

:-(

We are in the painfully messy process of emptying the loft. HWSNBN passed a box down to me and spider poo fell off it into my eye. He made a disgusted noise but offered no sympathy.

Also, my new walls are sticky.

I think I may have got distracted somewhere along the way

I am feeling a bit better today. Thank goodness for that. It is so very frustrating being so annoyed over so little. It is also very tiring and a waste of my life. Happiness is much more satisfactory, and I shall try to do this instead. Except that one cannot do happiness, as far as I know. But you know what I mean.

Anyway, posts complaining are often very boring indeed, especially if the writer can't even be bothered to format them correctly. I shall therefore talk of joyful things.

I should have some fuchsia alpaca wool arriving any day now. Also some knitting needles in the wrong size (1.25mm too big).* How exciting! In a totally novel and unpredictable move, I shall then knit myself a scarf. It will be the wrong shape, I expect, but I think that it might be a good idea to let go of the perfection thing until my second knitting project.

I think I milked that subject for all it was worth today.**** Now to milk another.

I am surrounded by boxes at the moment. Many of them now contain lots of things, including HWSNBN's CD collection. This is a big collection. If this move has done nothing else, it has given him an opportunity to sort this out and retrieve a couple of his CDs from my CD rack. One of them (my favourite one) was just an empty case.***** It turned out that this is because he had put the CD in his car CD case, for traveling - its missing-ness was not my fault at all! In fact, it was not actually missing at all, and I did not get into trouble! Yay for CDs!

I also started to sort out my shoes. I have selected about eight pairs I am happy to get rid of (well, about five pairs I am happy to get rid of, and three pairs I want to keep (including my favourite shoes in the world ever (2002-2007, RIP), which have flowers on the soles so that they make patterns when I walk on the sand), but have decided that it just isn't sensible), and kept two boxes of them. No, I am not counting. I might post a photo when they are installed, though. Not of the shoes specifically, more of the new house. I imagine that I will be very proud of my work when we are installed, and will want to show it off. I do sound a little weird, though, wanting to post photos of shoes. There are only two pairs I really consider to be photo-worthy (plus my favourite pair ever); my new strappy ankle shoes and my black leather knee-high boots which don't really fit me but which are too new, lovely and gorgeous to get rid of. Ever. They will go really well with my corset, should I have occasion to wear such an outfit.

Anyway, I have one box of shoes packed (I can't go anywhere posh until after we move now), and a few big ones (boots) standing by until I open another box for my shoes. I think that I will start to sort out my clothes on Saturday afternoon, after the landlord has visited. Tomorrow evening, HWSNBN will move most/all of the boxes to his mum's garage; when I return from climbing I can give the bathroom a preliminary good clean (in case the landlord wants to see it), and HWSNBN will hopefully do something with the kitchen.

Of course, we still have to go to The Field and take all of the flagstones which have been hanging around to the vegetable patch (I want to complete the paths this year) on Saturday. While we are there, we really ought to take some trees for planting, as I am getting little tired of carting trees around. Also, I think that they would probably like their freedom. I would really like to see the purple hazel grow big and strong, and it is not going to do that in a little pot. Having said that, I think that I will keep the acers in pots, and will probably also have to keep the twisted ?willow? ?hazel? and the little dangly tree, which has catkins. Does that make it a willow? And the two hostas. Possibly a pot of mint (although I will probably liberate all of that, too - it is out-competing the nettles where it has been planted, and I know that I would rather have hills overrun with mint (which does not sting you and tastes good on its own) than nettles (which do, and which I haven't tasted). I am sure that I have lots of other random little plants which need moving, but I can't remember them just yet.

Another task I must complete is the plotting of the vegetable patch. I need to ascertain whether or not I have permission to bring some of my friends along to help with the growing/weeding (and possibly also the mowing - Rose is the adventurous sort, and would probably be up for that. I don't expect she has had a go on a ride-on mower before). If I do, we need to sketch out a plan for what will be grown in each bed soon, and get the peppers started. Ideally, they need to get going in February, so if I could get permission on Saturday I could speak to them on Sunday and arrange a date to meet up and discuss options.

Although there are certain things which must be done with the design of the plot (I am trying to get into a strict rotation pattern, so that each bed only has potatoes once every six years - there are 8 beds, two of which have semi-permanent and permanent dwellers, and which are subject to a different rotation pattern from the other beds. Lettuces went there last year), we can afford to be adventurous with the actual vegetables we grow. I need to make the order soon, though (although I will be eke-ing out the seeds I have left from previous years where possible, and I do already have a full complement of potatoes. But the artichokes need splitting ASAP - they were looking really tired last year. Bugger - I forgot to make a note of which ones were doing well, and which were not).

Also, Rose and Ele will be giving up plastic for Lent, which adds a bit of complication to getting compost for starting off seedlings. Hopefully the stuff I have already will do - that was bought last year, and so is exempt from their ruling. I hope. Otherwise, I am sure that they will be happy to extract their own topsoil from The Field.

Did I ramble? Sorry about that. I suddenly realised that I am not nearly busy enough at the moment. I hope that this vegetable patch helping thing works - we could get a really good crop (weather permitting) this year. Oh, and Ele and I will make wine. That will be fun, too. Not before we move, though. I packed my wine book, and will pack the equipment any day now.


*Yes, I know - the brief was to talk about something joyful and interesting.** I do not look likely to succeed at either. It should be less angry, though - is that any good?

**Well, the "interesting bit was implicit, insofar as I was suggesting that writing boring things was bad; people who do that are usually getting at the necessity to write interesting things, although they could just really be in to*** boring things.

***in to? into? Probably the latter. The former just looks weird.

****Don't worry - you will get to hear of it again.
Goodness me; this level of sarcasm is hard to bear sometimes, isn't it. If it were funny it could be more useful, but I am using the whole "let's try to make this slightly funny by pointing out that it isn't really very interesting (to put it politely) to the vast majority of people" gag a little bit too often. Should I accept that these things are not interesting and just stop using the gag, or should I jut think that those who do not find it fascinating don't have to read it, and stop trying to make it funny? Whichever way you look at it, I should be limited to using that inexpert device twice a month at most. Please don't count, though; you'll only disappoint me when you point out my mistake. Although I will be impressed that you noticed.

*****Actually, this was not the case. (sorry) It contained one of my learn Italian CDs. My learn Italian CD case, however, did not hold the corresponding CD of HWSNBN; effectively, the case was empty, only with a few hopeful moments when I thought I would be able to retrieve the lost item without getting into trouble.

Caged

I am trapped in a cage. I made it myself. You would not expect anything less, I am sure.

It is nice and safe. It is hard to hurt me when I am behind these thick, strong bars that I made (ironmongery of the mind is one of my many talents). I have spent years forging them just so; they contain me.

I suppose that trapped isn't really the right word - I can get out of it. It's just that the door in the cage is very high on one of the walls.

When I get there I can either go straight ahead into another cage (tunnel-shaped; getting narrower), or jump into the unknown and see what happens. It is dark outside my cage; it could be a long fall and there may be nobody there to catch me, just people cheering me on from afar.

There could be another cage where I land. This cage could be less comfortable and safe.

I am building steps out of my cage. Once I get within grabbing distance of the door, though, it will be time to take action. I am building the steps slowly so that this does not happen too soon. As I said, it is safe within my cage.

My cage is not bare. There are plenty of playthings. They do not melt the bars, though.

My cage is portable. It won't go very far, but it does not have to stay in exactly the same place: some variety is permitted, although not welcomed. The doors have to be padlocked shut to facilitate any moving, and it is a while before they will be opened again.

I can still build the steps while I am waiting, though. I can stand at the door and try to gauge what will happen when I step through.

I actually feel as though I might explode. If this were not impossible, I would be mildly concerned. There would be limbs everywhere. People might trip.

Knitting

Suddenly I feel as though I should learn how to knit. Preferably this evening. I know that it's not a road I should go down, as I will then have to learn how to spin my own yarn, then learn how to dye it, then have to start keeping sheep to support my habit (I really hope that I am exaggerating here), but I want to start a small gauntlet selection, some of which must be in very soft wool (silk will do, of course), and some of which must be in very sturdy wool. As I do not want to buy these, I shall have to make them myself.

Of course, I do not have any knitting needles, nor any wool I would use for knitting: the only stuff I have is ribbon substitute, for adding the finishing touch to wrapped soaps/presents/truffles. It is all synthetic and a lot of it changes colour as it goes along; this is an effect I really love in the wool itself, but I find the effect it gives to finished garments really irritating.

The plan is this: tomorrow I shall go go the charity shop to see if they have any knitting needles. If they do, I need to find some wool (either as a ball from there, or from a garment from there which is made from good wool, but which is not very pretty). If they do not, my plan is scuppered for a bit. I really want to have a scarf underway by the time I go to visit the parents on Friday (HWSNBN can drive while I knit) so that I can learn some basic stitches again. Once I have mastered that, I can then attempt gauntlets. Because they will be very easy, I am sure.

HWSNBN will, of course, be delighted for me to find a whole new hobby just before we move house. If I keep it to one pair of needles and a couple of balls of wool it should be manageable...

Riding

Yesterday evening brought with it some interesting developments. It would appear that the person to whom I have been giving large amounts of shredded paper is looking for someone to ride her older horse. That person could be me! Of course, I shall have to demonstrate proficiency in the art of staying on, starting, stopping and steering. My legs remember, though, and have been telling me to get back on a horse recently. I, of course, have been telling them to shut up, as I can't really justify spending money on this, nor do I have the time, and I am not prepared to make both the time and money for this. If I only have to make one of the two, I am in!

The next step is to retrieve my riding hat and boots from the parents' house, and obtain a suitable pair of trousers. After that, I believe that I am to have a go at riding the horse (whose name is Holly, I think) in an enclosed space so that she can't run away with me.

I rode most weeks between the ages of 10 and 18, so I used to be mostly OK (although my sense of balance was always somewhat dodgy; I am hoping that the yoga and martial arts I have done in the meantime will help with this), but 18 was a long time ago. I think I rode again once when I was 20, but that didn't really work. I blame it on the horse being young and unbalanced, but it could well just have been because I was rubbish. I just prefer that explanation less.

Today we have been moving boxes around. We put my books and the DVDs in HWSNBN's mum's garage and collected a lot of boxes. I think that my next task will be to pack the contents of the kitchen (except for the plates, bowls, cutlery and three pans. Plus a roasting tin. Oh, and the cups and some glasses. And most of the food, for now. So basically I need to pack the kitchen equipment that I don't use very often, which is a different proposition, I suppose). That will start shortly, and will continue tomorrow afternoon.

Ah. I shall have to go - Stephen Fry's on (QI), and I've not seen this episode before.

Argh! He's gone orange! How did that happen?

Still moving. Will be moving for a while.

I continue to bimble along, achieving little. I have started to pack the contents of my house (five boxes down, more than I care to admit to go), and shall have to make a concerted effort in that direction this weekend. I told HWSNBN that I was prepared to take on a lot of the responsibility for this house move, so I shall have to become very proactive soon.

Last night I packed all gardening books of the appropriate size, most of Delia (her vegetarian collection is, alas, too big for my boxes) and my entire soup-making collection. And a few assorted cookbooks also of the appropriate size. I also moved three candles across to a different table, two matches back into their box, and the radio onto the floor. I can scarcely keep up with the pace of my packing myself - it must be very bewildering only to hear about it second-hand. I am sure you are amazed with the sheer quantity of book categories I can pack in just one single evening. Let me tell you, that is nothing. I can pack twice that, and propose to do so this evening. I know, I know; I really am setting difficult-to-achieve goals for myself, but one has to aim high or one will never achieve anything!

Actually, the most difficult goal I have set for myself is that of moving twice as many boxes from the office to the car as I did yesterday - I was at my limit with six boxes, one of which some girl took a fancy to. She requested it and I gave it to her with very bad grace indeed. I know - I can make a run at lunchtime. Tuesday's bags of shredded paper still take up most of the back of my car, though, and the hammocks (which I still haven't told HWSNBN about) are still in the boot of the car, plus I am giving a lift to my colleague this evening which means that a) I will not be getting rid of the shredded paper this evening; and b) I must not stack the passenger seat full of boxes. I could always lift up the back seats and stack the paper bags on top of each other, I suppose.

We also have to get rid of the bed settee temporarily. No need to pay attention to this section, though - I have a feeling I have said it already, and that I shall say it again a few times until the offending item is moved. Once that is gone I will have more space to sort out my clothes and *sob* get rid of some of them. As one of the objects of this house move is to make me get rid of excess stuff (as opposed to acquiring hammocks), I had better make a good job of it. Also, the washing needs to be washed and put away. As HWSNBN will be off work for a few days he might do this. Then again, he might not. I ought to put a wash on when I get home (I notice that he has put a selection of dirty clothes in the basket - it will not be hard), and put lots of clean clothes away.

I noticed that the knicker fairy had been to fill up the knicker drawer since yesterday morning. I didn't look in the sock drawer (wearing tights today. You don't think they would go in the sock drawer, do you? How absurd. They go in the bra, corset and nightwear drawer, of course!) but I suspect that she will have visited too - she works with the knicker fairy quite regularly. The t-shirt, shirt and skirt fairy, alas, does not exist (HWSNBN might beg to differ on this one, although he would lament the infrequency of her visits). The trouser fairy has only ever appeared to me once, but she did a good job in difficult circumstances. Her little fairy hands must be better at getting trousers into an already full drawer than mine are.

I am starting to feel a little sad about moving. Still afraid (although much less so), but the packing process just makes me feel bad. It's the emptying and removing myself from the place,I suppose. I could also be mis-attributing the sadness I feel because I have so much packing to do, to the fact that I am leaving this house. That doesn't sound entirely unlikely. Mind you, I am the sort of person who likes to be where she is already. Going anywhere always takes time because I rarely want to stop staying put. Even at work it can take me ages to leave, because I am settled there.

Ah well; I am sure that this will all be very good for me. If Efficient Abi manages to surface this evening, some actual progress may well be made...

Today - now with title!

Today has been a busy day. I woke up at 11.15, but was able to spend another 55 minutes just lying there. That was nice. I wish that I had the opportunity to do that more often; it would probably make it quite boring after a few goes, and I would just get up and get stuff done.

Having got up and eaten breakfast, we went into City for Potato Day. This is an annual event during which one can purchase organic seed potatoes for 15p each. I bought 36 potatoes (6 each of 6 varieties) and am pleased with my haul. Last year they did not have Maris Peer (2nd early) in stock, but this year they did: cause for much rejoicing, and all that. They also still had Red Duke of York (1st early) and Arran Victory (maincrop), which was great - I love the red and purple ones the most: it's like digging up jewels, then you get to eat them! Also, I like to make a potato salad out of Red Duke of York for my birthday party in June. Last year it took a whole row of them to make one potato salad, but it is always worth it. I also bought Bamboo, a salad potato, Remarka (maincrop - good at blight resistance, apparently) and Maris Bard (1st early). These are an experiment, and I hope they pay off. At the very least, I hope not to have the blight problems we had last year and the year before. Please, God, make it rain less this year.

After that had been achieved, we went to HWSNBN's mother's house and painted the garage floor. We used a little over half the tin for the first coat - I really hope we have enough for the second coat tomorrow. The wind kept blowing leaves onto the wet paint (where did they come from? Autumn was ages ago! Having said that, I was looking at some fat sheep a few days ago and wondered how they had got so fat, it being autumn and them, presumably, being only recently impregnated. I now realise that I was wrong; autumn was ages ago, and they will be giving birth very shortly. Saw my first 2009 lambs this morning), which was frustrating: it was very satisfying to shut the garage door. I am now less than enthusiastic about the second coat, which is a shame. I was hoping to have enough enthusiasm to do both coats without any problems, but that does not look likely. HWSNBN's mum will be making us dinner after we finish the second coat, though, which is a good incentive.

Speaking of whom, I looked under her bathroom sink today and discovered a stockpile of my soaps. I though that she had run out, but it doesn't look as though she is using them at all. Ah well - it means that I don't have to worry about making enough for her next time. More for Serena, who doesn't seem to use any other sort of soap at the moment. It is a bit frustrating, though - I think I gave her some of my best soaps, which I have now run out of. I want to give them to someone else now (i.e. Linda - no way I'm going to be able to make her a lavender soap in the near future, but I know a person who has one going spare now), but never mind. At least I know now. It is very frustrating always to receive the wrong presents from people, which they mistakenly believe that one likes, but one, in fact, hates. I shall be able to avoid doing that, and potentially inducing guilt, now. She would be better off with some of my soaps than with that liquid soap she uses, though - mine are full of all sorts of goodies.

Sorry - did I just go off on one? Please be assured that there are no hard feelings there, although there is an awful lot of poorly written stuff.

As it appears that I am currently operating on an "it is in my head; let's get it out here" basis, may I take a moment to say how much I love my new shoes? They are black and shiny, and have long ankle straps which go round twice. They look quite elegant, which is unusual for shoes belonging to me. They are also really comfortable for climbing shoes.* Which is something, I suppose. I hope that I will have worn them in sufficiently to be worn on an actual outing some time soon...

Other than that, it appears that the truffles I made before Christmas really need eating now (damn), so I am making a gentle start with that. Two is a good start; I can have a few more tomorrow.

Now I had better practise tomorrow's hymn. I could do with sounding as though I have seen an organ before, as we have a visiting preacher. Also, I mustn't forget to collect Jeanne on my way there - must text her now to remind her she's supposed to be waiting for me...



*Climbing shoes are not comfortable. They have to be really close-fitting to be useful, and this often has its disadvantages. I would love it if all climbing shoes were as comfortable as these shoes; alas, they are not.

I survived!

The maths lessons are now over: thank goodness for that.

The first one did not go well - the exercise sheet I prepared was not well-prepared and had difficult exercises at the beginning and easy ones at the end. I kind of lost the class, and ended up babbling and losing the ability to add up and to write on the board. This was about 20 minutes after I finally lost the attention of the class, but fortunately the lesson did not last long after that. I am not convinced that many of them will have learned anything. I think that the Oxford English Dictionary may now be in the process of re-defining the word "crap" to include my lesson.

Before the second lesson I re-jigged the exercise sheet so that it was in the right order; that lesson went a lot better. We nearly got through the whole lesson, and it went along at what I considered to be a good pace, with plenty of time to talk to individual students and also quite a few comparatively fun bits. This very nearly made up for the profoundly unimpressive performance I produced in the morning, and made me feel a lot better. The class behaved less well (like teenagers in their own clothes (as opposed to school uniform) away from school on a Friday afternoon, in fact), though. It was a pity that the unruly class got the good lesson while the well-behaved class had to put up with a shambles.

Now I have to start to concentrate on the business of moving house. Mother says that she and Father, along with Anne and maybe Robert will come on 27th Feb and help to clean the new house, then help me to move on 28th, then help to clean the old house on 1st March. This will be very useful; cleaning is a nightmare! Also, as HWSNBN's dad is no longer alive, we will not have his help with the moving of things - he helped a lot last time and also drove the van.

Tomorrow we will paint HWSNBN's garage floor to seal it (so that it stops shedding concrete), and we will then be able to use the garage to store our boxes for a few weeks. That will help a large amount: the thing I hate the very most about packing is that one fills loads of boxes, but then has no space to fill additional boxes because the place is already filled with boxes. This way we will be able to look as though we are organised, and stuff.

HWSNBN still doesn't know about the hammocks. Mother thinks that perhaps they were a bad idea, but that I might be able to put hooks in my walls from which to hang them. I think that the landlord may not be impressed. We then discussed my wrought iron candelabra and my desire to have it up in my new kitchen. Mother says that it will make the ceiling black, and that I should use it in my back yard. Given that I acquired this about 5 years ago, and that I have to cart it about with me, it really would be useful if I were to get to use it.

I am looking forward to the space in the new house, and am feeling less anxious with the (mostly) successful completion of the maths lessons (nobody died nor ran riot, nor was the projector hit with an exercise ball) and the doing of an unbloggable thing today. I am .looking forward to jettisoning some Things and moving...

Looking promising

Well, we signed the contract. Now to discontinue the old contract and get packing.

The kitchen in the new place is dreadful: it was probably ultra-modern in 1953. I may have to make a new one. I do hope that I can afford to do so; it would be an excellent joinery exercise. Not that I haven't made a kitchen before, you understand, but this time I might use some actual joinery techniques rather than just drilling holes and inserting screws. I would make pretty doors and ensure that the hinge holes were in the correct place. Hmm; we shall see.

The maths teaching thing is still on. I am getting increasingly worried. Roll on 3.15 on Friday. Except that I need more time to prepare.

On Saturday, we are due to paint HWSNBN's mum's garage floor with concrete sealant. We will then be able to stack our boxes of packed stuff in there, thus making way for other boxes of stuff.

I am still terrified by the whole moving thing, and probably also by the maths teaching thing. And also with the "what do I do next, career-wise" thing. Also by the whole difficulty with making this new house comfortable and beautiful.

But now it is time for bed. More complaining and terrified squirming soon!

And yes, the title is a bit weird with the contents of this post. But it really is looking promising - it will be good when we are settled and can walk to the pub! I just don't know what it is going to cost (financially and in terms of upset) to get to that stage. I am so annoyingly contrary. Humph.