Quite Random

Moving time

Tomorrow I move house, so today I spend all day moving boxes of miscellaneous junk around this place in the vain attempt to look like I know what I’m doing. The thing is, I’ve been packing bags and moving around for most of my life, so I’d like to think I was some sort of seasoned pro in the moving front, but the simple reality is that I’m just as disorganised as ever, and the closest I get to sorted out is when I’ve wired the hi-fi up again and made a cup of tea. This is why I’m making sure the hi-fi and kettle are readily available at the other end.

This is the first time I have ever had a place on my own, and so will be a little bit of an adventure – it’ll be great to have my own place, so I too can now cooly say choice lines such as ‘you must come and stay!’, ‘your place or mine?’, and ‘oh I think the Brita water filter is better’, but I also know that I’m basically hopeless in my own company after a very short time, and could be found slumped in my beanbag a month after moving in, comatose eyes staring at the TV, Playstation controller in one hand, bowl of pasta spilled down my front, hi-fi on, attempting to enjoy five different kids of entertainment at once and melting my brain. Good job friends live nearby, the local pub’s good, and I have to leave the flat to go to work.

Anyway, this isn’t helping. I’m typing this when I clearly should be upstairs throwing half my possessions away as the dusty underutilised crap they are, and putting things in boxes ready to go. So before heading off, things that annoy this week:

• The use of the word ‘mom’ in the UK instead of ‘mum’. The former can be left to the Americans, it’ll be a cold day in hell before I use it here
• Tourists at South Kensington tube still insist on getting in your way no matter which direction you turn
• Ryanair apparently being cheap but actually only being cheap if you fly at unbelievably bloody obscure times in the early morning or night – otherwise costing much the same as anywhere else AND charging you for baggage
• Individual portions of milk, sugar and Flavia coffee used in the coffee machine at work. Apart from the fact that Flavia is disgusting, the whole concept of a one-use coffee sachet, milk tub, sugar sachet and stirrer, serving their purpose for one bad drink before going directly in a bin, is insane
• More packaging – Pret a Manger carps on about additive-free quality food, but seems not to give a dingo’s kidney about the fact that one lunch from Pret creates a large amount of packaging which ends up in landfill.
• Piss-poor recycling facilities in Central London and workplaces (if I’m wrong, where are they?)
• 1&1 Internet’s anti-spam measures – which consist of trashing all of your e-mail as spam, just to be sure
• Being here and worrying about all this nonsense.