Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. Or at least, I think I do. I've certainly enjoyed seaside holidays over the years. And so, over Christmas, I decided to move to Brighton. I went flat hunting on the 28th December, fell in love with the second place I saw, gave them a deposit, filled in some forms, and I get the keys tomorrow. I figure that there's no point waiting around once you've set your heart on something.
I'm not leaving London quite yet. So's not to have a hellish move, I decided to have a two week overlap period between getting the keys to my new place and moving out of my old place. Tomorrow sees stage one of the move: the big clean. The flat is perfectly clean already, but I've decided I want to get it all sparkling and dust-free before I start moving my belongings there.
I packed the essentials. Namely:
- Cleaning products and dusters (for obvious reasons)
- Laptop with back-up up copies of all my work (so I have copies of my work in London and Brighton, just in case of computer-transporting disasters)
- A CD player and selection of bouncy-type CDs like Blondie and Kaiser Chiefs (to make cleaning less arduous)
- Bath stuff (so I can clean myself after cleaning the flat)
- Martini glasses (well, it'll be nice to be able to offer the people who help me do the big move a week later a decent cocktail...)
- Wine glasses (...or a glass of champagne, and if you drink champagne out of a martini glass it goes flat too quickly)
- Heart shaped fairy lights and disco-ball framed mirror (I'm moving to Brighton. My inner student is allowed to come out)
- Ashtray - though not for real cigarettes, but rather herbal ones. assuming my will-power holds. I'm trying giving up smoking for New Year and, with the help of herbal fags, have been (almost) nicotine free for 11 days now - longer than I've managed on previous non-smoking attempts. OK, the herbal fags still have tar in them, and do smell like an old bonfire made from fishbones (hence the 'almost' nicotine free record - I've twice been out, drinking reasonable amounts and in an enclosed environment. After the first complaint about the stink of the herbal fag, I decided to limit my intake. After the second, I decided I couldn't inflict the stink on anyone else and ponced real fags off people instead. But, given my previously copious smoking habit, I don't think 5 fags in a night when I'd normally smoke at least 20 is that bad) With any luck I'll be able to phase out herbal cigarettes next. There certainly isn't the same compulsion to smoke them as there is with real fags (hell, I've only had four today and I'd have had at least twenty'real' cigarettes by now) And I *have* turned down cigarettes, when a friend who was unaware of my attempt to give up bought me a pack round as a present. However, I'm not getting into smug mode yet - I won't be a proper 'quitter' until I've managed to be drunk and not smoke. But I am making my new flat a non-smoking one once I move in, in an attempt to help me stick to my mission.
I can't quite believe that I'm getting excited about going to Brighton to clean my flat. I'm fairly sure it's because the new flat has a sea view (from the front door, anyway, and that's close enough) and as such feels like a holiday place, rather than because I've developed a cleaning fixation. In fact, looking around my paper-strewn desk, I'm certain of it. It just seems a bit daft to do anything other than perfunctory cleaning/tidying in the old flat, given that everything is getting packed in boxes and moved over the next fortnight anyway. Whereas going to the seaside and cleaning seems a lot less arduous.
Moving aside, I've been doing my usual juggling act. Obviously, there's been a tonne of Scarlet stuff. I've been asked to put together some more book proposals (I prefer writing actual books to book proposals but, right now, I'm happy to have a bit of a break from big swathes of words, so that I can focus on the move) And I'm in the studio recording the next Audible show on Friday. There are also a couple of exciting top secret projects on at the moment, that I'll blather all about once I can.
But for the time being, life is, for once, taking as much time as work. Guess I'd better get back to packing...
Posted by emilyd at January 12, 2006 12:56 AM