What a way to pass Saturday...

It's too damned hot. No really, you could use me to run a small irrigation system; it's horrible. And of course it made sleeping last night next to impossible until just before the dawn broke.

Today we are packing. I am taking the opportunity to update while I am cooling down a little. Furtle has gone to the hairdressers for her pre-move coif. In a moment I shall return to the fray.

It is rather odd. This morning the first thing we did was go through our clothes and sort into keepers and let-goes. Some of the latter were reluctantly put in bags and we have taken them to the charity shop. Several of my favourite tee shirts went. I don't know if the shop will use them, but the clothes are clean and in good condition, except for some of the prints on the front, which are the worse for wear. I confess that there was a lump in my throat as I bagged some of them. It took me a while to realise why. It's not so much because they were favourites and that I was getting rid of them because they no longer fit (odd how clothes shrink over the years). No, that wasn't the reason - they were not so small that I couldn't entertain the hope of wearing them again one day (hence why they are only now going). It was the realisation, an unwelcome realisation, that what I could wear in my late thirties and to a lesser extent in my forties, begins to look rather stupid on a man in his early fifties. It's the inexorable march of time and the fact that most of the time you only notice it during beginnings and endings.

And as much as I am looking forward to the new beginning in just over a week, it marks also the end of two very happy years in The Carpathia and before that, three good years in The Athenaeum Club before it. The move is not just goodbye to the flat, it is goodbye to five years in this area and all the things I like about it and the friends I have made here. I was irked when I left Clapham because I had to get past my inertia and the fact that it was so damned cheap. But for all that, it was a dump, that garret and I was glad to be gone once the hassle was over. I shall miss Whetstone. I shall miss The Carpathia. Ho hum.

As a previous incarnation of a certain TV character would have it, "Allons-Y!"

What a way to pass Saturday...

It's too damned hot. No really, you could use me to run a small irrigation system; it's horrible. And of course it made sleeping last night next to impossible until just before the dawn broke.

Today we are packing. I am taking the opportunity to update while I am cooling down a little. Furtle has gone to the hairdressers for her pre-move coif. In a moment I shall return to the fray.

It is rather odd. This morning the first thing we did was go through our clothes and sort into keepers and let-goes. Some of the latter were reluctantly put in bags and we have taken them to the charity shop. Several of my favourite tee shirts went. I don't know if the shop will use them, but the clothes are clean and in good condition, except for some of the prints on the front, which are the worse for wear. I confess that there was a lump in my throat as I bagged some of them. It took me a while to realise why. It's not so much because they were favourites and that I was getting rid of them because they no longer fit (odd how clothes shrink over the years). No, that wasn't the reason - they were not so small that I couldn't entertain the hope of wearing them again one day (hence why they are only now going). It was the realisation, an unwelcome realisation, that what I could wear in my late thirties and to a lesser extent in my forties, begins to look rather stupid on a man in his early fifties. It's the inexorable march of time and the fact that most of the time you only notice it during beginnings and endings.

And as much as I am looking forward to the new beginning in just over a week, it marks also the end of two very happy years in The Carpathia and before that, three good years in The Athenaeum Club before it. The move is not just goodbye to the flat, it is goodbye to five years in this area and all the things I like about it and the friends I have made here. I was irked when I left Clapham because I had to get past my inertia and the fact that it was so damned cheap. But for all that, it was a dump, that garret and I was glad to be gone once the hassle was over. I shall miss Whetstone. I shall miss The Carpathia. Ho hum.

As a previous incarnation of a certain TV character would have it, "Allons-Y!"