The champion defends her title

While some have made claims to the contrary, I still maintain that with an average of nearly 1 change of address for every year of my life, I have moved more times than anyone I know. (Greg: if Jacqlyn wants my crown, bitch is gonna have to come over here and take it from me.) And I can tell you that this experience has come in handy. The secret is all in the preparation. Wisdom that I have, on this occasion, applied as follows:

1) Ordering in supplies. Many, many boxes. Possibly too many. A situation I would never before have believed possible. Final verdict to be delivered after D-Day (Thursday). (Still keep running out of bubble wrap, though.)

2) Ordering in really essential supplies. Unfortunately, Beloved got at my Jaffa Cakes and I am temporarily low on fuel. I'm sure this can be rectified, however, before crisis point is reached.

3) Getting started rather ahead of time. I have therefore spent the weekend - while Beloved was at work - packing, and doing laundry. It normally takes about a week to get through one average-sized load of laundry in this flat, for two reasons: first, we have a teeny little baby washing machine. Second, we have just one clothes airer, and one spot (handily, right in front of the radiator) to stand it, fully laden with damp clothes dripping on each other. One half-load thus requires a few days to dry. UNLESS you exert Scroobious Superpowers as follows: keep the radiator on a few hours per day, despite the weather; rotate the laundry on a two-hourly basis to ensure that the garments closest to the heat source are turned around and dried in double time, removed, and next driest garments take their place, enabling another small load to be added before the whole airer is available. Success! Four loads in one weekend. So we can move clean clothes, not laundry. Which satisfies something deep in my anal soul.

And packing. It's rather odd tackling the packing of an entire two-person flat entirely by myself (well, almost). Especially when Person #2 is famously Swiss and has the ability, unique in my experience, of being able to treat any packing exercise as a 3D jigsaw puzzle, and ensure that when done, not so much as a cockroach has room to turn around* inside the packed box. Or van, for that matter. I have photos that would astound you. (Can't show. No idea where the photos are.) So, I have a little performance anxiety; it's tough living up to such genius. And plus, when confronted with his files, I simply seized up and refused to continue. The first two box-fulls, okay. Man needs to keep records. But then I discovered the stash under the bed. Who on earth needs that many files? For the love of space, what can he possibly be keeping in there?

I'm getting a little distracted here. My point was, I been busy. Packing. Laundry. Packing again. At this point, there is precious little free floor area at Chez Scroobious. There is nearly nowhere to sit (desk chairs and bed are about the only options). The morning sun peeks in only to taunt, because it's impossible to get anywhere near the one corner of this little rabbit hutch that actually gets any sun. I'd show you, but no idea where the camera is, either.

And it's only going to get worse. Already, there's pretty much nothing that can be done here except: pack; eat (assuming you can navigate your way around the kitchen packing zone enough to find comestibles); sneeze (thanks to all the dust that has been stirred up from its happy resting places behind couch, etc); watch TV and sleep. This is perhaps a good thing, as it encourages maximum packing, out of sheer boredom if nothing else. I'm hitting the most difficult patch, though: the point at which the easy stuff (books, clothes) has all been packed, I'm halfway through the kitchen - tricky, since we still need to eat here for three days - and then I'm just surrounded by all the little knickknacks that will be shoved on top of things in the nearest open box when all the boxes have been filled with their Core Ingredients. And of course there's all the electronic stuff. Which is most certainly Beloved's territory. So, um... what next?

[twiddles thumbs]

Hey, who else is gonna have a go at Red Meat?**
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* Cockroaches being the fiendish little buggers that they are, they might get in initially, but then they'll find themselves forced to simply move along in a straight line until they find an exit point. Or starve. No three-, four- or even six-point turns will be possible.
** Gersh, I admire your recharacterisation of the Lonesome Cowboy into the Bragsome Cowboy. A bold move, and one that I feel has paid off.