The second bedroom. Full of boxes

Third bedroom. Also full of boxes

I’m so glad I took a few days off work to get everything straight.Packing seemed to take forever, even though a lot of my stuff was packed months ago when our first move fell through.  It feels like we have been living surrounded by boxes forever, so it is a real relief to now only have a few left, and confined to one room.  On the day before we moved I got as far as about 8pm and ran away to Horsham to see Covered at the Queen’s Head, where on arrival the first person I saw was my erstwhile electoral opponent Jim Duggan. It was good to be able to catch up with him and with Damian.

The next morning the removal truck arrived early, so they were all parked and had their ramp set up for the time they said they would start.  They did a brilliant job too, so I’m only too happy to recommend Durrants to anybody wanting to move house in the Crawley/Horsham area.  A very good price too, though I’m sure that is partly based on not knowing just how many boxes of books I have.

By mid-day we were all moved in and getting everything in order.  Virgin said they would tbe around between 1pm and 6pm to connect the broadband, phone and TV and they turned up a bit before 5pm I think.   Everything was connected up and worknig well before 6pm so no complaints there either.

On the Sunday morning we were expecting a new cooker to be delivered, to replace the one I cooked at the old place.  I had ordered one online from AppliancesOnline because the price was quite good and they not only do free delivery but do weekend deliveries.   They called on Friday to confirm everything was OK, and then texted on Saturday to tell us a timeslot (between 8am and noon).   They turned up just after 8, unpacked everything and took away the old cooker and all the packaging, so after a few days of take-aways we had some home-cooked food Sunday night.

The kitchen and living room were sorted out fairly quickly, while Frankie helped a lot with the bedroom, putting together flat-pack wardrobes and chests of drawers, as well as moving heavy boxes around and putting all the camping and Christmas stuff up in the loft.  Very handy having a son who is built like a brick shithouse and currently unemployed!

Amongst all this I was gradually chipping away at the boxes of stuff: putting up shelves and filling them, with periodic trips to the tip to dispose of the empty cardboard boxes that were filling the house.  Somewhere along the line I changed my attitude towards books from “you can’t have too many books” to “I have too many books”.  I think that resulted in me throwing away about 10 books.  Well it’s a start.

By the end of the week I had put up 48 shelves with a total length of about 64 metres, or as my work would call it “64 linear metres” as if there is any other kind.  I think that may be a lot.  I think that another 3 shelves will just about do it.  I would have put them up already but I ran out of brackets.

The target was to get Chrystal’s room all set up before she got back from Uni on Friday, and we made it just in time.

The biggest help was from Southern Housing and Hyde Martlet who both worked wonders to get the exchange arranged in a really short time.  Jayne and the lady we exchanged with both work in schools so moving at the beginning of half-term was the best time for everybody.  Several times it looked like we would not be able to manage that, but in the end they managed to get past all the obstacles.

Throughout all of this I have been keeping away from the computer, except to keep up-to-date with newsfeeds and to tweet a bit.  I thought I should concentrate on the important stuff and not get distracted.   I think I am now near enough to being done to be able to once more dip a toe in the internet again.  It looks like there is plenty to moan about.

The Green Man Festival¹ is running a competition, well a couple of competitions really. They are letting bands who are not on the bill register on the site so that Joe Public can vote for them. The band who gets the most votes gets invited along to open the festival. The second competition is that anyone who votes gets a chance to win a pair of tickets for the festival.

I can thoroughly recommend voting for Spizzenergi! I would love to see them rocking a field in Wales…

So -any other 40-somethings out there who remember Spizzenergi with fond nostalgia know what they have to do:

• Vote for Spizzenergi
• Pass the word around
• If you have your own blog encourage your readers to vote
• If you have a Facebook or Myspace account you can add a ‘vote Spizzenergi’ widget to it.
• Go to Wales and hear ‘Where’s Captain Kirk?’ at full volume

The code for the blog advert and widgets is here and below is a little video clip of Spizzenergi back in the day when they were called (probably) The Spizzles.

1. a great web site design – check it out