I know I’ve been a bad blogger lately. friday was the last day of work – a tremendous relief, even as they were already trying to bribe me back in six months time by offering me a promotion. my leaving do (which I had been dreading, since i avoid any occasion for extra attention like the plague) was actually lovely – a bunch of people turned out, and the wine was flowing freely. why do you have to leave a place before you realise how much you were valued?

then we had the big clear out over the weekend. even though most everything was already packed away, it was all about cleaning and dealing with odds and ends. for example, i know I will never remember that my blue purse got thrown in with the dvd player because it was the last box that hadn’t been sealed up yet. you’re so at loose ends that after a certain point you start just staring blankly at the last few boxes, having moved them from one room to the next 3 times, and wonder how on earth anyone ever gets *out* of a place. and then there’s the guilt, because no matter how organised an approach you take (sifting our stuff to be donated to friends, charity shops, recycled) in the throes of end-stage chaos, you just start chucking shit into rubbish bags because you don’t know what else to do with it, and frankly, you no longer give a flying fuck. and I know I am going straight to hell for throwing perfectly good food in the trash, and it serves me right that i only had to turn around and buy more anyway.

in any case, that was most of the weekend. since then, i’ve been more social than i have in ages! sunday i met up with a friend for a long lunch of moules frites and some great conversation. monday i met up with a colleague (who’s also leaving the council) and we had drinks and dinner to celebrate the end of our working relationship, but start of a friendship. all in all, it’s been about “maxing and relaxing”, with the errant errand thrown in here and there. soaking up the decadence of being gainfully unemployed, which feels wonderful.

there are things i am realising I will miss – some is silly stuff like my pillow, and some is more intangible, like the view from my office over the thames. there is some stuff, however, that i will not miss for even one second. like the tube. this morning, we went down to the chinese embassy bright and early to apply for our visas. we were up and out of the house by 7:30, hoping to get there for the front of the queue. there was some kind of kerfuffle in the ticketing area, where they weren’t letting people through the gates for a few minutes – not a good sign. then boarding the train, it was already fairly full – also not a good omen at that time of the morning. we stuttered our way all the way to stockwell station, smooshed up against the doors, me with my face buried in j’s armpit. at stockwell, the platform for the victoria line was aleady packed – pure aggravation. we waited 6 minutes for the next train, and getting on was an exercise in assertiveness training. my “inner new yorker” surfaced, and I forced my way on. but several stops later, there was a girl who boarded by basically moshing – throwing the whole weight of her body into me multiple times, even though she had actually created quite a bit of personal space for herself. i swear, i nearly punched her in the face. by that point i was so aggro, i was a hair’s breadth away from grabbing her ponytail and ripping it off her stupid little head. holy shit, i have never been that close to picking a fistfight in my life, and the saving grace was that we got off at the next stop. i’m not usually a shrinking violet when it comes to confrontation, but i really couldn’t trust myself to speak. poor j, on the other hand, got quite an earful when we finally made it out. bless him – sometimes it think he doesn’t quite know what he got himself into, marrying me!

the bright spot of the day was buying a nice pair of sunnies, which i’ve needed for ages. buying sunglasses is always so difficult for me – they’re always either giagundo like huge bug-eye glasses with that awful metallic sheen, or too small like some kind of swimming goggles. i can’t be trusted with anything too pricey, as i will inevitably lose or sit on them. (i know, i know – i am a full grown adult and one would hope i could care for something as simple as a moderately priced pair of sunglasses… but one would be wrong.) so although j has had an expensive pair of titanium oakleys for several years, i really can’t buy anything i can’t afford to lose.

but, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles – i found some i actually like!

on another note: there’s been a bunch of adverts for the brasilian “brahma” beer in the tube lately, and for some reason i find them vaguely disturbing…

but i’ve finally figured out why!

Like this post

Unlike

tube, brahma, speto, moving, tube rage