Home (UPDATED)

Now I am home. Back where it is warm, where there is food in the fridge and carpets that haven't been walked on by hundreds of strangers from the past with verrucas.

Yesterday, at about nine-thirty pm, I took a last cursory glance in all the rooms in the flat to check that they were clean, and also that none of us had left anything tremendously embarrassing behind that would have to be collected at a later date (vibrator in the desk drawer? Lucky I checked.) (Lucky it was my drawer.)

I stood at my window for a bit, trying not to breathe on the freshly-polished glass, and tried to commit the room to memory. It has struck me a few times that, by leaving the flat, I am leaving behind so many memories that begin and end in those the chipped floorboard-ed, bright pink curtain-ed, mouse-ridden confines. I did like it there. The parties, the over-enthusiastic singing along to the Power Ballads CD whilst washing up, the even-more-enthusiastic singing along to the Power Ballads CD whilst simply dancing crazy-like around the living room, the rumbling of the trains as they trundled by about ten metres from the window. Waving to the Eurostar as it went by, hoping it would take my wave along to Paris for my Impish Little Sister, Railway Children-style.

My life has undergone a rather dramatic and sudden re-shuffle in the last three weeks.

Sudden. No job, no flat, no boyfriend.

Written out like that it seems rather more stark than it actually is.

I may have no nine-to-five, but I have the smallest buddings of a career.

I may have no flat, but I have a home not so far from London.

As for the third thing, I am not sure yet. It is, however, what it is, and the only thing I can do is live through it.

Today I am unpacking, which involves finding space for things I should have maybe thrown away and wondering whether I really might have needed all the things I threw away last week. I am aching and sore from carrying the rest of my stuff back from Clapham yesterday (two large rucksacks, a large hold-all and a keyboard stand) and my head is slightly fuzzy from inhaling about six litres of Pledge.

I am happy to be home.

I'm off to gaze in wonder at the glorious contents of the fridge.

UPDATE:

I keep finding write-ups of that 'blogmeet' I went to the other week, as I haven't been reading blogs quite as often as I'd like now that I'm not being paid to pretend I'm doing something else. Not out of lack of interest, you understand.
Anyway, what a nice thing to find written about me when I'm feeling a somewhat low and in need of ponies (from Mike of Troubled Diva):

"...we didn't really get past the nodding and smiling stage. She really is a very lovely looking lady, though. Is it OK to say that? Well, she is, dammit! I'm a big old poof-arse, I can say these things."

Yes, he can say these things, and I shall not stop him.

I knew blogging was all about how you looked.