You’ll have to do with bullet points instead.

1. I am sanding a desk. Knobbly, swirly scrolly bits are hard. It also has ‘grunge’ in the corners. Did our forefathers keep earwax and snuff in the joints for extra rigidity or something? It will look lovely when I am finished though. I’ve changed the knobs to nice sparkly ones which M said reminded him of ‘The Crystal Maze’ and I shall be inserting some of my smelly lining paper to rid it off ‘Eau de Attic’. More lovely secondhand furniture is coming this Friday. Chic and hopefully unique.

2. Weird seaside weather here – grey, cold, hot, sunny and then grey all in the space of an hour.

3. I have some pretty calling cards from Etsy (seller Enfin La Volia.) All the cool kids have calling cards dontcha know.

4. I had a very nice Sunday roast at our local yesterday with M and M’s mother. Piles of organic chicken smothered in thick glistening gravy. Mmmmm hmmmmm. I also discovered while there that we have a local indie night, observe!

5. I bought an old apothercary bottle at the flea market yesterday with TINCT. NUC. VOM. on it. Apparently this tincture contained strychnine and was used to treat morning drunkenness, nervous affectations and loss of periods amongst other things – lawks. I shall use it to store my washing up liquid in. Or possibly gin.

6. Since having our chimney swept we have a black rain of toot coming down the sitting room chimney. Clean chimney = lots of stuff can come down it. M and I shall be pleased when we have a proper hearth and grate. We are now thinking of getting a wood burning stove. Efficient and real flames. Toasty. Also less dependence on imported Russian gas – up yours Medvedev!

7. My tummy is rumbling at an epic volume.

8. Our upstairs neighbour who is is moving to the US for four years (won’t someone nice that I know come rent his flat and be a darling neighbour to us? Please). Last night at midnight FFS he dropped something incredibly heavy which caused all our electrics to go blinkety blink. Mmmm if I see him today I shall scowl.

9. I answered the door to what I thought was the postman this morning only to discover Jehovahs Witnesses. A motherly type with her seventeen year old son in tow. The seventeen year old was rather disturbingly hot (for a god bothering youth). Is this a new tactic by the JWs? Any how it turned out she wanted to talk about global warming and my trump card of “Oh but I am Roman Catholic!” was not needed. Apparently Jesus is upset with us for ruining the earth and will smite all excessive carbon emitters. Something to think about eh? She tried to quote something relevant from the Book of Revelation but alas could not find it. I felt smug and a little sorry for her. I wished them a cheery good day though.

Right I must away our little local hardware shop and select the appropriate grade of sandpaper. The glamour.

I’ve uploaded about a milliontyone cameraphone pictures to Flickr.

Completion date 4th July.

I can now eye:

Bedlinen from Cologne and Cotton
Regency decanters for port
Massive gilt mirrors
Antique poison and apothecary bottles
Cake stands of all descriptions
Bone china tea cups and saucers for afternoon tea
A skinny turned leg Regency desk
Porcelain knob coat hooks
Cut glass door handles

The agony and ecstasy of house purchase.

*dances again*

Kate rather marvelously emailed me last night to check I was watching ‘The Supersizers…. go Regency.’ I was in fact watching and no doubt will watch it again shortly on iPlayer. The wonders of modern technology. Any man who can write in his food column about ” weeny bike thieves and kitten-stabbers” has won my heart. Oh Giles!

Watching Wimbledon just now and one of the commentators said “He has mad staring eyes, eyes like a scientist. A set of eyes on him all right.” WTF.

In flat news no, we haven’t exchanged yet. The contract finally arrived yesterday and we returned it to our solicitors by Next Day Delivery service today. Hopefully we can exchange tomorrow or Friday. I know I have said that before.

Looking through the weighty tome our solicitor sent it appears that their solicitor is a very rude and slow person. When I read his terse correspondence to our solicitor (and her repeated reasonable requests for information) I thought she was a saint for staying civil, bless her.

I did entertain a wild idea of giving up on this flat yesterday and had a look at other Brighton flats on t’internet but I found nothing I had the love for and that I’d feel happy ditching this flat… so I guess we are committed, or may be should be?

The only potential fly in the ointment is a clause in the lease saying we have to have carpet (and apply for permission to have pets and that we have to have suitable window coverings at all times). Now, I LOATHE carpet and I have asthma. Soft furnishings, especially carpet, make it worse. Our solicitor said we could apply to the other joint freeholders for permission to have wooden floors (and obviously state we would soundproof it to a level over and above the existing carpet so as not to annoy others). Fingers crossed then.

I’m hoping our new neighbours will be reasonable about the flooring. We haven’t met them yet. It was snowing and blowing a gale when we viewed the flat back in March so the neighbours were either inside by the fire or in the pub knocking back a whisky or three (I know I would.) The secretary of the freehold company (which we will have a share in) lives immediately below us and in his correspondence to the solictor sounded reasonable and sane. Nice penmanship too. The person above us in the small second floor flat is a guy who used to live there with his mother and took over the flat when she passed away. I’m getting a mental image of Ronnie Corbett crossed with Alan Carr.

Annoying woman upstairs in our rental flat (yes, they have NO soundproofing under their wooden floors) is now – by the sounds of it – doing step aerobics while holding a baby elephant and singing a medoly of songs from Oliver.

Oh God.

* I am eyeing up another one in a secondhand shop – what if it sells when I’m not there! – a 1950s two tier one with red roses and black leaves.

Meat aside, I particularly like the ravenous cake girl and the ideas for gay teens prints.

I have also been staring hypnotically at this IKEA minisite – Be Brave, Not Beige. Window number one is just wrong.

Lastly, I have strong men in on Friday. A fox specialist is calling about our vulpine problem. Another man is also coming ’round that afternoon as we have crappy broadband; Tiscali/Homechoice sucks.

Anyhow, after sitting through a mind-numbing marathon of 28 songs we selected the ones we liked best and hoped they would make it through to the final proper on Saturday night. Some – we thought – were absolute no brainers to go through, like the highly favoured Denmark.

We liked:

1. Belarus – “Work Your Magic”. (Watch this video on YouTube as it won’t embed here) Gravy tan boy Koldun (who could be Paris Hilton’s younger sister in drag) does Bondesque number with a slick dance routine. Pour your magic potion all over me, eh? Naughty.

2. Cyprus – “Comme Ci, Comme ça”. Manic stary-eyed singer Evridiki belts out a good poppy number which ticks the classic ‘nonsence lyrics’ Eurovision box.

3. Georgia – “Visionary Dream”. Sopho sings what M thought was the best song (which could be listened to outside Eurovision) of the night. Nice dress too.

4. Switzerland – “Vampires are alive”. Oh dear Switzerland, you have DJ Bobo and a group of dancing goth wannabes. Everyone knows vampires look like Stuart Townsend, wear much more eyeliner and definitely don’t jig. Null points.

5. Netherlands – “On Top Of The World”. Edsilia Rombley can sing and then some! Imagine Shirley Bassy and Heather Small combined. Really nice Eurosong.

6. Denmark – “Drama Queen” by DK. Wow, Everything down pat from the Eurovision playbook. Feathers, glittery headdresses, a six-foot drag queen and a high-energy camp number. What more can Eurovision ask for?

7. Andorra – “Let’s save the world” by Salvem el món. A fake Blink 182 with extra fake. Oh you want to feed them up you do the little schoolboys.

9. Belgium – “Love Power” by Krazy Mess Groovers. This is Belgium!? Wow, he was like a poppy Indian Mika with short bell-bottoms, rah!

So the voting. Oh my bloody god. How did they get it so wrong? From our fine list above only Belarus and Georgia went through. At the end of the programme the audience were were audibly booing and the pundits were all scratching their heads. How did the favourites Denmark not get through? Or cute Andorra and highly liked Belgium? The lead singer from ‘Scooch‘ was there and said either it was good news for the UK as all the favourites from the semis did not get through or that the European public hated ‘traditional’ camp poppy Eurovision songs this year and they were in trouble. Paddy was a bit sharp and said it all “looked at a bit Eastern.” Naught Paddy. I guess we shall see on Saturday what the public wants. Ones to watch I think are Belarus and Greece. Personally I’m miffed by Latvia (BONAPARTI.LV “Questa Notte”) getting through singing in Italian. Il Divo Geriatrico.

I’m supporting Sweden with their jolly effort “The Worrying Kind” by The Ark. The lead singer thinks he is Marc Boland’s little brother who happens to look like Mark Gatiss in a wig. Nice.

Obviously this number, “Trafalgar” by Neil Hannon would win if he’d entered. We heart you, Neil.

One essay down and one to go next week and I have finished all my work for the academic year, I should by rights be feeling chipper. Not so.

Two weeks ago a family of foxes moved into the block communal gardens behind our flat or rather I should say under our flat, due to a dirty great ruddy hole so kindly put there by the incompetence of our freeholder Southwark Council.

Nightly, we have screams, fights and digging (with such gusto that it would put the tunnellers in ‘The Great Escape’ to shame) under our bedroom, lounge and kitchen windows. Noisy fucking shitty little blighters. I think you can sense I am a wee bit put out here. As a person who is against fox hunting and considers herself an animal lover it is doubly peeving.

The fox problem neatly coincided with a letter from the freeholder containing the much awaited engineers report about why the foundation work could not be undertaken from outside our flat and why we have to move out from our home this coming Autumn. Reading on with growing alarm at such phrases as ‘floor collapse’ and ‘not supportable in court should the worse happen’ I came across this gem… just to make me feel worse (the gits) “… the void below the slab is like to be infested with foxes, rats and other vermin.”

Dear sweet fucking Jesus, can anything else go wrong or be wrong with our first home?

So we have researched. As foxes are not counted as pests (oh yes they bloody well should be) there is little to be done apparently by the council. Websites say one should cherish our little urban fox friends and learn to live with them. To that I say have you tried not fucking sleeping for two weeks? We have diligently plugged holes in the lawn as they have appeared with stones, poured yet further stones (futilely) into the large hole in the tarmac in our carpark (located under our kitchen window), tried to throw off their sent / marking by pouring water with disinfectant down the holes and around the property and made sure our bins are secure. We’ve even gone out to shoo them at 3am when they have been screeching without end under our bedroom window. But to no avail… we are now looking at sonic fox deterrents, anything really to get an unbroken nights sleep.

The council have referred our case to something called ‘The Fox Project’. No doubt some treehuggers will turn up shortly and attempt to commune with them on the astral fucking plane with the spirit of Herne the Hunter, or something.

Your grumpily,

Bobble

Writing essays this week and next so I won’t be around anywhere much.

Hugs to the sweet peas.

He was 90 years old and had outlived his wife by 20 odd years. A good innings one might say. He died peacefully in his sleep with his family round him. Just thinking about this incredibly long span of life, latterly without the woman he loved, kind of puts things in perspective. It makes you think about things that are really important.

The troubles we’re experiencing with the house and the struggle of earning money to pay my college fees recede and the important stuff comes into focus: having a loving partner, having a home, being healthy… being alive.

It’s all good.

Essays, learning lighting, stripping wallpaper, Christmas baking, the need to nest… that sort of thing.

I’m meant to be doing an essay today on how we are the new Victorians, but the lure of teh intarwebzs was too great.

Happy 2007 everyone.