I had a thought today.  It was, “Quick!  Post something!!”  So today’s post is just a quick sketch of thoughts on my impending move to London.

Heading to London later this week to look at flats.  I’m excited and nervous to be moving.  Exeter’s been my home for the past four years, for the best part of which I was very happy, and for at least some of which I was convinced I’d never want to leave.  But now I’m getting impatient to go and start a new chapter, and very nervous that I won’t find a place to live during the five days I’m up there (I don’t have to move immediately, so if I don’t manage to work something out there’s still time to look, but I’d be a lot happier if I did manage to get it sorted in that time.)

Moving always involves finding vast quantities of stuff you’d forgotten about.  I move so often that luckily these things aren’t able to build up in any great quantity, but I still found myself huffing under the load of two bags of clothes and books on my way to Oxfam recently.  I hate giving away books.  It’s like giving away old friends.  But I don’t have any rare books (apart from the academic ones, and even those aren’t truly rare) so most of the things I consider essential to my collection can be found cheaply wherever I go.

Plus there are always those things which you neither want nor can be given away to charity: several dozen CD labels from an open packet, none of which I now need; 48 out of a packet of 50 CD sleeves; half a packet of red tissue paper; about eight inches of ribbon; a two-hole punch that works perfectly fine except that the paper guide is missing so there’s no way of lining it up…  If I had an attic, I would fill it with things like this.  Alas, an attic is something in the murkiest distant future for me at this point.  Also, it’s just occurred to me, I’ll no longer be able to watch the little firemans go about their firemans-y business on the training tower, alack.  I am cheered, however, by the thought that soon I’ll be settling into new surroundings in London.  Which will probably flood.  (If only I could somehow control these watery powers…)

I managed to get what I’m thinking will be my last sunburn of the summer today.  It’s been extremely autumnal the past week, so today’s unexpected sunshine was most welcome.  I spent part of the day reading in a sun lounger and didn’t notice my collarbone turning pink until I came inside.  The novelty of having achieved a sunburn on a bank holiday Monday, when by longstanding custom and practice it has been sure to rain and howl with wind, is certainly worth a look of mildly surprised interest.  Hopefully it won’t be too off-putting to the people whose flats I’m going to look at later in the week…

Originally published on Skirt.com