I've been strict with myself.
In order to only take what clothes and papers I really need to my new place and my new life, any clothes I haven't worn in the last 6 months have gone. This has, sadly included most of my university t-shirts (apart from a couple I really couldn't part with and defend my right to use them to sleep in, even if they are crap). I threw away two fit-to-burst bin bags as a result of today's efforts, full of t-shirts, old letters and correspondence, and a load of other crap that I'm not going to miss.

I feel strangely liberated from it all.

A new toy I discovered on the net today - as I write this blog I am listening to live whale 'song' (mostly grunts, moans and whistles) being broadcast over the net from a floating platform in the Pacific near Maui Island, Hawaii.

So; live from a moaning whale several thousand miles away, picked up by a platform bobbing around on the waves, broadcast on FM near Maui Island, squeezed into pipes, (oh my god one sounds like it's about to eat the platform and there is a lot of choral moaning in the background as if a load of whale-zombies are closing in...now bizarre farting sounds, as if one whale is trying to impersonate a farmer walking across a cow-pat encrusted farmyard), hurled around the world at a respectable fraction of the speed of light and then spouted out in my study here on the Isle of Wight.

Technology.

You've got to laugh.

I woke up with Allie at 7am. She busied herself getting ready to go to work for the next hour, during which time I stayed in bed, feeling progressively more and more lazy as time went by.
This normally has the effect of making me feel like I've had an eighteen-hour sleep marathon by 8am, resulting in me getting up and starting the day in sheer shame, a veritably unheard-of occurence. Today I managed to conquer the guilt-laziness tie-in and fell asleep five minutes after the front door slammed, waking up at the more shockingly slobbish time of 10:45.

At this point I had some toast, and as the war coverage appeared to have vanished, I channel-hopped between Cliff Richard's 'Summer Holiday' and a Laurel and Hardy film on BBC2, where Stan and Olly were in the French Foreign Legion, imprisoned, and due to be executed at dawn for some reason. Stan helpfully pointed out that the gaoler had left his keys in the cell lock. Olly growled and took off his hat in frustration.

Getting dressed, I left the house and wandered down to Cutty Sark Docklands Light Railway Station, and took the train to Bank, from where I wandered up to the Royal Bank Of Scotland Offices in Liverpool Street. After sitting in a luxurious white leather sofa in the foyer, reading my book and fending off the receptionists' regular offers of hot drinks, Alice came down and we went and had lunch in a place called The Grape Shot. I had a Chicken and Chesnut Pie, or rather Chicken and Chesnut stew with a massive, six-inch-thick wafer of puff pastry resting pathetically off centre on the top in an attempt to impersonate a pie.
PAH!
Allie had a Cumberland Sausage Baguette. And some cheesy chips. I'm telling you, this was a classy joint.

After lunch I caught the tube to The National Gallery, and charged into the exhibition, determined with one thing only - to get the name of a painting I saw about four months ago in there. I wrote it down in a handy tiny notebook, which I then lost. I rushed in, and the bloody painting had gone. However, the nice lady at the information desk instantly knew which painting I was talking about, showed it to me in a huge tome of a book she had behind the counter, and told me where it was now (Hamburg). I was understandably a little deflated at this news, as I was planning on trying to squeeze in the Natural History Museum that afternoon as well, and Hamburg wasn't really on the agenda.
Then she produced a print of it and told me they had them on sale in the gift shop.
Hurrah. A genuine copy postcard for my wall.

The Natural History Museum was so good I couldn't take it for very long, so I went to the Science Museum as well, and was kind of impressed by it all. The best bit of the two museums for me was the free 'Earth From The Sky' photography exhibition outside the Natural History Museum - the photos are enormous, beautiful and stunning, of all sorts of land and sea and city-scapes...I was there longer than in either of the museums...which might account for 'Culture Overdose' setting in by the end of the tour.

I am now sitting in an internet café near Leicester Square, and I'm off to my first 'Second Thursday' a regular monthly convivial meeting of people I know from university, mostly through RaW, the student radio station at Warwick. Seeing as I'm a tiny bit more local, I might be making more of these things now. I'm off to On Anon where drinking will definitely be indulged in.

More soon.

I have now sorted out a house in Hatfield.

From 'hitting the ground running' just before half past one, to about ten minutes ago when I arranged to meet my soon-to-be Landlord to sign the contract, it has taken me just that time to sort myself out. I didn't even need the extremely helpful people at the letting agency I contacted via the internet.

I just looked in the window of the first newsagent I saw after getting off the train.

The room I'm getting is the lounge of an end-of-terraced house, light, two radiators, central heating, huge wardrobe, two sofas, large pine table, big frame bookcase, and the landlord said that he'd buy me a double bed if I wanted one, seeing as I was potentially the first person to have the room after it's being converted into a bedroom. Oh, and there's a big garden with a pond and a patio. And all bills/council tax included in the rent, which is very, very reasonable.

I'm meeting him in an hour to sign the contract and sort out the picking-up-of the keys to move in in a week or so, so I guess there's little left to do except to sit back and watch the hate mail roll in...

I am a jammy bastard. I know.

Woo!

Right.
After all that, I now have a job with the lovely people at Moooochel, and I will (hopefully) be starting on the 21st of April.

This puts an end to all the hoo-hah about me maybe doing one of those exciting PhDs at Manchester or Sheffield, (and believe me, they were exciting - The South Pole or the Caribbean to choose from...) and means that I am joining the serried ranks of the employed, a pillar of the community, one who pays tax....

Right.

The job is good, the prospects are good, the money is good and I'm excited. I already know I have a desk and computer waiting for me.
I don't know why, but after eight or nine months of monging around the house watching bargainhunt in one of my many dressing-gowns, that is really exciting for me.
Strange.

I'm in an internet cafe in Greenwich, and I'm off to Hatfield to househunt today.

More soon.

P.S: I might treat myself to a PS2...you know. For being such a good boy.