Tuesday, August 24
The Sparseness I Find Myself In
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. They say a lot of things, most useless tosh, but this one is worth taking account of.It is relevant here because I want to describe the sheer lack of, well, stuff in my room at the moment. The simplest solution would be to take a photo, but although my camera is still with me, the cable to connect it to my computer has been packed away and is no longer in my house. I should have planned this a bit better, methinks.
Come to think of it, I should have planned full stop (period, for you Yanks). I've known for a good long time that the vast majority of things that I own would need to be collected by my parents before I went to Germany, with the intention of the necessary items being sent to me once I had a definite address for them to be sent to.
I've also known for a fair amount of time that the date for the collection of said items would be a good ten days or more before I actually went to Germany, since my parents are going on holiday a few days before I leave the country. Basically, I should have been on top of things by the time they came to collect everything.
Was I?
Was I fuck.
They were coming on the Tuesday, the one day I had off work that week (double shifts for the rest of the week), and I had also had the entire weekend off work too. I'm not sure how, but that's how things worked out. In theory, I had a completely free 48 hours as well as Tuesday morning to pack everything up.
In theory, that is. In practice, it was altogether a different story.
I didn't start doing any packing until late on Saturday night, and all that that entailed was throwing everything that wasn't clothing and that I
My CDs weren't coming with me (that was how I managed to sell my Dad the idea of an iPod, remember?), and I had spent nearly every waking moment of the previous week ripping them onto my computer. Again, I'd had nearly 2 months to do this, and I left it all until the last moment. I didn't even manage to get it all done, and still have 15 CDs in my room, as well as a small box to post them in back to my parents. At time of writing, I have 8 days until I fly out, so no doubt I will leave them until the last minute once more.
Sunday was also a bit of a washout packing-wise, since I spent the afternoon in the pub, watching football. No beer though, since I am a good boy. Ahem. Once more I started doing some packing late in the evening, ripping CDs all the while. I took apart my shelving unit (surprising easy, since I'd taken the remarkably intelligent, and somewhat out of character, step of not throwing out the construction instructions 12 months ago. All I had to do was go back from step 5 to step 1...), packed all of my various crap into as many boxes as I could find, and made it to bed sometime around 5am.
Not a good idea when you have a double shift at work that day. I was knackered by the time I got back home sometime around 12.30am, but I knew that still more packing awaited me. I think I got to bed around 5 that night, only to be rudely awoken by a tremendous racket elsewhere in the house at 8.30.
We had builders in, you see? My landlord had arranged for our entire house to be fitted with double glazing, conveniently less than a month before we moved out of it. Yeah, cheers for that. As if my day was not going to be sufficiently chaotic already, I now had 5 or more builders coming in and out of the house all day long.
I still had all of my clothes to pack (I'm only allowed one suitcase on my flight. Stupid Ryanair), and less than 2 hours to do it all in. Oh, and I was still frantically ripping CDs as fast as MusicMatch would let me. My room looked like an entire Squadron of bombers had practised on it for months before unleashing one almighty blast, and I was hopping over boxes as I attempted to sort out the unwanted clothes from those I needed.
My parents turned up, and I was still not ready. I really do leave things until beyond the last minute... My striking memory for the day was me standing by my cupboard, throwing clothes at my Dad with barked instructions as to whether they were to be posted or not. I had a seperate box for each, being the anally organised, if not exceptionally prompt, person that I am.
We were in a rush against the time left on the car's meter, so it was a fair old panic to get everything sorted. But get everything sorted we did, somehow.
There's a couple of things left in my room that I probably won't be able to fit in my suitcase, and will thus have to be discarded, but so be it. So long as I don't throw away anything valuable or of sentimental value, I'll feel as if I've succeeded.
Which brings me to the current state of my room. Empty is the one word that springs to mind every time I open the door, the cupboard or one of the draws. Ahh, I need some sellotape, I think, only to find the draw absolutely barren when I pull it open. That would have gone in a box then...
I'm even having to sleep with an unzipped, old and decrepit sleeping bag on top of me rather than a quilt. Oh yes, I'm living the high life right now. It's one of those occasions that I'm almost glad that I never (get the opportunity to) ask girls home on a night out. Oh yes, I can offer you a share of my sheetless bed, with only a twenty-year-old sleeping bag to cover you. Oh, and there's a delightful view of the carpet in every direction, if only because there is nothing in my room to go on it...
Glorious it is, I tell you. I'm actually quite happy to be out at work for the majority of the time, so that I don't go mad staring at the (bare) walls.
So think of me as you enjoy the various luxuries that you have in your rooms: your stereos; your TVs; your window-blinds; your shelving units; your well-stocked cupboards; your beds;
Actually, don't think of me as you enjoy your bed. That'd just be wrong.
And possibly quite disturbing for yourselves.
*shudder*
3 Comments:
Do you realize someone, a GIRL, had copied your bio and passed it off as hers? Go to www.tequilamockingbird.blogspot.com for more info. And file a complaint w/ Blogger. Its sad that it is so much fun when someone is found plagarizing. The internet world will most likely crucify her.
Funny that this entry was about words. I bet your next one will be also!
By 
mish, at 10:32 PM
Hmmmm, it seems that the girl at Inflatable Emu has indeed ripped a large chunk from my own bio to use as her own. It would have been nice to get at least a heads-up or a thankyou, but no such luck.
Let's see if she responds to the email I have sent her...
By Rob, at 3:06 PM
Honestly, I've been blogging since May '04 and I have to say that you have the coolest looking site that I've seen yet. I really like the layout with the papers and stuff. Nice work!
By Drunken Proletariat, at 3:35 PM
