a moment to reminisce

after much panic and flat-pack furniture, we are currently 65% moved. Now for the annoying little things like cutlery and toiletries. I don't think I mentioned that we are moving about fifteen minutes walk down the road - but that is also how we are moving! That is to say that we don't have a car and couldn't bring ourselves to fork out for a moving van when we own so little. Still a gap-year-in-europe-sized backpack full of books is a HEAVY thing to carry - even fifteen minutes down the road.

Another thing I didn't mention, is that we have moved to the area of Edinburgh affectionately named "the pubic triangle" - after all the strip clubs. To be fair, we're not in the pubic triangle as much as adjacent to it (and our flat is great) but my mom cant see the difference :) and, no, I want be persuing a new career there ;p

One sad thing about the place is that it doesn't have a phone line, and to reinstall one costs around 140 pounds and takes weeks, and since we're only there for just shy of 4 months, this is another thing we've decided to be thrifty about and not do - so bye bye broadband my old friend. Jono glumly informed me that it would be worth getting used to before we return to SA, but I'm still dreaming of a cheap connection revolution in SA before I get back. [Come on SA!]

With all the stress and organising this has taken, I haven't really had a moment to feel sad, or anything really, about the place that we're leaving, but last night it struck me that this was "our first flat". Maybe it's just my folks, but growing up I was always told "our first flat" stories by my folks, who apparently lived in a shoe box in jo'burg in the 16th century.

Moreover, most of the time spent living here was spent complaining. Its a tiny little flat with 100 years worth of dirt that Jono and I scrubbed out of it over the last year, and it overlooks the Grassmarket - where all the tourists come to get drunk, so we haven't slept very well in the last twelve months. It's miles from any stores, except the overpriced milk-eggs-and-bread shop that caters to above-mentioned tourists. Also the glazing is shot, so its pretty chilly here in winter.

But now I'm all misty-eyed about the glorious view over the ancient cobbled streets, and drunk people watching in the evenings, and huddling under blankets and wearing my boyfriends jerseys all winter. Nothing like the prospect of leaving to romanticise the place!

Anyway, I've got to head back to the new place to sit in the dark (it's a basement flat) for fecking hours as the Scottish Power folks are coming to reconnect us and couldn't possibly give more accurate timing that "sometime between 11 and 5" - and this is six weeks after they were told about the problem [see, this is a 1st world issue too?!]