We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries

We got to move these refrigerators
We got to move these colour TVs

Say one trip across the Meadows is an Ikea bag's worth of stuff. About thirty to forty kilos and about a mile. With someone else assisting (massive thanks to scotm), we could manage three loads on a single trip: one each carried on the shoulders, and another slung between us.

I'd done four or five the previous day. Then, with some help, we did fifteen loads on Sunday. Then five more on Monday, and paid the removal men to shift the really heavy stuff: nine boxes of books, three computers, two desks, amplifier and speakers.

This is after a really vicious cull of books, CDs, audio cassettes (I still have some of those), magazines, and recipes. Paper is heavy. I have thrown so much shit away. I still own a totally ridiculous amount of stuff.

And I carried it all up four flights of stairs at the far end, too.

stormsearch helped me set up my bookcases and arrange my books on them. Now it starts to feel like home.

Yesterday, a run to Ikea for another chest of drawers. Because the flat is full of weird angles and also because we both own so much stuff, the only one that will fit anywhere comes from the kids' section. Since we're getting a taxi back from Ikea anyway, and there's a massive Sainsburys just across the car park, BOOZE RUN! Vodka, whisky, and a case of assorted Wychwood ales. Now it feels like home.

Two more Ikea-bag loads today. Food, tins, storage jars, the rug, the poster I'm keeping, the missing pestle for the mortar, the leftover shot glass so I have a pair, that sort of thing. The empty shell of my former flat looks weird.

$AGENCY are already trying to re-let it. It's not been decorated in ten years and they've not yet engaged a painter. (After the last month of NOW NOW GET OUT NOW WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE GO NOW GO GO GO, they've decided actually, can you wait a week?) The shower is a minimum of fifteen years old. Also we're still moving out, there's dust everywhere and boxes stacked up, and the place looks derelict. They brought somebody round today to view the property. It took thirty seconds before she'd seen enough.

I've had a look online. For this ruined husk of a potentially lovely dwelling, they've raised the rent to 160% of what I was paying. No wonder they wanted us out so fast. Photos to be taken soon it says on $AGENCY's website. Odd, that. I've watched them take photos twice.

This is mostly Someone Else's Problem, now. I am in my new flat with penelope and the Speakers of DOOM set up, and I am playing Dire Straits, because I can. scattergather would never let me play Dire Straits, or Meatloaf, in the old place.

Looking out of my window, there's a half-Moon poking through suitably atmospheric clouds just above the Crown Spire of St Giles' High Kirk, and Capella is shining brightly over the Union Flag, still flyin', atop the Castle. Feels like home. This'll do.

Anybody want a Sun Sparc Ultra 1? Cost $27,000 dollars new, and I don't want to carry it up four flights of stairs.