I’m tired out. But damn it’s been good just to have a little bit of work in this wasteland of a January. That’s it for now with the business of jumping around with different heads on. It’s been fun.
After work I rushed over to Hampstead. I haven’t been since it was warm, but I still have the keys to my friend’s flat. And she is still in New Zealand. She’s been paying rent for a year now to keep the flat through Covid, even though she’s stuck on the other side of the world. Terms of the lease disallow subletting, so if I’m not there it sits empty. Her landlady keeps coming in unannounced and moving stuff around though, and she told me she was just about to start some building works a few months ago, which is why I haven’t been. She hasn’t started the works. Shame really, as all the walls are leaking, the taps are dripping and the carpets stink. The bedroom is still good and it wants to be lived in to prevent the damp. But after a day of Joybomb I wasn’t going to sleep there, I just wanted to check that the heating was working as I’d had loads of anxious messages from the landlady. It was all completely fine, the pipes weren’t frozen, I took a load of photographs of the carnage wrought in my absence without any actual positive change.
That achieved I got an uber back home to my flat which is also part home and part building site. Now I’m done JoyBombing I have to overcome my bizarre pathology of enjoying the process more than the result. I have to get this flat good enough to rent when the world switches on again. There is still much to do. I can’t stand still for a long time to come. I can enjoy the process of making decisions, but I’ve got to keep stoking the fire. First thing: sort out all of the damn pictures. Then beds, carpets, walls, showers, water pressure, cracks, surfaces, etc etc
For this evening though I’m just winding down in front of a film. Now I’ve cleared space in my living room I’m enjoying the humongous telly in here for the first time in months. I’m stuck into Howl’s Moving Castle at the moment on Netflix, but I’ve paused it in order to write this before my brain dissolves entirely into this unusual, ambiguous and hypnotically soporific animated schmaltz fairy tale thing. The week starts tomorrow, if that means anything anymore. Hopefully I’ll start with it in some way. It’s time to see what ’21 has to start cooking.
AlBarclay 