I’m in Sturry. Even the name is suspicious. I booked the cheapest room on booking.com local to the storage units as it has become time to work out what the fuck is in my storage unit.
There’s a bloodstain on my single duvet cover. I’ve loaded up the cats with food and water in my absence. I’m here.
Today was looking at the big stuff, and there’s some awkward things to move on. There’s also some good things, it’s not all bollocks. But there’s a guy who has been slowly creaming off the good stuff for years whilst charging storage. I don’t like him for it. But this stuff has provided money for many of my friends in the shifting. The only person I haven’t paid is myself. And this is what I’m trying to do now, with the time I’ve got. Time to pay myself if there’s any value left after what Andy has cherrypicked.
For tonight though, this horrible tiny cheap room. The landlady was wandering around in the street when I arrived, looking a bit confused. I’m in now, and I’m in a single bed, and the internet is good now I’ve taken it off the router. I’m pretty chill about the fact it isn’t nice because the mattress is fine and there’s internet. The blood on the duvet has been washed a few times. And it looks like it was from an ingrown toenail. They’ve been thoughtful by putting it on top rather than hiding it, perhaps. It’s above my left toe on the outside, so I reckon it was from a right toe on the inside. And I write this as a man who had horrific toes as a teenager so I know that blood well. I ended up having an operation after teen Al said in earshot of matron: “you know when you step on the floor in the morning and pus flies out of your toe so far it hits the door and you have to clear it up? That’s why I was late.”
I was lucky. It was extremely painful but I just believed it was destined to get better, that it was “growing pains”. My mate Tim was at posh boarding school too where parents don’t give a fuck. He did the same, left it longer, didn’t have Claire Braine-Nicholls as a matron and ended up with one foot and half a leg amputated from gangrene. I reckon they just got it in time with me. When I think back on the level of heat and pain in that injury it gives me perspective on when antibiotics are actually needed.
I’m not gonna bleed on my duvet anymore. My toes still ingrow but I know how to manage myself much better. Eventually. It took me a long time.
Lots of work to do tomorrow but I’m up for it. Bedtime now. It’s fun, in a weird way, making sense of all this stuff. Today and tomorrow are about cataloguing. Thereafter is dealing with it all.
AlBarclay 