March catch-up

I'm not feeling particularly inspired this evening - tired, more than anything - but I thought it was time for a quick catch-up for those of you who are wondering how it is going with the new flat! Well, we have successfully exchanged contracts, and have set a completion date of 25 March; we've booked the packers and will be moving on 26 March! Exciting!!

We had hoped to be in a week earlier, since that would have given us a little bit more time to get settled and sorted before the busy time at the turn of April, when I have to do a book launch and a quick work trip to Amsterdam before we head for Central Asia and Iran for the rest of that month...! But never mind - the settling in and unpacking is likely to be a slow, organic process, which means we'll properly have the feel of the place when we do it - but I also hope it is not too drawn out, as the prospect of not being able to find anything for months is a little boring...

So the weekends have been completely given over to sorting and chucking. An enormous load went to the charity shop - our next-door neighbour Sue gave K a lift, since it was an entire car-load of stuff. The poor staff in Barnardo's looked totally fazed as it just kept on coming... Since then we've created another few piles. Last weekend we went through the study and took about a forest worth of paper down to the recycling. Slightly weird sensations induced by sorting through a decade of paperwork, mainly relating to the transition from graduate study to adult working lives - you sort of re-live your life as the papers pass before your eyes, not all of it pleasant or happy to remember...

There's still more to go - we have got to the stage where it's not easy to decide what stays and what goes. Plus I'm running out of steam. It doesn't help that during the week we're incredibly busy as well - we seem to be doing something every evening. Last week I was giving a lecture, to the London Society for Medieval Studies. After spending the whole of Saturday sorting out my desk and files, on Sunday morning I turned my thoughts to writing the lecture and found that by mid-afternoon my head felt like it was going to explode. We went out for a very muddy walk in Brockwell Park - it reminded me of when I was writing up my PhD thesis and would hardly ever set foot outside, unless K took me out for walks around Magdalen Deer Park... We wandered up to the little café in Brockwell House and thought about how nice it will be to be that much closer to the park when we're in the new flat.

We're feeling jolly satisfied with ourselves for eating our way through the cupboards, fridge and freezer. We made an inventory of all the accumulated tins and dry goods and frozen leftovers and ends of veg, and came up with some imaginative ways to concoct it all into meals. We had a nice venison pie last weekend (frozen diced venison from the East Molesey butchers + leftover shortcrust pastry), accompanied by red cabbage and green beans which had been languishing in the crisper for a while! It's amazing how much cheaper the weekly shop is if you plan the meals around the ingredients you already have!