Sixteen Days

Things move fast sometimes, maybe too fast. There is always the opportunity for life to get just a little more mangled than it already is and my trusty life managed to find a couple of curve balls to add to the mix in the past 48 hours. As a consequence I'm now on the countdown to leaving my flat and heading off and up to North London in sixteen days. I'm off to sign on today and now also have an appointment for my 13 week interview with the Jobcentre people which will be right in the middle of moving house.

As I'm a single 45 year-old man with no children, an ex-wife demanding money for their upkeep, disabled, or ill or infirm in any other way, the chances of the council actually providing any decent help is next to nothing. I think I pay my council tax (when I actually pay it) to have my rubbish taken away. Yet I actually create so little of this I usually throw out a bag of rubbish every fortnight. Somehow I think the knowledge of this would probably make them view me as something approaching a model citizen. That said, I don't expect there is anything really they will do to help me as I've only been in the Borough for 6 months - if that. So thankfully I have friends who can at least help me out with somewhere to live for a while at least.



I'm off to check out some storage options tomorrow so I should have quite a bit of the ground work done by the end of the day. It will then be down to finding someone to move my stuff to the place and arrange what day that will be. After that, I just have to get the little stuff I'm taking with me up to my new abode and hope to goodness that I find some form of employment reasonably quickly so that I can begin the process of finding a new permanant home. Somewhere where I can at least have most of my stuff with me. That said I think the TV may be making its way to my sister for a while to come. I don't expect I'll be living on my own so it would be a waste just to have it gathering dust.

My mood is very changable. I felt like I was turning the corner and this has certainly knocked me back. I woke up at 5.17am this morning very stressed and couldn't sleep again because of the worry I was experiencing. All the doctor stuff and the moving forwards in that department will simply have to wait until I've sorted all of this stuff out. That said I may go up and register myself in the area next week as feel this is going to one of those occasions where there will be a burst of activity before I actually run out of things to do and turn back in on myself for a couple of days. People are being brilliant and very supportive still and I really don't know what would be happening if that wasn't the case. My one friend is still silent, and I'm quietly coming to terms with this.

I've got one little goal to complete before I head out of this place, and that is to watch the final series of The West Wing. I'm shamelessly addicted to this since I got the box set about a year and a half ago. I've been really good and only watched about two episodes a week up until season five. Since then I've been binging on the thing like there is no tomorrow. I've got through two seasons in a matter of weeks and now have 16 days for the last one. I have to say it is one of the few things in this house which absolutely animates me. Throughout the programme the performances and the characters have been strong, the earlier seasons have slightly sharper dialogue but the later ones have driving plot which makes them almost more addictive for some reason. There is more plot and less nuance but it still makes for compulsive viewing. Yes, I do know some of the key developments in the last series but I'm sure it will not spoil the pleasures of watching it. At the very least there are about 20 hours of the next couple of weeks I can look forward to.