I didn't want to move initially but let me tell you, now that I have, I am so glad I did! I moved last weekend. I think it's safe to say that every part of the move was an upgrade in my life. I moved from North London to (and I really am telling the truth right now) Kensington. For those of you who don't know where Kensington is, let me explain it to you...
Imagine London and all its bustling goodness, now imagine central London where you have Big Ben and the Thames and the West End and culture and the London Eye, move a little bit away from that, just a small bus journey, slightly further west and you reach the place where famous people and royalty reside... There. Right in that place. That is where I am living right now.
No, I'm not famous, nor am I royal, nor do I have anything close to the money that famous and royal people have. Compared to them, I am poop on their shoes. However, I work in Kensington now and I thought, as I had to move anyway, I'd try my luck and see if there was any way at all that I might be able to find a place nearby to live in. For a long while, the answer was 'no.' Actually, a more accurate answer would be: "Are you mad? You want to live in one of the poshest areas of London on your budget? The only way that that will happen is if you find a cardboard box and a porch somewhere. Downside to that is it's not entirely waterproof, upside is that it's completely rent free!"
There was one opportunity that came up for a place nearby whereby someone was trying to rent out a flat for the cheapest amount you would ever believe. However, once it got to the point that they were asking for deposits before seeing the place as the owner was 'out of town' and 'needed reassurance that I was serious enough' I began to suspect that something was a little fishy in this area... guys, just a little tip, if you are looking for a place to rent and someone asks for a deposit before signing a contract, say no. They are scam artists and it just isn't worth it, you will lose money and then cry for a long time on account of said lost money. It's not pretty.
So, with that flat as a definite no no and plenty of other places that were either miles away or had a 'student halls' kind of feel about it, I was beginning to despair... okay, I was downright stressing. I had got to a point where I had a week and a half to find a place and any time I found somewhere I did like, there were so many people who also wanted it, I was usually bumped out of the race early on... I've never been that great at selling myself, as previously discussed. I was looking for a houseshare, so when I visited a potential house and spoke to the current housemates and they asked me what it was about me that made me fabulous to live with, I would usually panic and start saying that really I was the wrong person to ask this question to, and that they should be asking others who know me, which led to me taking out my phone, scrolling through my contacts and then panicking because I didn't know for certain that my friends wouldn't mention my tendency for thinking the world was going to end every day or how I enjoy to eat a person now and then; which in context, I think we can all agree, is perfectly understandable and a wonderful personality trait to have, but to be thrown into first time conversation might lead a person to get the wrong idea...
So I was sucking really hard and the whole 'You want to live with me because I'm awesome' sell. In fact, I had had a good response at one place to the fact that I write books, so I figured I would just use that in every correspondence I had with people. This was fine at first, and people were genuinely interested, but when they asked me what kind of TV I liked and I panicked and just said "I write books" again, people began to look tired with the conversation and I began to worry that I had slightly overdone the one interesting thing I could think of about me in that 'on the spot' situation... which is ridiculous because if there is one question I could talk about for hours on, it's the question 'what do you like on TV?' freaking hell, I'm an expert on the subject!
Yeeeaaah, so there was some disappointment, and there was some serious overdoing of my CBT training just to keep me going, but eventually, after seeing one of the most drabbiest looking places but trying to convince myself of the fact that I could live there because, although the small flat was lived in by 9 people and the bed is on a makeshift shelf above the desk, there was a particularly good looking ginger man also living there who would be nice to look at on a daily basis, I went to look at an ad which hadn't uploaded any pictures (usually a big no no for me) but was just round the corner to my work... in Kensington... the posh place... how bad could this flat be?
The answer to that question is not bad, not even slightly bad, but actually amazing and awesome and affordable and leaving me at a loss as to how it can be all of those things. What made things even better was that I walked in, met one of my new housemates and we just clicked. We talked for ages, we laughed, we cried, we fought then made up again, and so much more... okay, so maybe we just talked and laughed, but still... we could have done the other things as well, if we had wanted to. In short, it was perfect. None of the other places, even the ones that I had really wanted prior to this one, came anywhere close to how perfect it was. When I say round the corner to my work, I mean a 10 minute walk. 10 minutes. It's clean, it's got a brand new kitchen, the rooms are huge, and both flatmates are lovely.
The day after seeing the place, I went back and was told I have it. I danced, I cried, I laughed, I put on a dramatic improvisation based on my feelings, and then I fluttered away to pack all my belongings and move once again... this time, I was convinced it would be the last time I moved in a while. I'm still convinced of this. Guys, I ain't going nowhere. The place is too much of a good thing to give up.
The packing and moving experience was also an emotional rollercoaster as I decided that I was going to cleanse myself of pretty much everything I owned... seriously, I threw away about 80% of my belongings. I took with me 10% of my clothes, a handful of books, and all my DVDs, and that was it. Everything else was recycled, thrown away or given to charity. This meant that I managed to unpack everything I owned in the space of one day. One single day. And this even included alphabetising 600+ DVDs because, well, how else am I going to find the one I want to watch?
The actual move took longer to do. Older-Brother-Glyn and Sister-In-Law-Amy helped massively in this whole ordeal. I have no car nor a license to drive one (who needs one in London?) and I had to get from one side of the city to the other with a large amount of stuff, whilst also getting to a skip with an even larger amount. What I had hoped would only take one day, ended up taking two, and both beautiful members of my family were amazing in helping me get it done. They even took me back to their house in Essex on Saturday night which meant that I could watch Doctor Who (don't get me started, I'll talk about that another day (I will say that I am very happy with how it's all going at the mo, as I'm sure all Whovians are)).
So now I'm in... I have a beautiful little room, smaller than the one I had before but I kinda like that it is. I don't really need any more space than what I have. For the past two days, I have been getting up at 8am, leaving the house at 8:45am and arriving at work at 8:55am. I even went home for lunch yesterday, because I could. The flat is beautifully decorated by one of my lovely housemates, we are all getting on wonderfully so far, and everything is awesome... By the way, I'm pretty certain this is all just a dream and I'm going to wake up any moment back in North London, realising that none of it happened, but until then, I'm going with it.
Never before have I felt so much like my life has been given a new start. I squandered away most of my 20s due to illness, and the good things that came out of that time (of which there are a fair few) I now have with me and am taking forward into my next chapter. Everything else, all that clutter I had, all the baggage I'd kept, I threw it all away on Sunday afternoon August 31st 2014... well, actually Older-Brother-Glyn threw it away, I was cleaning the house, but still... the imagery is still there. Here's a couple of pictures of the stuff I actually kept, see if you can spot the fandom...:
I feel like I'm on a completely clean slate. I don't know where I'm going in the future. I don't know if my dream career as an author of books, films, TV shows and a double episode of Doctor Who will ever happen, or whether my writing will only ever be at the level it is now (which is still awesome, by the way) and I end up doing something else. I don't know if I'll ever find the energy to do the dating thing and get married, or how I'm going to bring children into this world, but I know that I'm on the right track to see good things happen and I'm excited about it. Life is good at the mo, peeps. In fact, life is better than I had thought it would be, and I can't wait to see what it has in store for me next...
Peace out my lovelies.
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