Pete Cooper

I had a night out in Oxford over the weekend, and it was likely the last time I’ll be there. I don’t have any love for the place, despite it being a tourist and educational centre. It’s not for me. All power to those people who love it; I’m a square peg in a round, traditional, staid, expensive, showy hole.

I’ve mentally checked out of here, now, and I just want moving day to come along and I can re-root myself near the sea. The house here is nearly ready for sale, and then it’ll be put on the market at an attractive price for a relatively quick transaction. Both Emma and I have things we want and need to do, and a pile of cashola would be useful.

There are myriad little things that I’m putting off until I’ve moved – I used to be of the opinion that my brain could handle anything I threw at it, and that was largely true, but I’m now more in control of my noggin, and this new-found awareness has made me work more efficiently. The chaotic ADD-ness of my life is dissipating fast, and I’m far stronger than I’ve been in recent years, both mentally and physically, and that’s only going to get better in the coming year or two.

Cheerio, Oxford. I won’t miss you, either.

Update: there’s some deep irony in a business cheque arriving in the mail about 30 minutes after I posted this. In order to pay it into my Co-op account I need to go to – yes, you guessed it – Oxford. Sigh.

I’m still living in Abingdon, at least for a short while. I’m surrounded by boxes and the smell of last night’s emergency Domino’s pizza is hanging in the air like a cat fart (though tuna as a pizza topping was inspired, I have to say). I’m low on packing tape, low on time, low on energy reserves, I ache all over, I’m about to pay about £1500 to a removal company to schlep my boxes halfway across the country to my new home on moving day, and the only thing keeping me stable and vaguely alert is loud music and a wandering mind.

And yet, I’m grinning like a loon.

The office will be packed up soon and then everything I have will be at the mercy of the removal dudes. In a bizarre way, if it was all to blow up in a horrible motorway crash and I lost everything, it’s just stuff and I’m already essentially starting over and rebuilding, so it’d be just one more thing I need to fix (plus the insurance payout would mean I could really go to town), and I’d be fine with that. No deaths, though, I don’t want my pile of cash tainted by human deadness.

I do appear to be organised and on top of things. BT are being useless, but then nothing changes, especially when grotesquely large telcos are involved. On the one hand, I want this to be over with and moving day to arrive already, but there’s still a bucketload of things to get done around here – and there will be numerous trips back here after I’ve relocated – so there’s no good reason to burn bridges with the abomination that is Abingdon, OX14.

Abingdon: I won’t miss you.

In my last post, I said:

I’m going to fill you in on the details of what’s what in some forthcoming blog posts this evening (update: and over the next few days).

Well, that didn’t work out so well, did it? I was reminded last night that I’d been tardy on that front, and so again I must apologise for being a less-than-scintillating blogger of late. The ideas that I had for writing just fizzled and croaked it, nothing was forthcoming.

There’s a lot going on. I’m moving house, soon, and I’ve got a bunch of stuff to pack up and relocate. I was going to say “a life to pack up and relocate”, but that would be inaccurate; the life I have here isn’t too shiny and I won’t miss the place. I’ve grown apart from Emma and, while there’s no ill-will on that score, the existence I have in this part of the world is pretty weak. The stuff I’m packing up in removal boxes is just that – stuff. Boxes and boxes of stuff. On a practical level, there’s a need for some of the stuff, and other boxes are stuff are nice to have things, but it’s a distinctly cold and rather clinical process. Necessary, seemingly endless and ultimately perfunctory.

I have a moving date, and I’ve signed my tenancy paperwork. I’ve put a bunch of stuff on hold until after the moving date, so the final stretch of time between now and moving day is all about packing and making arrangements. I’ll be able to talk more about the ins and out of moving myself 4 hours down the road after the fact, suffice to say I do seem to be pretty organised right now, and I’m still expecting something to come up and bite me in the manparts before the process is done.

I’ve spent a lot of the last week or so travelling around the country seeing people I haven’t seen for some time, in some cases for many years. Some people I will miss, some people I won’t. Some people I was able to pick up with and chat with like no time has passed, whereas others were pretty hard work and I had some serious lip-biting/conversation-throttling going on. I saw Doug Stanhope live for the first time, and laughed – like a drain – so hard that I hurt the next morning. The fun is starting to come back into my life after some time away, and there are a small number of people in my life who are helping that along. Some know it, some don’t, but they’re all valuable to me and I hope to be able to return that favour in some fashion before much longer.

And so, to the future. Between now and moving day I’ll likely be quiet around here. You shouldn’t take this as a sign of bad stuff happening, I’m just taking care of myself more these days and I know my limits. Being aware of these limits means I don’t paralyse myself by over-doing it, and the moments I had which I would consider ‘low’, ‘down’ or ‘miserable’ are far fewer and much shorter when they do appear.

Finally, I’m sporting an almost-Amish beard. For now.

The trouble is, when you don’t do something very often, you stop wanting to do it. And then, when you do do it, you don’t do it very well.

Wise words, indeed. Spoken by Chris Howell (also known as Luna-C [plus a bunch of other pseudonyms, too]) on episode 35 of the Kniteforce Revolution podcast, and with the appropriate citation/credit out of the way, on we go.

I have neglected my blog of late. I have neglected my podcasting. I have neglected my photography. I have been a cruddy friend to a number of people. I’m not down in the dumps about this, it’s just a symptom of some substantial life changes going on with me.

I’m going to fill you in on the details of what’s what in some forthcoming blog posts this evening (update: and over the next few days). It’ll be a late night as I’ve been asleep this afternoon – this never ends well for me, so no doubt I’ll be awake until some ungodly hour. That said, I have my best ideas when I’m supposed to be sleeping, so some good will definitely come of today.

It’s rare for me to complain about stuff in public, but I must share this story with you.

About a week ago I opened a tin of one of my favourite foods. I won’t tell you what it was right now, that’s not important. I get through a fair amount of this particular food; it’s low in fat, high in protein, tasty and filling. It was going to be part of a sandwich/baked potato filling and I was cooking a big ol’ spud in the oven with which to liberally apply said filling to, and enjoy for my lunch.

Something wasn’t right. The contents had a funny smell and some discolouration had occurred. No biggie, I just binned it and opened a new can. No great loss. I kept the can for info, along with the odd-looking discoloured parts of food, and sent an email to the company letting them know I’d had this whacky looking thing appear in my tin. No accusatory tone, no nastiness, no demands for compensation, just a ‘look, guys’ email. I heard nothing back. Again, no big deal.

Until just now, that is. About 30 minutes ago I had a very apologetic email from the customer contact team, they opened with an explanation of the delay – which I’d figured was down to Easter and public holidays, the usual thing this time of year.

Apparently, my attached photo of a can lid (with all the date codes, etc) and discoloured food was caught by their email security scanner…and tagged as porn.

Nice.