House (On) Hold
So - quick update. We didn't complete yesterday, but we have some breathing space. While I was on a plane yesterday, The Mrs took charge and sorted it all out. So we're exchanging at the start of next week and completing early the following week. Which will mean we actually become owners while we're away on holiday in Cornwall. Yet another stroke of good timing...
Like A Lamb To The Slaughter
Oldest and dearest friend Simon has taken the plunge and started a blog, and as he's been kind enough to add me to his blogroll (yes, and I still hate that word), I've done likewise. This may be an easier way of keeping track of each other than actually picking up the phone and talking, which I've been manifestly bad at doing of late.
The King Of Dreadful Timing
So I'm in the US this week, dealing with the unfortunate effects of being eight timezones away from home at exactly the same time as all the transactions of the flat sale and house purchase will hopefully be happening. If we don't complete on the flat by Friday then we may well be kissing goodbye to the house because of the deadline the vendor has set, and I can't tell you how gutted we'd be if that happens. If only we'd got to the bottom of things with the evil freeholder even a week or two sooner then we wouldn't be coming up to the wire quite as extremely.
And I'm just not there, so all I can do is fret about everything from a distance and become increasingly certain that we've lost the house. There's not a single thing I can do to make things happen any faster than they are, so all the fretting is inevitably completely futile, but when's that ever been a reason to stop?
End Of An Era
I just left my flat for the last time. Everything is packed and stored that's being packed and stored. Everything is junked that's being junked. The cleaners are going in tomorrow, and with a fair wind the sale should complete by Friday of this week. It had better - if it doesn't we'll probably lose the house.
So I've left the first piece of property I owned (mortgage notwithstanding) and even though I haven't spent much time there for the last two years, I'm feeling pretty sad about it all. There's something a bit dismal about empty property anyway, but back in 2000 that place really meant something to me. My first step on the property ladder, independence, investment, all of those things certainly; but also a sense of comfort and security that went beyond the physical. There's something about being able to close the door to your own place and shut the world out that isn't like doing the same in a place you're renting.
But even with all that I wasn't expecting to be this sad about it.
Time for a new era now.
The Sound Of Drums (Spoilers)
Okay, so the other good intention - to get caught up of Doctor Who series three before writing about the two final episodes - has conspicuously not been achieved. What can I say - it's a busy old time.
But I have to leap right in and talk about The Sound Of Drums, episode 12 of 13.
This is the big one - The Master is back, and while in a way I'd have preferred the Derek Jacobi version to continue, I guess if you want dangerously manic, John Simm is good for that. But he's back, and running the country. Actually, he's pretty much running the world. And that's not good news for The Doctor and his companions. On the run in Martha's native time, with the forces of the Government hunting them down and her family already in custody, the odds are not good. Add to that the freaky 'aliens' that have made contact, and The Master's brand new Laser Screwdriver, and it's all looking a bit grim for our heroes.
Actually, 'grim' is a good word for the tone of the episode. From Martha's mother's discovery that while believing she was helping to protect her daughter she was actually betraying her, to the sight of London decimated by the Toclafane assault and various points in between, this was a dark episode, with the obviously humorous points creating an even shaper counterpoint than usual. The way that the Saxon storyline has run along in the background of this series has worked extremely well, creating a degree of tension and inevitability that this is going to end badly, and given some stuff I know about the next series, a lot of curiosity about how we get there.
As the "Return of The Master" story, it also contained some lovely touches of respect for the past, including the Teletubbies scenes, and the deliberate echo of The Master's address to the universe in Logopolis. And I was *not* expecting to see Gallifrey, or the old Time Lord robes again last night.
I always tend to love the build-up that episode 12 gives to the series finale, but I think this is my favourite yet. The situation is apparently hopeless (Go Martha!), there are still a few unresolved details from Utopia that will come home to roost, and no matter what happens, Martha's world (both physical and personal) will never be the same again. This is possibly the definitive episode in showing how Russell T Davies' vision for the series; the need to make the viewer feel that there's a human involvement; is exactly what's needed to create the maximum possible dramatic impact
The Road To Hell
I had all sorts of good intentions to post interesting and discursive material yesterday about the trip I was on for the last couple of days. But then I spent quite a lot of time in an airport departure lounge and eventually got home at ten past two this morning, and have consequently lost the will to blog.
On top of which, having had about nine hours sleep since I got up on Wednesday morning, I've also pretty much lost the will to keep my eyes open...
We, The People
There's an ad in today's Independent, and I assume in other papers, headed "Fellow Citizens". This alone is the kind of opening that tends to have me expecting a rant about immigration and the decline of Britishness. My eye trailed to the bottom expecting it to be signed by Robert Kilroy Silk or similar.
But no. This ad is a production of The Power Inquiry (I'm one of those who favours 'enquiry' myself, but horses for courses), and is signed by an almost bewildering array of individuals and organisations. Academics from the LSA and my old alma mater Manchester University sit alongside organisations such as The Black Londoners' Forum and Church Action on Poverty. The Peepal Centre Leicester (no, I've no idea either) shares the platform with Claire Rayner and Miriam Margolyes (OBEs both) in calling for, well, I can do no better than to use their own words:
"... a full deliberative process, like a People's assembly or convertion, which engages people from across the country. Given time and resources we are confident that together we will make the compromises to shape the renewal of our democracy."
The point is that they believe, as they say in their opening line, that there is a problem with British democracy. Phrases such as "a growing sense of a failure of government and a deepening public distrust in politics" also appear early on.
Essentially, they think that it's time for a change, and are hanging off the back of Gordon Brown's promise to renew our constitution to make the point that they want this to mean real change and not just some tweaking around the edges based on decisions made without consultation or involvement.
It all sounds very laudable, but it also sounds a bit like they're resigned to failure from the outset. They make the point that they have a wide variety of divergent opinion themselves on many issues, such as electoral reform, decentralisation of power an the constitution of an elected upper chamber. And obviously if they're talking about involving 'the people' in the process then the range of opinion will just get wider and wider. Which would suggest that the 'deliberative process' could be very challenging indeed, and almost certainly to the point of paralysis. Let's face it, this is a campaign which has set itself the objective of achieving compromise. Granted that most big political debates end up at that point anyway, it's not exactly inspirational stuff to say that's where you want to be before you've even started, is it?
Anyway - for those interested: makeitanissue.org.uk
Going Quietly Mad
Can anyone, anyone at all, explain to me why I have the nightmarish My Grandfather's Clock going round and round in my head *all* the time at the moment?
Is it being used in an ad? I can't think where else it would have come from, but wherever it is, I'd like it to stop please.
External Storage
It's well known that the self-storage industry has had a bit of a boom in recent years - the things are everywhere, in London at least. My assumption has been that the cost of property is such that in order to afford somewhere to live, people have to give up minor luxuries like storage space. Also, with more and more people living in flats, I suppose attics aren't as standard a feature as they used to be. So great big self storage facilities have sprung up all over the place.
I've taken a small corner of one such on as part of the process of moving out of my flat before being able to move stuff into the house (which we're going to get a bunch of stuff done to once we take it on and before we move in). I was there this evening, putting a few extra things in my cage, and was struck, as I have been on both previous visits, by how busy it always is. The parking bays are always full, and the steady stream of people in and out seems to continue at all hours.
It's seeing this, more than the sheer number of facilities around the place, that has really brought home to me the scale of the storage boom, and made me acutely aware of how lucky we are that we're able to move to somewhere that should have enough space for all our stuff.