Here I am, evidently once again fully equipped with broadband. I feel that my poor journal requires a longish update now, after my longish absence, so here we go…

Now this new house of ours is really quite nice. When I first saw it I was making plans in my head of all the things that needed to be done in it before I could deem it fit for liking. Turns out, all that was missing was our own furniture and bits and pieces and some getting used to, since now I can hardly find things that I’d like to change.

Our living room, the one where I’m currently sitting in and writing this, is even larger than the one we had in our flat. I think this actually used to be two quite small square reception rooms before, but now it is an elongated living slash dining room, painted with what I’m sure is Crown paints’ Egyptian sand; pale yellowish that is, in case you’ve never been to Egypt or have never browsed through Crown paints (no, I can’t tell paint brands by looking at walls but I did find an empty paint tin in the backyard). The room has all that your average British terraced house, nearly sub-urban living room needs: a blocked up fireplace, a worn out black leather suite, a bay window with old office blinds, and so on. Oh, and a beige carpet. However, it manages to be quite nice and cosy, has an old wooden dining table (and chairs even) lots of room, nice curtains and is crammed with our DVDs and (still) boxes of yet-to-be-unpacked stuff.

Now me and Jim are dedicated living room people and spend almost all our time at home in the living room, and I could happily ignore the rest of the house. The orangeness of our bedroom kind of seems to be growing on me, the spare room is awaiting for the day when we will finally get a new state-of-the-art computer to fill it with, the bathroom is very blue with a big window and a huge enamel bathtub and smells of all things bought from Lush. Oh, and the kitchen just sort of is there, daffodil yellow and sunbathed in the afternoons.

It’s taking me a longer time to get used to our new neighbourhood though. I am used to being completely ignored by everyone else who lives in my vicinity, and it’s weird and slightly disturbing to all of a sudden be a target of any mild interest. The kids come and look through our letterbox and keyhole, and the old men standing about and smoking on the street stare at us. On our first day here someone came to our door to yell at us for complaining about our neighbour’s music (which we hadn’t done of course, we had just moved in). Also someone knocked on our door and came to ask if we were Christian, to which we semi-lied that we were, and invited us to church, to which we made polite excuses.

Oh, and the noises! You know, I’ve grown a sort of tolerance to most city noises. I don’t even notice any traffic noise most of the time, I’m used to drunk people walking home from the nightclubs in small hours, and I’m used to constant building site sounds. But here! Well, there is hardly any traffic to mention, which in itself is strange, but then there are the kids! I mean, of course there were kids where we used to live, but they were usually always just being transferred from place A to place B in their pushchairs or parents’ cars as far as I could tell. But here there seems to be a whole flock of them living on this street, and they all just play outside by themselves: cycling, roller skating, drawing with chalk on the driveway, running around with their dogs, playing football, eating ice lollies, flocking around the ice cream truck (which by the way stops by our house) and in generally making a lot of noise. It’s disconcerting. It’s like all of a sudden being transferred into a family movie from the 1950s.

* * *

I’ve now been working for seven week, which is quite good considering that in the beginning I was only promised about four or five weeks. And you know what? I am really enjoying my work. I just want to keep on working for as long as anyone anywhere has any work for me to do!

Now don’t get me wrong, the work itself is still fricking killing me. Every morning I wake up my legs so stiff it’s hard to walk down the stairs. My skin is getting both sunburnt and wind-beaten, my feet ache, one of my fingers and my right wrist have tendonitis and the rest of them are a collection of band-aids, and I have actual blisters in my actual palms. Let’s not even talk about my back. But it is totally worth that and more to all of a sudden see something unusual in the dirt you’re going through, carefully take a closer look and realise that you’re holding in your hand a hundreds of years old coin or a pin or a pot or a candlestick or a shoe (all of which and more I happened to come across last Friday alone) that someone, hundreds of years ago, lost or threw away.

And you know, I don’t think I’m actually half bad at this job either. It looks like the company I’m working for is keeping me on for the whole summer, and they’ve started letting me do monitoring and such things on my own as well, which I’m quite surprised about (and slightly panicky).

Oh, and as for the hardness of the job, there is a plus side. I win every time when we do our nightly “who has had the hardest day” competition in a mutual urge to avoid washing up, cat tray cleaning and such things.
”Oh, please, Sof… My legs are so sore! I had to stand outside and wait for the bus for twenty minutes tonight and my ankle feels a bit weird after walking home from the bus…”
”Yeah? Well, you see I would, but I had to shovel clay in deep hole, harassed by flies, the whole morning and then I got to spend the afternoon kneeling ankle-deep in smelly, organic, rotting waste and shift through the grime with a small trowel… So I’m more miserable so you do it.”

Honestly, promise, works every time.

* * *

This week I turned 24. Not a bad age to be, as far as I’m concerned, and quite suitable a number to follow 23. We haven’t celebrated yet, but Jim keeps saying something is to be done this Saturday, and at least I’m supposed to be getting some presents. Ho hum. I wish he’ll just buy me loads of nice things from Lush (my newly found true love and the absolute acme of all things lush) and some nice wine, given that I’m guessing he won’t be able to afford to take me to Amsterdam.

* * *

Talking about affording things, who would have guessed me working would be such a great thing, financially?! Well, I suppose, lots of people, but for some reason I never really realised that I’m actually perfectly capable of bringing in some cash myself too. I think maybe I’ve been too spoiled to think clearly when it comes to money.

In any case, my fortnightly pay check really seems to be changing things around here, finally. For once we are not in acute problems over how to get our bills paid and how to get by. On Saturday we went downtown, bought stuff from Lush (notice the signs of a developing obsession here), bought me some new underwear and a bathrobe, called into Boots (where I’m unable not to spend too much), bought a couple of new games and had lunch, and we’re still not broke. The new computer is no longer a distant dream but a plan to be carried out, and one day soon, let me tell you, we will get to Amsterdam.

* * *

Well. This sore wrist of mine is starting to ache quite bad now, so this will have to do for tonight. Hope you’re all fine. Now I’ll get down to catching up with other people’s journals and other nice internet thingies I’ve been missing.

before & after