Settling; Like Snow Doesn't.

We are, of course, exhausted beyond all reason, but Hev & I are now installed at the new Swansea mansionette. We're 10 days into the biggest game of TETRIS of our lives, we're on level 129, and it's become a full-contact bloodsport. We're just starting to see carpet, so we're still motivated. Building a kitchen out of spare parts is proving challenging, but at least space is no longer an issue... for now.

We're already feeling the benefit of being in the middle of things, and having friends "just pop in", which hasn't happened to either of us for a decade. There's a couple of restaurants around the corner, three parks and three or four pubs within five minutes' walk, and our favourite late-night bar just in the next street. After Splott and Waun Wen, this feels like Beverley Hills.

If we've left you out of our update texts/e-mails, drop us a line for our new address, landline no. etc. Then perhaps you too can "just pop in"? That'd be grand.

I Can't Call Them ALL "Dave"!

I wonder if anyone has ever written a poem about cardboard boxes. I'll ask Google...

http://snipurl.com/cgaek

Hmmm, a few, but strictly amateur stuff and mostly... um... idiosyncratic, I think I'll say. Not that I'm particularly moved to verse by the things, it's just that there are an awful, awful lot of them in my life at present.

There's something about them that can seem comforting or depressing, depending on one's mood, I suspect. That brutal, efficient reduction of a well-rounded life into a matrix of stubbornly square holes; is it liberating, or suffocating? I suppose - to those to whom tidiness and order are ways of life, rather than abstract concepts - mostly the former. I'm trying to see it that way, and partially succeeding.

I suppose I just want it on record that it's an effort, okay?

Back in Jack

Hmm, yes... there were supposed to be house-related updates. Bum.

Okay, so here's the gen. Hev's place is sold, gone, and we move into the new place, in Uplands, together, in the first week of March. All who merit a personal update will get one by some means or other. My place didn't sell, still trying, will probably have to rent.

So a ten-year residence in Cardiff draws to a close, though I'll only be down the road, really. The chance to be nearer to people that I care about is really exciting. There will even be parks to go for walks in, and stuff.

As you can tell I'm not too comfortable with this mundanity-bulletin stuff. I'll try to find something actually interesting to write soon.