Clothes-munching varmits, Cocktails and Pirates, and somewhere to call home

I spent last weekend down in Peterborough with friends and family. The first task when I got there was to clear up all of the boxes and bags that had been dumped in my room. When I left London almost all my belongings (kitchen bits, books, files, winter clothes) were taken up to Peterborough by my Dad and left at my Mum's, where they have been cluttering up the place for over a month. When I arrived last week it was clear that if I didn't do a bit of tidying up there'd be nowhere for me to sleep!

I polished and scrubbed and hoovered (very uncharacteristically) to give everything somewhere clean to be put once it was unpacked. Once the boxes were cracked open it was quite satisfying to put things back into their original places - books into the gaps where they once resided, good albums squeezed next the other ones that weren't deemed worthy enough to come with me to uni (when most of my boxes were originally packed up!). Then I tackled my clothes. It was time for a sort out. I still had clothes that I first wore to school discos in year 8... Anything bobbly, stained, too big, too small, or just unlikable was put aside for charity shops and rag bags. The first bag was empty and I wasn't left with much left to wear!

Next bag I tackled was filled with winter clothes. I pulled out my trusty blue duffel coat and long teal wool vintage coat. Underneath, on a white bag, were lots of little blue crumblike dots. Strange... Next I pulled out my feather-filled slippers. They looked oddly straggly. I took a closer look and realised that there was something moving on them.

LOTS OF WHITE SQUIGGLING
MUNCHING LITTLE BEASTS
(Photo: www.reviewmylife.co.uk/blog/2008/05/14/clothes-moths-attack)

What I found looked a bit like this picture - the larvae of clothes moths. And at first they seemed to be everywhere! In both my coats, my favourite jumpers, my slippers. YUCK! After the drama of the tick I was not impressed to be under attack from creatures again so soon.

Mum and I spent ages brushing, shaking and spraying my clothes. We put them all out in the sun. Unfortunately the duffle coat was so holey it had to be binned and my slippers were too moth-eaten to keep. Everything else was salvaged, but does look a wee bit nibbled.

Lucky lovely things happened in Peterborough too. I went for a drink my Dr Kirsty, who had just passed her driving test (hooray!). I went to a beer festival with my Dad and Stepmum. I also went to my Cousin Henry's 30th birthday party.

Henry and his Balthazar
(© Sunil Patel, Facebook)

There was much champagne, a cocktail party/pirates theme and a cake in the shape of a Millennium Falcon. Awesome. It was brilliant, and as you can see from the picture, Henry had a pretty good time too.

Since I got back to Manchester Chris and I've been undertaking "Operation Find-a-Great-Flat-on-a-Limited-Budget" in earnest. I've spent hours trawling the internet and calling estate agents. Over the past 2 days we've had 7 viewings.

Thursday:
1) The estate agent didn't bother coming, but the tenant kindly showed us round. Too small and stuffy and modern. Also, no dining table to speak of.

2) It was big and light, on the top floor of a tall Victorian house, but it had very odd sloped ceilings that made me feel claustrophobic, and there wasn't much in the area except a park.

Friday:
3) The estate agent cancelled on us 20 minutes before the viewing (we'd already got the bus there and had been wandering around for 15 mins before they called...)

4) Agent was over 30 mins late. Office called us to tell us there had been an electrical fault, the agent, when he arrived told us that he'd been double booked. Ahem. The flat was great, but it was in the basement (this hadn't been mentioned in the ad online...).

5) With the same agent as No. 4. We were told it was also in the basement (again not mentioned online) so we didn't even bother going.

6) THE FLAT WE CHOSE! Will tell more below.

7) We turned up and had a look outside, but were rung 5 minutes before the appointment to be told that the person who was supposed to be showing us round had called in sick.

In summary, estate agents are not the most reliable of people...

We headed straight back to flat no. 6 and put down a deposit, securing a wonderful flat, and we'll be moving in towards the end of August.

I don't have a picture to show you, but the house looks a bit like this one which is from the same street:

It's a Victorian semi with a two-bed flat on each of its three floors. We get the whole of the downstairs of the left house, except the small hall which is communal. We have a big kitchen, a really big sitting room/dining area, a brand new bathroom and most important TWO double bedrooms. Get that? One for us, and one for VISITORS. Everybody welcome!

We also have access to the communal outside area. There's a lots of space in front and behind the house, although it's gravelled and used for parking. A bit dull but plenty of scope for pots, BBQs, deck chairs and maybe even a mini veg patch, as long as it doesn't get run over!

The road's in West Didsbury, which is about 20 min bus ride from the uni, 30 from the city centre. That's a bit further than we'd planned to go for, but the advantage is that we get more space and the area has its own nightlife with good pubs and a good mix of hippy cafes and independent restaurants. I can't wait until we move in!

We now have a good 3 weeks to trawl Manchester's salvage yards and reclamation joints and see if we can snaffle some bargainous furniture. The flat comes with beds and sofas etc, but we need a table and some shelves, maybe a desk too, and I'm sure we'll find something old and interesting and cheap without too much trouble.

When I was 11 I used to watch Home Front and Changing Rooms religiously. I thought I might be an interior designer when I was older. And now for the first time ever I have a whole flat to play with! Chris may also be allowed a little creative input. No painting, obviously, but a lot of temporary decoration none-the-less.

So get yourself on the train and you can come and see for yourself!

Mining Museums and Bed Bugs

This Saturday Chris and I headed off even further north to Penrith, to spend a couple of days with Chris' parents and younger brother who were staying up in Keswick. We were met at the station by my brother and sister-in-law who kindly took us over to the holiday cottage and stayed to have dinner in one of the village pubs.

There were only two pubs - The Salvation and The Horse and Farrier - and they were 1 minute walk from each other (and one minute from the cottage, conveniently). On inspection of their advertised wares, it seemed that they served identical bar menus. Lasagne and burgers are pretty standard fare, but they had both chosen to champion Bean and Celery chilli on their veggie section. There didn't seem to be waiters scurrying across the main street, so we speculated about whether they shared a vast underground kitchen. The plot thickened two days later when the waiter who had served us on Saturday in The Salvation showed up behind the bar in the Horse and Farrier. Very odd. Perhaps not all that interesting in itself, but somehow it made me think that this was only part of a much bigger Cumbrian village conspiracy, which probably involves putting lost and forlorn fell-runners into pies.

The next day we went for a walk around one of the lakes, managing to get more than a little confused about which direction to go in. It was sunny. It was beautiful. It was exasperating not having my swimming things!

On Monday we went to Castlerigg Stone Circle and watched as tourists clambered all over the ancient stones. The setting was stunning, as the picture I found below shows.

http://townhousegallery.co.uk/shop/, Copyright © 2009 Town House Galley
Clearing Storm, Castlerigg Stone Circle, Mike Shepherd

However, it was just depressing to see children kicking at the carefully placed rocks. The sign said that getting them into their current formation would have taken as much planning and work as constructing a medieval cathedral. I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced by that, but I did find it unsettling to see people being destructive in such a beautiful serene place.

So we headed on to a somewhat rickety labour of love, the Museum of Mining and Quarrying. I can't say that the digging of minerals out of the earth down a deep dark hole is a particularly appealing topic for me, but the museum had been put together with such care and attention to detail it was fascinating to look at, even just to appreciate it as a collection of information.

Outside the main building were what looked like over a hundred old machines - diggers, steam engines, cranes. The man at the shop explained that they were restoration projects, but I thought that bringing all those rusty metal contraptions back to life would take a century or more. Perhaps it would make a good site for another Transformers movie? Or maybe Scrapheap Challenge would be more feasible?

I forgot to take many pictures of the landscape but I did get this single moody shot from the window of the train on the way back to Manchester. The hills make me want to pull on my walking boots and get climbing. Don't mark me down as some breed of fresh air adventure though. Unfortunately the clouds make me want to take shelter in a pub with a pint. And if I'm unlucky, perhaps I might look like a straggler and end up in a Salvation pie.

Once we got back home I took this picture. It's a shot from Chris' bedroom window, so it's the view we wake up to every morning, and this photo sums up what it's like at the moment. If there's not a shower on the way, there's one just been!

The streets around here are crammed full of these red terraced houses, with alleys running in between the backyards. I'll take some pictures next week to show you the neighbourhood.

The last adventure of the past few days began this morning. Chris had gone to work and I was in the shower when I noticed a dark mark on my leg. I reached down to investigate and realised that something was stuck to my skin. Not just anything, though. A creature! I was horrified. I pulled it straight off and attempted it squash in between some toilet roll. Having lived with cats most of my life, I have on occasion had to contend with cat fleas. They are speedy little blighters, so to avoid further bites and possible infestation the only course of action is to grab them and pinch them as soon as they are spotted.

This bug was refusing to be squished. It wasn't jumping anywhere though, so it wasn't a flea. I decided to deposit this new breed of biter into a pint glass and see if I could identify it. The persistant beast started to climb up the pint glass, so I decided to fill it with water to hinder its escape, and also preserve it so that Chris could help me identify it when he got home. It didn't seem to mind the moisture though. It spent hours floating on the water surface, looking like it was having a jolly afternoon doing the backstroke.

I looked up biting creatures on wikipedia and decided that I'd been nibbled by a bedbug. The monster looked a lot like the pictures, and it was possible I'd picked it up in the Cumbrian cottage bed. The possibility of a bedbug infestation was not a pleasant prospect though. I set about washing all bed linen, pyjamas and towels on a boil wash. No nasty eggs were going to survive on my watch.

In the afternoon Chris came home and had a look at our uninvited guest, who was still enjoying the swimming facilities. He took one look and decided that I was wrong. It wasn't a bedbug at all! It was a tick, that must have climbed aboard when I was in the long grasses of the Lake District and had been clinging on ever since. Yuck! I remember when my cat would get ticks and we'd have to coat their swollen blood-filled bodies in Vaseline until they suffocated and dropped off. And I'd just wrenched one off in the shower! It was, however, very little and doesn't seem to have got more than a little nibble at me, so I think I'll live. Probably.

A snapshot I found online of a beast that was pretty close in appearance to my creature ( from www.businesspundit.com/tick-warning/).
Not my finger! There are many more gross pictures if you care to google the subject, but I decided to spare you here.

Flat hunting, room tour, graduation

It's been a funny couple of days. Things do feel a lot quieter and calmer, with all the coursework out of the way, but I'm still pretty busy. I've been filling out endless forms for my course: health forms, CRB declarations, Primary School placement details. The worst was writing an email to the French police asking for a Criminal Record check. I don't even know what 'Criminal Record' is in French... It took quite some composing.

Yesterday Chris and I went flat viewing. We saw three places. For the curious, you can check them out here: http://www.samproperties.co.uk/2-bed.htm

The first one - Hathersage Road - was a write-off. We didn't even get to see inside because the agent had forgotten his key (classic...) but given the broken window and the fact that he was almost able to force the lock to show us inside, that was off the list.

Number two was stunning from the outside: a beautiful redbrick listed building on Swinton Grove. But once we got into the house and through the rather depressing corridor to the flat door we had more problems. Keys a plenty, but inside we were confronted by 10 up-ended sofas, littering the sitting room. As we squeezed past the excess furniture, we noticed that the flats had been created by putting up little pinboard walls because the building was listed, and the whole thing looked pretty shabby.

Finally, number 3 was a possibility. It was in a place called Plymouth Grove. New purpose built flats in good condition, and we were shown around by the caretaker rather than the slightly shambolic agent. Although it had 2 bedrooms, everything was a little bit pokey and it's right at the top of our budget, so we're going to hang on for a bit longer and see a few more before signing up for anything. The hunt continues next week!

This morning I went to my cousin's graduation (well, the drinks after the ceremony). He's been at Manchester Uni studying chemistry for 4 years and came away with a first class MChem for his troubles, so it was a good opportunity to celebrate all his hard work.

George and his proud parents

They have a long drive back to Pembrokeshire, so I came back to the flat in the pouring rain and have been sheltering here ever since, looking for flats and temping jobs (and occasionally sneaking in the odd chapter of Roald Dahl's book Boy which is utterly compelling and in places terrifying...).

It had occured to me, though, that you have no idea where I am living up here, so I thought I'd take some pictures to give you some idea of my current living circumstances. As I've explained in earlier posts, I've moved into Chris' room in his shared house, and therefore my stuff has had to squeeze in around all of his belongings for the time being.

The edges of his book shelves house my toiletries and bits and pieces. The bottom shelf is mine and mine alone (eager eyes might spot The complete works of Shakespeare and a Louie highligher).
Chris' desk is covered by his computer and my laptop, so I've had to seek alternative storage. The floor is currently my admin hub, covered in CVs, letters (thanks Laura!), university tick lists and scripts.

I've got half the wardrobe to put clothes in. See how the pole bends... We had to empty the whole thing and glue all the joints a couple of weeks ago, because it was getting dangerously wobbly. It leant forward away from the wall, and everytime I took something out it seems to loom over me as if awaiting an opportunity to lose its balance and flatten me. That wood glue sure showed you, huh, wardrobe?

And these are where the rest of my clothes huddle, in boxes in the corner. See how neatly I keep them all? Looking for clothes in the morning is a bit like swimming through fabric.

On the whole though, even with these slightly makeshift storage solutions, it is great being here. I LOVE eating with someone. We get up and have breakfast while watching BBC1, taking the piss out of the presenters over our porridge and toast, laughing as the poor weather presenter has to make an outside broadcast on a golf course full of waving, camera hungry tossers. We cook dinner together, or apart (when I say apart I mean Chris cooks, normally because I'm lazily watching telly. Ahem...) and share washing up. We talk about important things, or silly things, or we don't talk at all. It's actually nice to share.

Next week I'll take some more pictures of what the room and the house are like. I might even show you the petshop across the road!

I can't wait until we get our own flat and people can start visiting to see our place for themselves!

The First Northern Post

I am here! You might be forgiven for thinking that I never made it up to Manchester, given my silence over the past month. It is slightly ridiculous to have a blog set up to report your move to the North, only to neglect it entirely once you're out of the confines of the M25. But no longer!

I actually first arrived in Manchester on Friday 19th June, but I stayed around for less that 12 hours, so I hope you'll forgive me for not posting. After that I headed straight down to Devon for a week with friends. We roasted in the sun, shivered in the sea, enjoyed the almost deserted beach and many a glass of pimms, and even went to a dance at a National Trust house (a rock and roll holiday all the way...).

A delightful picture of Chris and me in Devon

The week we got back I had an interview for my teacher training course. I was very nervous. I'd done a lot of preparation, but you can never be sure what will happen on the day so I was very relieved when it was all over, and even more relieved when I heard 3 days later that I had been offered a place! My friend Kirsty had given me a badge saying "Inglish Teecher" before I left London, so now I feel I can wear it with pride.

Last week I spent hours writing film outlines, character profiles and plot summaries. I've been attending an evening screenwriting course since Jan 2008 and the final deadlines for my coursework were coming up. Chris* was required to read draft after draft of my scripts, but he did it all with patience and many good suggestions, and I am happy to say that the last of the work was sent yesterday!

So now I have my first day in Manchester without an interview or a deadline looming. It feels significant, like this is the moment I can start making decisions for the next few months, rather than finishing off work that has been hanging over me since I left London. But what decision to make first? Summer job? Flat for me and Chris? Student Finance Forms (yuck) and reading lists? Maybe just a walk in the sunshine.

I'd better start finding something to fill my days, or I'll be stuck with the problem of having all the time in the world to write on here, but having nothing at all to say!

*along with Kirsty and James - thank you!