moving

I went to have another look at the house I’m moving into. Its worst feature is arguably a kind of towelling soft toy fish creature, which hangs at the end of the light cord in the bathroom. I’m sure it was all very amusing when first installed: now it is grubby and (no doubt) piss-stained. It just swings there, mocking our inability (in rented accommodation) to do anything to it.

The garden is less secluded than I thought - only the most token of fences separates it from next door’s, which looks alarmingly like a mini-adventure playground. Mat can’t wait to meet the neighbours - and ask them when they go on holiday. The only way he’ll get away with that as a conversational opening gambit is if he becomes their barber.

Mat and Dave were familiarising me with the kind of noises they make when playing Operation Flashpoint. Some of them are quite alarming; particularly, I imagine, at four in the morning. I don’t get computer games. I’m beginning to see that I’m going to feel rather bemused and bewildered in this house, like some elderly relative living in the attic, wondering why the Vietnam war is still going on downstairs.

Not that I understand my parents any better. The other day my Dad thought he’d developed uncanny precognitive powers because he could predict the ending of Robson Green vehicle Northern Lights. And my Mum popped her head round the door of my room to tell me that she liked the track I’d just been playing. It was the droning death metal of Sunn O))): a hoarse voice shouting ‘Burn it to ash’ (or something) over massed guitars. So at least I know what to get her for Mother’s Day.