Diary of an up and coming sociopath

A quick update on the situation wouldn’t go amiss, I guess. We did finally get the forms sorted out, so Tuesday afternoon I stepped on the gas and made my way to Oxford, collected Ian, and then continued on to London, where we signed our contracts and made our payments, and then got Josh and Al to do the same. We now are officially renting that there house which we have been eyeing for some time. After the contractes were signed, we celebrated by visiting the local tescos. Being close to a Tescos (or at least, a supermarket) was quite an integral part of our eventual choice, after the cintinued usccess of the revious house’s proximity to one. Cheap prices and high quality, if you dont’ shop at Tescos, you’re just deluding yourself. They don’t pay me to say that, it’s an independant judgement. The closest to us is a “Tescos Express” which means it’s tiny and doesn’t stock a lot. We were previously used to a Tesco Metro which had a far wider range, and was slightly closer. However, the smaller and further away “small” Tescos was more than compensated for by the closer and far larger “large” tescos, which unlike Oxford, is a superstore. So things about even out nicely.

After Tescos, we went and found our new house. It’s a great place, with very few flaws. A good job, really, given the price we’re paying. When Dad saw the monthly rent he said “Do you know what sort of property you could buy with the kind of mortgage?” I admit I don’t, but I assume from his exclaimation that it must be quite a good one. Ah well. For our first order of business, we moved the furniture into the correct rooms, which involved performing feats of geometry I’m not entirely sure were even possible, yet we somehow accomplished them. We passed a bed down the stairwell, and a sofa up. The sofa required some serious cleaning - it was already filthy with dirt, and when we pulled up the cushions, we were bemused to find a lot of pine needles. In my experience, these kind of needles come from Christmas trees, which indicates about 9 months, at least, of not having cleaned that sofa. Urgh. More amusing was the empty Def Leppard video case under one of the armchair cushions. Less amusing was the makeshift support being provided in teh broken armchair by a piece of wood.

Having completed various derangements, we dropped Al and Josh back home, and Ian and I were left unable to contain our excitement and drove up to the big tescos to have a look at the nirvana that it is. Situated in the Hoover Building, we expected it to be pretty good, and it was quite excellent. The font appears to be a cross between las vegas, and a Tescos, with lots of neon coloured strip lights. The shopping spiralled out of control and we found ourselves purchasing quite a large amount of food, in the end. We bought some fries and chicken dippers as part of Tescos’ “American” food selection (headed: “American Meal Solutions.” Solutions!?) The reasoning behind this was that it’d be easy to cook and eat out of the ackaging, only, the packet wouldn’t actually go in the oven, it was only for microwaving and, er, once we bought chips, we needed ketchup, salt, bread and butter. We didn’t have any plates, nor any baking trays, nor any cutlery, and we’re both far too paranoid to use what we left in the house by the previous weirdoes, at least, without washing it, we are, so we rinsed off one of the less dubious looking aking trays, sterilised it in the oven, then cooked our food on that. We ate it out of the remaining packaging. We buttered and cut our bread with our swiss army knives. It felt not unlike living rough, in our own house.

The next morning, we drove back up to Oxford, handed in our forms at isis (deposit will be returned soon, only one more bill to go…) and bought some comics, then finally got Ian’s stuff out of George and Karis’ surprisingly cramped house, leaving it far less cramped. I made good time in both directions, and we were unpacked fast. A short visit to the agency to outline our biggest problems with the house followed (1 x Knackered Bed, 1 x Knackered Armchair, 1 x YOU CALL THIS A COOKER!?) and then I came back to Leamington. It took me slightly longer to get out of ealing, and even with that, it only took me 11 hour 30 minutes, so I’d estimate that after three years, I’m about twice as far from home as I was. At this rate, in 2020 I’ll be living down in Guatemala.

This evening, I went out for a post-graduation celebration dinner at a local Toby Carvery, with Mum, Terry, Nikki, and her sister and mum. Even by my standards, I ate a lot, and I was quite astonished by the amount of turkey I was given. So much did I eat, that I was unable to finish my dessert. A grim spectacle indeed, though I get the feeling my intestines are paying for my foolhardy ways.

To get to the carvery and back, I had to drive Nikki’s mother’s car, because mine has been making some strange sounds over the last few days. We marrowed it down, eventually, to the brakes, and then Terry had a look and declared the brake pads to be DOA. Actually, they were so much DOA as MIA, since one of them has completely flown the coop, and the strange scrapy-metal sound I had been hearing was indeed metal scraping on metal in a valiant attempt to provide some braking force unto the wheels. “Unsafe to drive” apparantly, and it’s probably a good job I didn’t hear that the first time the noises occurred, otherwise it’d have provided yet more obstacles to the house. Luckily, the scraping wasn’t actually happenning all the time when I drove to London, so I wasn’t in immediate danger, it was only when I got back that they jacked it in completely.

So, tomorrow maybe they’ll get fixed. Hopefully. It’s not a hard job for someone who knows what they’re doing, I hear. I dno’t, but I know people who do, so that’s good. Now, with the house out the way, the car’s repair as good as sorted, the deposit nearly back form Isis, getting a job is once again, the only huge problem I’m faced with. If that can finally come to as smooth a conclusion as these other few bumpy rides, I will, no doubt, be most pleased. If…