Diary of an up and coming sociopath

I’ve finally moved most of my stuff up to London now, after Nikki and I made a trip down there today. Most of the stuff seems to be ready now, I’m still waiting for Argos to sdo what their website claimed and ring me to arrange a delivery date for the bed, then I have to make the bed, but besides that I’ve got enough stuff to at least live there until the rest of it turns up. An internet connection would be kind of nice, though. Let’s hope BT get their arses in gear.

There are many decent things about the room I’m in at the house. Not least of which is that it’s actually got a window. I always kind of missed having a window, in the last house, skylights don’t let in a lot of light, and there’s nothing to see out of them besides open sky. This window has fake leading, which at least means I can get away without the horrendous net curtains that were in there. I took in the chest of drawers which we had previously been without a home for, because I don’t have any storage space of that kind, at the moment. Just the wardrobe. It’s fitting quite well, so I’ll probably keep it, and then soon I’m hoping to get a bookcase to display my books and DVDs in a proud fashion. With that in mind, I also have to start thinking about posters. I’m clearly old enough that framed posters are the way to go, and I’m on the look out for some Marvel posters with the inconic style Jack Kirby art on them, but they don’t seem immediately available. Something like this Silver Surfer would be excellent. It’s either comic art, some movie posters, or, er, Warhol prints, though that might make me obsessed with soup or something.

I don’t profess to know who had this house before us, but whoever they were, they did not enjoy cleaning. The sofa and chair are nothing short of filthy, and will require som serious work for us to want to sit on them. Luckily, there’s no reason for us to, at the moment. I realised earlier the reason the cooker was so knackered was probably because it hadn’t been cleaned. It’s not an old cooker, it just appears to have been neglected over the years. In an astonishing display of actually appearing to give a shit, a landlord turned up and actually spoke directly with us. In Oxford, this only happenned if something bad was going on, or if the guy wanted his mail. One thing remains consistant, though, in that this is the second person to turn up and claim to be the landlord. I theorise that all landlords exist only as a gestalt between a young and old half of themselves, each claiming to be the landlord, one half obsessed with maintainance, and the other obsessed with collecting mail.

So anyway, only a couple more boxes to take up now, and a bunch of furniature which I may have to let someone else deal with bringing down. Then I can begin the process of being a Londoner, though I suspect in truth I’m always going to be a midlander who lives in london, if we’re arguing semantics. Or, as Ian would claim, a Crazy Northerner. I did apply for a couple of jobs over the last few days, but as usual, it’s hard enough to get any acknowledgement from the companies I apply to that they’ve even received my application, let alone anything claiming they’ve even made a decision about it. One job application was for Titan publishing, which is such an excellent job that I can’t help suspecting it’s a trap. Titan publish, mostly, Sci-Fi and fantasy magaines, and some comics, and I’ve read most of their magazines at some point or another ever since I started buying the Star Trek magazine well over 10 years ago. The job is, to heavily distill the concepts, to update their website with news items and stuff, something which in my mind translates to being paid to be a full time geek, and some general admin. To describe it as the most perfect job I could ask for at this point would be a gross understatement. I have been repeatedly foiled by adverts claiming to want website maintainers with knowledge of football, or cars, but Sci-Fi? I’ve got it nailed. Unfortunately, the degree with which I would love to do the job makes me all the more pessimistic, because when I can’t get jobs that I don’t like, I find it hard to believe fate would work so that I could get a job I do.