Thursday 30/07/09

July has been a blur. I started it in a post Glasto haze, the refractory period spent recovering from a festival in which I inevitably got very ill and moped around until it was time to do something productive. I was injured too, having sprained my knee ligaments, so couldn't exercise. The swine flu had made its trotter shaped mark on my body.

Smash cut to now and I'm wondering how I'm staying awake. Before, I woke up and strolled into work pretty much when I felt like it because all I'd do when I got home at the end of the day was masturbate and watch Peep Show (though rarely, if ever, simultaneously). Such behaviour is now impossible, has to be postponed or at the very least performed in slightly less time than before. I have responsibilities and probably some growing up to do.

My parents have decided that despite me not really having saved enough money and although I'm earning less than a tramp who had recently been made redundant because his tramp work had been outsourced to India, I can now afford to buy a flat. Now, they say, is the best time to get on the property ladder, because prices can only go up. They're probably right, but this premature exit from home means that my options are slightly more restricted than if I'd saved more money, rather than spending it on now neglected Xboxes, drum kits and foosball tables. In short, all I can afford is a craphole.

I found one that was affordable, in an uncharacteristically pleasant street in Slough, and to say it has a troubled history would be a little unfair on somewhere that has such a rich story to tell. Apparently the flat was occupied by the ringleader of an Islamic terrorist group and was raided by police in 2004 who found all sorts of fertiliser and other bomb making paraphernalia in the tiny property. At least if I do move in the neighbours can't complain if I make a little noise because there is no chance in hell that I'll be worse than the folks who lived there before, unless Sam Carr turns up.

The flat is tiny, with the lounge doubling, wait, tripling, up as bedroom and kitchen. All this can do is encourage my laziness. The one flaw is that the toilet isn't in there too or I'd never have to move. God forbid I'm ever allowed to work from home. Which brings me to another point; when did the phrase “studio apartment” replace the million-times more accurate word “bedsit”? Studio apartment sounds like somewhere Radiohead go when they want somewhere intimate to record their latest CD, when in actual fact it's somewhere you can sleep, fry an egg and play Fifa without having to budge an inch.

Nothing is set in stone, and despite the encouraging sounds of the mortgage people, it could all go down the toilet before long but it's nice to finally be able to start the moving out thing, even if it is to a terrorist's former residence in Slough and is all happening at the speed of light.