Picture the scene, if you will.

The flat is awash with boxes. CDs spill from towering racks to pool shinily and pointily on the rug. Half-filled bin bags squat ominously in every room, waiting to ingest the objéts d’histoire that are being purged from this writer’s life. Cupboards yawn open, waiting for the consumption of their contents either by myself or by the containers that will eventually be their transportation to their new home.

In the midst of this I tiptoe, daintily, through the debris. I check that the ancient frozen foodstuffs in the oven are not gaining life of their own in the sudden warmth. I talk aloud, carefully announcing every action before I attempt it, chiding myself if I have forgotten tasks from previous days. I pause to open a bottle of wine. Looking for glasses, I see that they are all dirty, and am forced to choose a Bailey’s glass. I search for a bottle opener, initially fearing that they have already made the trip to Harborne, but move a box and locate it, resplendent in its lilac beauty. I partially destroy the cork, such is my determination to reach the alcohol. Some spills on my finger. I lick it off. “Ooooo, blackberries!” I cry.

The rest of the glass does not taste of blackberries.

It’s one thing to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but quite another to actually get there.

Or; How to eat yourself out of house and home.

It’s only a couple of weeks to the big move. Preparations are going pretty well (especially for me) – I’m on my tenth sack of rubbish, sixth of charity donations, and am about seven boxes into the actual business of packing. I’m being completely ruthless. I have severed emotional ties to objects, demolished arguments for retention of said objects, and thereby purged a huge amount of crap from my life. And bloody hell, does it feel good. I’m amazed by the amount of stuff I’ve held on to ‘just in case’, or ‘because so-and-so gave it to me’, or ‘it’s not that broken’. Fuck that noise. Yeah, so it might come in useful one day. Why not chuck the piece of shit out now, then if that fabled day should come, you can buy yourself a good one with all that money you’re going to be saving. Get rid of it.

I really feel I’ve achieved something now, because today I can see the bottom of my freezer drawers, and the back of my food cupboard. I have only two miscellaneous home-cooked meals left – miscellanous because I forget to label virtually everything I freeze. But it does mean that it’s always an interesting game finding out a) what the meal is (spag bol last night) and b) how old it is (definitely made at some point in the last two years, but the memory is vague enough for it to be in the earlier of those). I am down to only three types of rice, and two of pasta. I found a whole block of marzipan and a box of chocolates I’d forgotten about. And I’m eating a rather delicious prawn and lentil curry which I don’t think I would have thought of had I not banned myself from the weekly shop until I’ve moved.

In sum, I feel good.