Jewel of the Taff

Those with an attentive nature will have noticed my complete sense-of-humour failure last night - almost hand in hand with my consciousness failure. Sian was due to reappear at six this morning, and when my alarm went off, there was swearing from both our couches. We turned my phone off with extreme prejudice, and put it on snooze. When it exploded into life again fifteen minutes later, I was punching myself on the chest, where it had fallen when I went back to sleep.

Nothing quite gets you awake like punching yourself in the chest, trust me. d woke up and snarled, at me and it, and I turned it off again.
"Wait a minute," said d, as I slid back into sleep again. "What the Hell time is it?"

"Mmmff..." I groaned, the staggering pain in my arms and shoulders waking up and bitching at me.
"It's not 5.45!" said d, announcing the time it was supposed to be when the phone woke us up.
"It's 4.45!!" she announced.
"Ni'night..."I mumbled, turning over on my couch. At some point int he next time, I went to pee. Took the phone with me. Left it in the bathroom.
Next time we woke up it was nearly 7 o'clock. I stumbled back to the bathroom, picked up the phone.
"So - gonna let me in?" said the message I'd received while snoring my head off.
Sian was outside the door, in the van...pretty much preparing to put the seats back and get some extra kip herself.
We ran around, finding clothes like characters in a West End farce. I'm fairly sure there was a Bo Peep costume at some point. There was definitely a vicar's collar. I put on and took off a pair of trousers at least three times. By the time we opened the door, we didn't know what day it was, let alone what time it was, who we were, or why we were running around at this ridiculous time of day.
"Sardines!" I yelled, almost instinctively.
"Not before the first coffee of the day, thankyou," said Sian, striding purposefully into the chaos of our living room. The next hour was a whirlwind of props and movement, as we shoved what we knew we were moving into the van, and then ran around again, improvising madly, making impromptu boxes, emptying bits of furniture we hadn'teven realised were there (that's what being 'part of the furniture' means, after all). A couple of wooden komodo dragons found themselves whisked to Wales. Suddenly, in the space of fifty minutes, our living room looked empty. Our bedroom was emptier. The kitchen...granted, there was still a lot of stuff in the kitchen, but it looked like a naked ass - suddenly and dementedly revealed. It looked achievable to pack up the whole of our lives in mainly one more week, with a couple of extra days at the end. There wasn't time to reflect on that though, we had a date with the motorway. Made it to Merthyr in good solid time today, rather than piddling about round Gloucester.

When we got there, there was plenty to do before we even dared unpack the van. First, and perhaps most important, there was boggling to do. It was the first time d had seen the place since it had been an idea, dunked in the dinge of a previous tenant. Now...

Now it's a thing of real beauty. Light, and bright and newly equipped and newly painted and newly...erm...new. Of course, it was this little oyster shell of a place, with a vanload of yesterday's boxes in it. d boggled, and loved it. Really, she loved it. It was one of those moments where you could see her eyes widen and her heart burst, like a...well, obviously enough, like a kid at Christmas. We opened boxes, and started putting our real identity on the place. Within the space of an hour or two, it felt like not just a jewel on the Taff, but our little jewel on the Taff. We brought one of the couches from London, and our bed. By the end of the day, we had put them both in place, and made the bed up, so that when we both move in on the 23rd of the month, we have a bed to go to.

In other words, this was a wonderful, painful, close connected day.
In Disappearing terms of course, there was a lot of exercise, and my arms are dead right now. As for food intake, it's been simple, but not light, so who knows what'll happen on Tuesday morning. But I wouldn't trade today for a stone of weightloss this week.

Or anything, come to that.