I’ve almost got to the point where I can’t remember when my life didn’t involve cleaning, polishing and putting things in cardboard boxes. The current status is that half of our stuff has gone down to Hampshire, and hopefully Julian (George’s brother- and my brother-in-law, which is still taking some time to sink into my head) will be back with the van this Wednesday for all the extraneous stuff that is currently lurking under the stairs. George’s Mum also came up on Thursday, stayed the night, and helped us do a gigantic blitz on the house with the result that it’s almost time to tell the Estate Agents that it’s time to start showing it to people. Getting used to the bare walls, the new structure of the furniture, and the general insane cleanliness of everything is going to take a while, and I’m trying not to scream my head off with stress at the prospect that we might be like this for a while, depending on how the whole ‘replacement’ things go. There’s a friend of Julian’s who might be a possibility- but it’s one of those possibilities that sounds suspiciously too-good-to-be-true, so I’m trying not to get too jazzed up about it.

Trouble is, our first explorations in the world of advertising the flat haven’t been massively succesful. We’ve had one person who left a message saying she was actually interested in looking at the flat, but she refused to answer her phone when I called, and didn’t call back. Apart from that, it’s been mainly Estate Agents, and the occasional confused person who hasn’t been able to understand that the whole “This flat is available as either a 2 bedroom or a 1 bedroom with lounge” equation means that there won’t be a lounge if you rent it as a two-bed. I’m suspecting something may have gone wrong with the publication of the Loot ad- we haven’t had a single call in the last forty eight hours, which is exceedingly strange. I’ll look into it on Monday- we need this to be as visible as possible.

On a suggestion from fjm I targeted the ‘Cotton Room’ at the British Library, which has a noticeboard, and this involved me signing up for a Reader’s Pass and actually visiting the place for the first time. Huge, expansive, and not good for my vertigo, with various walkways and a central collumn of big-scale books that occasionally had my head swimming. Nevertheless, I tracked down the right room, and pinned up a note. Don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I think being pro-active is the only thing that’s going to stop me from going mad over the next few weeks.

Another aspect to this whole situation which is both fantastic and potentially a source of galactic-level frustration is that George’s brother Toby is moving out of his house in Hampshire on November 1st- and George’s parents are going to try and hold onto it and pay the rent until we can get down there and get settled. Now, obviously, this isn’t the kind of situation that they’ll be able to do forever, and certainly not until the end of June 2007. It’s a massive weight off my mind knowing we have somewhere to go, but it’s a new problem that there may only be a limited window. I think, at the moment, I’d give anything just for a clue of exactly how long this is going to take. Stress has been swimming through my head for a while, I’m having trouble sleeping, and the only thing I really want to happen is to get this place sorted. I’ve had enough now- we’ve done our bit, all we want to do is hand over the controls to someone else and just leave. I do believe that if we could get someone to the point of looking at the place, they’d be very likely to say yes- it is a big, roomy flat. It’s just not somewhere we want to be anymore.

So, if anyone reading this knows of anyone looking for a one double-bedroomed flat (or a two double-bedroomed flat without a lounge) in Zone 3 for six months, at £800pcm (excluding bills), and which is available virtually immediately, please drop me a line. And if anyone knows of any other ways of advertising, publicising, or generally spreading the word, I’d be extremely grateful.

A few things have happenned to me which haven’t been House related, but I’m buggered if I can think of them for the moment…

(More interesting, less housing-related blogging will resume shortly…)