#oneaday Day 584: Moving Day, Part 1

Moving house sucks. It's supposedly shortly behind or ahead of getting divorced in the stress stakes and while I wouldn't necessarily go that far, it is a pain in the arse — largely because you usually find yourself having to move six metric shit-tons of crap in 24 hours AND clean AND remember to cancel all your bills AND argh.

So far this time things have gone relatively smoothly, largely because there isn't the time pressure involved. Both Andie and I are moving from our respective parental homes, which means no requirement to be away and completely vacated by a specific deadline. This is nice, and certainly a far cry from the panicked move which was me leaving Southampton last year — the stress of which was not helped by the fact that I really did not want to be moving amid everything else that was going on.

I haven't done "the big bit" yet, which is shifting furniture. That comes tomorrow with the joyful hire of a van. Once that's done, though, it's a simple matter of clearing up small odds and ends, unpacking stuff, acquiring extra bits of furniture as necessary and getting broadband and whatnot set up.

Once all this is done, I will feel a lot better about things. I will be in my own space doing my own job with my awesome girlfriend and things will be good. I am looking forward to things being good after a very long period of depression. It's about time.

#oneaday Day 583: Creative Breakfast

I've reached a decision. Once all this moving stuff is over and done with I'm going to start writing these entries in the morning. There are many reasons for this, chief among which is the fact that by the time it gets to late evening I'm knackered and have already spent the day doing my day job which involves, yes, writing.

Part of this is sheet stubborn determination to not let tiredness and lack of creativity beat me. It would be easy to say I was fed up and tired of writing stuff every day. I'm not; it just feels a bit like it sometimes, particularly when it gets to 11pm and I haven't written anything — and often haven't thought of anything to write.

So the plan is thus: get up, eat breakfast, indulge in "creative breakfast" by writing blog in the morning. That way 1) it's out of the way in the morning and 2) my mind is already in a good mindset for writing.

It also helps avoid filler entries like this one which follow 4 hour drives.

So night night! Look forward to the new regime starting soon.

#oneaday Day 579: The Littlest Hobo Journalist

I'm writing this sitting on a hard concrete floor outside a café because I'm using their Wi-Fi but I'm not confident enough in my German to go in and order something.

The fact that you can do this is pretty impressive, though. Laptops have been around for donkey's years, but the ability to sit in another country, outside, on the floor, getting pins and needles in your legs, and access the Internet is pretty remarkable when you think about it. It's certainly changed the way a lot of people can do their jobs. Journalists used to sit in offices, now they sit on the floor of German streets like netbook-wielding tramps. (Given the wild growth of my facial hair during my trip, that might not be an altogether inappropriate comparison. I'd shave, but I can't be arsed at the moment.)

Gamescom is coming to a close, with today being the first of two days that are only for the public. The "entertainment halls", as the public section is called, are markedly different from the relative peace and organization of the business area. Where the business area is clean, bright, not crowded and with no crap all over the floor, the entertainment area is the exact opposite in every sense. It's dirty, dark, crowded and the floor is carpeted with discarded leaflets from a thousand different vendors trying to promote their products.

It's interesting to see, though — having only really been to PAX and Eurogamer, there's a marked difference in the way the public presentations are handled. For starters, rather than holding behind closed doors panel discussions like at PAX, game developers and publishers get up on stage and put on a show for the audiences right there in the show hall. There's a lot of shouting, a lot of "call and response" audience interaction, and a lot of scantily-clad women flinging T-shirts into the crowd. I haven't caught a T-shirt yet, but I did take advantage of the English language Guild Wars 2 presentation to sneak a go on NCSoft's new WildStar MMO today — it's really rather good and I suggest you check it out if you get the chance.

I never thought I'd say this, but I am tiring of sausage. Currywurst is awesome, and I really wish we had that curry ketchup easily available in the UK, but when sausage is the only kind of food that's within easy reach (as appears to be the case once you're inside Koelnmesse — easier said than done with the German security guards today bringing a whole new dimension of Jobsworthness to their interactions with the public) you start to tire of it surprisingly quickly, particularly when it appears to be a staple at breakfast time, too — honestly, I saw a guy yesterday having a plate piled high with nothing but about ten sausages. The guy obviously needed his protein.

I fly back tomorrow evening and I feel like I'm ready to. Cologne is nice and all, but I'm tired of being self-conscious about my German and the fact I don't appear to know any nouns. It will be nice to have a rest in my own bed — but not for long, as very shortly I'll be moving house, which is exciting and awesome.

For now, though, it's time to go and find some food that isn't sausage for dinner.

#oneaday Day 577: Einen, Eine, Ein

German (I wish my iPhone would stop autocorrecting that to "Herman") is a funny language. I kind of like it, though as is often said, it's not a very romantic language. You can't whisper sweet nothings in German very well (though everything you say sounds like you're talking dirty) and it's full of harsh sounds.

My knowledge of the language is fairly limited, though I could probably get by if the average German didn't already speak English as well as their own language. There is, however, one small problem, and that is the rather important matter of nouns.

It's all very well being able to say "Excuse me please, I would like…" but what good is that phrase if you don't have a word to put on the end of it? German is quite a literal language in many senses, in that a lot of nouns describe the thing they are quite well — the word for "nurse", for example, is "Krankenschwester", which literally means "ill sister". The words for "entrance" and "exit" make it clear if they're for walking or driving — "Eingang" and "Ausgang" versus "Einfahrt" and "Ausfahrt". The German word for diarrhoea — "Durchfall" — literally means "fall through", and the word for constipation — "Verstopfung" — seems very apt.

But it's little things that are easy to forget. Desire a can of Coke rather than a bottle and how do you indicate that without pointing and grunting? (hint: with the word "Dose", as I suddenly remembered out of nowhere today) How do you ask for your Currywurst (which, incidentally, are delicious) to be provided "to go" rather than to eat in? How do you indicate that you'd prefer a T-shirt to a hoody?

That's what they need to put in travellers' guides: a big list of handy nouns. Then even the most inept linguist would be able to get by just by bellowing "Schweinfleisch! Soße! Erdbeer! Rückgeld!" at members of the service industry. Though exactly what they'd end up with after asking for that particular combination of things is anyone's guess.

#oneaday Day 576: Still Tiredscom

I'm afraid you're only going to be getting half-hearted (but still daily) updates out of me for the next few days, largely 'cause I'm spending my days at the Gamescom expo over at the amusingly-named Koelnmesse, then spending my evenings writing everything up. I'd write more stuff up in the daytime but 1) I don't have time and 2) Wi-Fi access as Koelnmesse costs 25 Euros per day. You'd think during a trade show they'd organise something for attendees.

I've spotted a weird thing since being in Germany — my thoughts have a German accent. When I speak German, a German can immediately tell I'm English — they have a strange sixth sense for that sort of thing — but in my mind, the things I think have a perfect German accent and, in some cases, German words too. Occasionally they're the wrong German words because I just end up thinking of amusing words or phrases ("Ich besuche mein Grossmutter" always makes me titter, even though what it actually means is rather mundane) but they're there, nonetheless.

Wandering around a country that doesn't have English as its first language is akin to playing an MMO with no keyboard. You might be able to make yourself understood with basic gestures, but after a while you're going to have to immerse yourself a bit and figure things out for yourself. I've now just about deciphered the confusing public transport system (though since arriving here, not one person has checked my ticket, making me regret the 7 Euros I paid on the first day) and can sort of recognise what certain shops and things are.

However much I know that "Notausgang" means "Emergency Exit", though, I still can't not read it as "Not an exit".

Feurwehr!

#oneaday Day 574: Flugplatz

Well, here I am at Gatwick airport ready to bed down for the night in anticipation of getting up at some ungodly hour in the morning to get on a plane for Germany.

Yes, it's Gamescom time and I'm approaching the impending event with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I haven't been to many of this kind of big event, and the few I have I've mostly been in attendance as a consumer rather than a member of the press.

This time, though, I have a jam-packed schedule of fun and it's going to be hard work, but hopefully a good time — and satisfying too. I covered E3 on the home front for the second time this year and that was fun, so I can only imagine what it's like actually being there. Gamescom, while arguably not treated with quite the same level of "importance" as E3 is, is still a pretty big event and hopefully there'll be plenty of cool stuff to see.

Quite when I'll have time to 1) eat 2) sleep 3) write and 4) go to the toilet is anyone's guess, however. I may have to do several at the same time.

As for tonight, my home for a matter of hours is the Gatwick Central Travelodge, which is currently undergoing refurbishment but manages to look surprisingly impressive for a Travelodge. The room is massive, for one thing — in fact it looks a little too big, as there's a huge space in one corner filled with only a crap wooden chair — and it has air conditioning, which is nice. In terms of floor space and facilities it's surprisingly on a par with several genuinely nice hotels I've stayed at that cost a hell of a lot more than £25 a night. It has scratchy toilet paper and crap bedsheets though — but given I will be beneath them (or more likely atop them — it's boiling) for approximately four hours, if that, I'm not going to complain. I needed a bed for the night, and I have one.

And on that note, it's good night from me. See you in Deutschland.

#oneaday Day 572: Book 'Em, T and the MGs... No Wait, That's Wrong

I read a book over the course of the last couple of days. I like reading a lot, though I haven't made a lot of time for it recently — it's something you very much have to be in the right mood for, especially given the length of a lot of modern novels.

I'm glad that I've got back into it, though, and I have technology to thank for it — I have now officially read a whole eBook (or iBook if you want to be pedantic about it) on a portable device (my iPhone) and discovered that it's a not altogether unpleasant experience. In fact, it's actually rather convenient — it's a lot easier to get comfortable when reading in bed holding a phone whose pages won't flop all over the place or fall out if you lie in a weird position, lighting isn't a problem with a backlit screen (unless you're in the bright sunshine, but I generally prefer to read indoors) and, crucially, you don't have to remember where you put the book down in order to carry on reading because you probably have your phone with you anyway. (It's also nice to be able to see how many pages are left in a chapter without having to do that "flicking forward while carefully trying not to look at any of the words on the page in case there are OMG SPOILARZ on them" thing.)

The book I read was called Pandora's Box by an author called Giselle Green. It was apparently the debut of this author, who has since been referred to as "the British Jodi Picoult". I've heard Picoult's name before but am not familiar with her work, so I was coming into this pretty blind, but the concept sounded intriguing, so I downloaded the sample (which turned out to be substantial enough to get me hooked, and then the full book was only 99p anyway) and got reading.

The story resolves around 40something mother Rachel and her 14 year old daughter Shelley. Rachel's life is a bit of a mess — her husband's left her, she doesn't really know what she's doing with her life and, most importantly, her daughter has a debilitating (and conveniently non-specific) disease that may or may not be something to do with MS. Despite this, she manages to remain upbeat and strong even in the most adverse conditions — her wheelchair-bound daughter, meanwhile, is mature, headstrong and stubborn.

Unfolding from the perspectives of both Rachel and Shelley, the story tells the tale of the days leading up to Shelley's fifteenth birthday — the day Shelley has decided that she is going to take her own life in order to be free from the pain and suffering she witnessed a friend with the same condition go through a year earlier. It's a tale based largely around characters, and Green creates some distinct, memorable personas to take us through the narrative. Rachel and Shelley themselves both have their own private issues which they let the reader — and sometimes no-one else — in on. But the supporting cast are strong too — Rachel's obnoxious ex-husband being a particularly prominent example, being a character you really want to take a swing at at the first available opportunity.

It's a real page-turner — the story unfolds at a good pace throughout, and each chapter is short enough to make you think "well, maybe I'll just read on a bit…" before noticing that you're actually halfway through the whole thing. It's not perfect, of course; remaining spoiler-free, I'll simply say that the ending is a little contrived, being made up of a series of events that are all a little too convenient given the realistic nature of the rest of the book. And the supposedly central theme — that of the titular "Pandora's Box" (in this case being a box of knick-knacks and memories from Rachel's eloping mother) and the Miseries within — is perhaps a little underused, or perhaps even inappropriate. Rachel is forced to come to terms with some past "evils" which had been left buried for many years, and Shelley is the catalyst for her eventual revelations, but the theme seems a little "forced" and I feel the story would have been better without this particular angle.

Minor gripes aside, the book was immensely enjoyable and I'm keen to have a look at Green's other work — if this was her debut novel, perhaps she hones her craft to a finer point in her later titles. We shall see!

#oneaday Day 571: An August Sort of Gentleman

I hate August. It's one of the biggest pain in the arse months there is. It's partly through my own doing that it's a pain in the arse, of course, but it's also an unfortunate combination of things that it's not particularly easy to do anything about.

The reason it's a pain in the arse is that it's always expensive. During the month of August, I have to pay my car tax, renew my car insurance, and get my car serviced and MOTed. When I lived away from home (which quite soon I will be again, yay!) August was also the month to renew the TV license and, if I was moving again (which I did every year for quite some time) find some way of scrabbling together a deposit on a new place to live.

This year is going to be no exception. Tomorrow it's the annual "cross your fingers and hope the car survives" experience of getting it serviced and MOTed, and inevitably there'll be SOMETHING wrong with it that needs fixing, which costs more money and time. While people are hitting it with hammers, or whatever it is mechanics do while they're servicing your car, I'm also going to go and get my car tax done which, given the "Do It Online!" system that the government was so excited about when they introduced, should be an easy process, but unfortunately isn't, largely because of the combination of other factors that August throws your way.

Boring factoid: you can't renew your car tax online if your car insurance is about to expire, even if you've already had the renewal paperwork through. This completely negates the convenience aspect of being able to do your car tax online because you then have to go to the post office and queue for hours and ARGH.

I am going to beat the system this year though by only renewing my car tax for six months while renewing my insurance for a whole year. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, August!

Breaking up the month is next week's trip to Gamescom in Germany, when I'll be far to busy to worry about mundane things like tax, deposits and all that sort of thing. It's fairly unlikely I'll have any time to socialise (sorry, "network") let alone think about things which aren't happening RIGHT NOW in Cologne.

Following that, I'll be moving house. This will involve handing over a large wad of cash to an estate agent (or possibly handing over a debit card and closing my eyes) but at the end of the process there'll be a new place to live available to me. Which will be nice. But then I have to move all my stuff there. Which will not be nice. Moving house is stressful, but fortunately there are no time pressures this time around, which means I can take my time over bringing stuff in gradually rather than having to get everything done in one night.

(Incidentally, there are those who say that moving house is as/more stressful than the breakdown of a marriage/divorce. Having been through both I can say with some confidence that the latter is infinitely more upsetting and stressful than having to carry a lot of boxes and furniture into a van, sometimes throughout the whole night. The former may well do your back in and cause you to be completely knackered, but the latter does unpleasant things to your emotions and brainy parts, as my blogs from last year will attest. Just in case you were wondering.)

I'll be happy when September arrives. When I was a schoolkid and later a teacher, September was a stressful time — time to go back to school. But as a "normal" person now with a regular job that doesn't take six weeks off in the summer, it's just another month — and more significantly, it's the month after the pain in the arse that is August.

So sod off, August. You're a pain in the arse.

#oneaday Day 569: It's All Kicking Off

"It's all kicking off." A phrase which now represents the recent riots that have been taking place around the UK.

I'm not going to use this as a means of making some sort of political comment on the whole thing, because as a normal human being and a law-abiding citizen, frankly I don't care on the political aspect of it — if there even is one. What I do care about is that people in this country have the capacity to go completely batshit mental and smash the shit out of absolutely everything, then set fire to it just to make sure it's good and properly destroyed.

A piece on the BBC earlier summed up pretty much what I think about the whole thing — a growing culture of consumerism, materialism and a sense of misplaced entitlement among young people is highly likely to blame. Evidence of it is everywhere, and as an ex-teacher I frequently came face to face with the kind of behaviour which, left unchecked, could (and did) escalate into something altogether more sinister.

Parents do need to take more responsibility for their children and be able to tell them "no" rather than pandering to their whims. In the first school I taught in, the most unpleasant child in the class would never turn up to his detentions because, I quote, "Mum says I don't have to do detentions". In the face of such defiance from not only the child but the parents too, what exactly is the educational system expected to do in order to instil a sense of "good citizenship" in these little scruttocks?

It's not all kids, of course, but any time an event like this comes along — particularly one of this magnitude — it's easy to quickly decry all children and teenagers as "feral" and start advocating increasingly Draconian societal measures. That's possibly not the answer, as it would likely lead to even greater social unrest — unrest which the previously "nice" kids might feel compelled to join in on.

What is a problem is the gang culture that is growing and spreading in our towns. When I worked in retail in Southampton, we used to have an almost constant gang presence in the store thanks to the fact that we offered, in effect, free Internet access. Hordes of youths in hoodies, ill-fitting trousers tucked into socks and several tons of cheap "gold" jewellery frequently spent the best part of a day in the store, intimidating staff and customers alike, until we got to a stage where enough was enough and we had to start taking tougher action.

The presence of these individuals was enough to be intimidating, but then you looked at what they were doing online. Most of them made use of the social networking site "Bebo" at the time, and most of them were on there "repping" whatever gang they happened to come from around the city. In some ways, it was sort of hilariously pathetic, as these kids boasted about how hard they were, how excellent their rapping was (spoiler: it wasn't very excellent) and how badly they were going to "murk" their rivals from the next postcode over. But on the other hand, the obsession with guns, violence and materialism coupled with severely short tempers was somewhat sinister — and it made running across these individuals outside a disturbing, unpleasant experience. And they knew it.

The scariest thing about these riots is seeing that the people that I fear are capable of scary shit. Having your fears justified only makes them more scary.

At the time of writing, at least, things do seem to be calming down a bit. I hope this momentary madness passes and the devastated communities affected by the chaos can regroup, rebuild and move on. And that the scumbags responsible are brought to swift and humiliating justice.

#oneaday Day 567: Home Sweet (Hopefully) Home

So Andie and I found a place to live today in what was possibly the most efficient piece of house-hunting I've ever seen. As an added bonus, I was required to do very, very little in order for the entire process to happen, so I was happy. Basically, Andie spotted it, enquired about it, went to see it and accepted it (with my agreement, obviously) all in the space of one day. This is efficiency at work. Given what a hellish experience house-hunting can be, I'm glad this happened very quickly — though of course now begins the frantic form-filling and scrabbling-together of cash for deposits. And also panicking about not having any boxes.

I've lived in a diverse array of places over the years. I shall now be terribly self-indulgent and describe each of them that I can remember, excluding my childhood (and indeed current) home.

My first home after leaving, err, home was my university halls of residence. Flat A33, Hartley Grove Halls, Southampton University. Hartley Grove was a very new block — I think our year were only the second or third (at most) to pass through it. As such, it was all very clean, very clinical and, if we're honest, rather like an old people's home. The rooms were quite nice, though — they were a reasonable size and en-suite, with an enormous kitchen shared between six people. As I was one of the first people in my flat to arrive at university thanks to a pre-term orchestral course, my first meeting with several of my flatmates-to-be was while I was clad in a dressing-gown, cooking bacon. Start as you mean to go on and all that.

Following this, I moved in with the then-girlfriend of my then-best friend from "back home". Not in a dodgy way, I hasten to add — we were good friends and it made sense for us to live together. We got a flat in the middle of Portswood, which is Student Central in Southampton. It was pretty expensive, but it was nice and big. There were two massive bedrooms and a big kitchen/living room with a breakfast bar. It was a decent flat apart from the fact that when we moved in the bath was full of paint, the cooker didn't work, the washing machine didn't work and it was generally a shithole. With a bit of happy teamwork and yelling at the landlord, however, we won over and ended up with a decent flat which was good for entertaining. Despite the fact that the internal walls had something horribly mouldy and black-goopy living in them, as we discovered when we moved out, this was a place in which I have some pretty fond memories.

After this, aforementioned then-girlfriend of then-best friend and I moved into a three bedroom house in the area of Southampton that was regarded as "the dodgy bit". Various urban legends abounded regarding people who had supposedly had bulletholes through their patio doors, but the house was cheap and in good condition. We didn't have any trouble while we were there, though my friend did have all the locks on his car broken which necessitated him having to enter the vehicle through the boot for a considerable period of time. This house was notable for having an invisible housemate, who was happily paying rent for a room that she didn't use once during the entire year we lived there. I wasn't complaining, as it meant our rent was down to approximately £35 per week, which was the cheapest of anything anywhere. Which was, you know, nice.

I spent my fourth year at university in a really nice house that had two toilets. I accidentally moved into the biggest bedroom because I arrived first and I didn't know my friend had already claimed it. Still, she didn't seem to mind too much, and for some inexplicable reason proceeded to replace the floor in her room with hardwood flooring. It looked nice, but I'm not sure she was really supposed to do that. But oh well. It was a nice place, and one of the few I have digital photographic evidence of.

After this, I spent a couple of years in Winchester, beginning with the nicest flat I've ever stayed in. Pretty expensive, sure, but it was fully furnished, had a dishwasher, had the comfiest sofa in the world, and a dressing room off my bedroom. It was awesome, but my housemate and I were unceremoniously turfed out when the landlord decided that she wanted to give the flat to her daughter. Bitch.

We followed up the nicest flat in the world with what would have been a pretty nice riverside cottage in Winchester, were it not for the galloping mould and the living room that smelled of gas. It also had the most unpleasant landlady in the world, whom my housemate successfully legally battled after she tried to withhold our deposit on the grounds we hadn't cleaned the chimney. Well, sure, we hadn't cleaned the chimney. But we also hadn't used the chimney.

After that, I moved to Aldershot to be close to the school I worked at. It was a lovely flat, though the worst shape in the world. The arrangement of the corridors and rooms was such that it would have been completely impossible to get a sofa in without taking out the rear windows. As such, we spent a year with an inflatable sofa, which was actually quite fun. Aldershot is shit, but this flat was close enough to Farnham to be on the "nice" part of town, and the fact it had "Aldershot" in its address meant it was pretty cheap, too.

Following this, it was back to Southampton into a small flat with a massive sofa in the living room. It also had a tumble drier which was, frustratingly, in the "office" room. This meant that said office room often got rather hot and steamy, and not in a good way. Disappointingly, the previous tenant had a cat and we discovered after moving out that we could have kept said cat. Frustrating, but never mind.

Finally, before moving back home last September, I had a pretty nice flat in the middle of Southampton. It was a nice place run by a bunch of complete fuckwits, as has been documented elsewhere on this blog. It also had a bunch of chavs who liked to hang out in the car park beneath the building, but the building itself was very nice indeed. Unfortunately my memories of that place are somewhat tainted by the way last year proceeded for me, but that doesn't stop it being a nice place.

So now I have something to look forward to. We've reserved the place and now have to scrabble together the cash for a deposit, which shouldn't be a problem. Then it's onwards and upwards. A year after "admitting defeat", as it were, life will be back on the way to awesomeness again.

About feckin' time.