Home at Last

Temperature at 10:30pm:  24c/75f

I am home!  In my lovely flat!  And you know what?  It actually is lovely.  I had forgotten how spacious and peaceful it is.  Strangely, even the tiny bathroom - which is indisputably tiny - seems spacious to me; I suspect this is because the pedestal sink has a lot of ledge space on which to put things, which I certainly did not have in my room in England.

I intended to put a photo of my alcove on here, but instead I've decided to put a couple of my  kitchen, because when I looked at my kitchen from my living room (where I'm sitting typing), it just looked so inviting.  So here is a photo of the stove and sink area:

Note the poster of cow breeds:  I love cows.  And that plate?  It has the first lines of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" on it.  How literary geeky am I?  If you look over at the etagere in the corner (ooo, how cosmopolitan!) you can just make out the novelty teapot I bought myself as a Ph.D. gift (that's right, a novelty teapot.  Of an Aga with a cat asleep on it.  I know someone who bought himself a motorcycle as a Ph.D. gift, but I guess some of us just have humbler ambitions), and the Pillsbury Dough Boy figurine.  As you may remember, I love the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

And here is a photo of my eating nook.  Okay, it would be more accurate to call it a notch, since it's really just a corner of the kitchen where I've put the table, but it's still nice and homely:

See the poster of French pastries?  That's how you know it's an eating nook.

I painted those walls myself.  The colour is actually a kind of warm orange, which makes the room look simultaneously cheery and cosy.

In fact, coming back here was, like the book-dividing, an interesting experience.  I had forgotten just how much stuff I own.  Look!  There's my Struwwelpeter mug!  Look!  There's my soup tureen!  Look!  There's my poster of cows!  And a goodly portion of this stuff filled me with warm feelings of familiarity and belonging (well, not the soup tureen).  Which meant that I suddenly thought, Wait.  How can I up sticks and move to a whole new life?  This stuff is my past and my self.   And I do feel that a little bit.  I never thought I was defined by my stuff, or that it was in any way integral to me, but it seems I was not precisely correct in this area.  It doesn't really define me, and it isn't really integral to me, but - again like the books - it does give me a kind of narrative:  I remember when I bought that poster...I remember how I started to like the Pillsbury Dough Boy...I am a person who loves the fact that she has a poster of french pastries in her eating notch...My stuff is the materialisation of my past.

Of course, wherever I move I'll create a new past, and I'll to some degree be able to recreate certain of these items.  Or bring them with me.

Now I'm exhausted, and tomorrow I have to teach William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (and it turns out I didn't bring the right book home, so I may have to teach them without preparing), so I will end by saying that my sublettor seems to have been a rather quirky individual.  The DVD player remote stopped working, so she unplugged the DVD player.  ?  She also unplugged and disconnected all the stereo components.  She also put the kettle up on a high shelf.  Clearly, this person was nothing like me.

Tomorrow:  the return of the cat.

Incidentally, I anticipate that you will have seen every room of my flat by the time I leave WhereIlive.