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Removal men came to move (almost) the last of our things across to the new house/into storage/into the dump.
Although solicitors are still going back and forth we should be handing over the house this week or next. The new owners have a fishy surname too, so we had to accept their lowball offer out of loyalty to our ancient ancestors.
It doesn't feel at all like our home any more. I stood in the empty kitchen and tried to imagine having lived here for more than seven years, but my only real memory was of the kids dancing around the kitchen island during lockdown singing "The sun'll come out tomorrow", which is more on the bitter side of bitter sweet.
As stressful as this week will be and the last few months have been, I am going to be glad to have gone from here. How strange that it feels so unlike home. Home is the people not the place. Those dancing children full of hope for a better world are my home. The sun did come out eventually. It will keep playing the hokey cokey for sure.
I should not be allowed nice things.
Am I super clumsy or super unlucky? I get through car tyres like the Springfield tyre fire and have broken an iPhone and an Apple Watch in the last couple of years. Today, when I got to the station to go in for the podcasts, I got out my phone as I'd put the tickets in my virtual wallet. Somehow the phone slipped out of my hand and hit the ground. It was the smallest and daintiest of drops. It could only have been more gentle if I'd placed the phone on the ground. In spite of me having bought a phone case where the advert showed men throwing phones off buildings to no effect, the top part of the screen had been cracked. Only very slightly and not in a way that would impede my use, I thought.
But last time I cracked my screen I then got the phone slightly wet and two hours later the whole thing gave up the ghost. So I thought, well, I'll get it fixed this time.
Luckily I had taken out Apple Care this time, mainly due to my poor record with phones, so it seemed like a reasonable gamble. So it would only cost me another £25 (on top of the £200 or so I'd paid already) to get a new screen. Fuck I should be smashing my screen every couple of months to get my money's worth.
The phone worked fine all the way to London, though as I sat in Pret having my early dinner I noticed there was now a line across the top of the screen - on the inside bit where all the pixels are. The phone backs up automatically, but I backed it up at this warning sign.
Sure enough, by the time I was in the theatre the phone, whilst still working, had started flashing every now and again (not showing me its phone genitals - though there have been plenty of genitals on this phone - but just going briefly all white). Then the flashing was happening more than not and then the whole screen went white. I managed to turn the phone off, but then out of curiosity turned it back on again and then I was done foe. The white screen was now permanent and the phone started getting hotter. Then a bit hotter and then much too hot. Was it about to explode? Would the podcast have to be cancelled due to the theatre being a heap of ash?
I couldn't turn it off and I couldn't really hold it and so I just put it down and hoped for the best. I think that's another fucked up phone. I should be given a repair or probably a new one- at the cost of £79. Still I had justified taking on Apple Care and would just have to navigate the world without a phone for a few hours (Catie has an old one that I could use until my appointment with an Apple Genius- how that Genius will feel meeting an Apple Idiot I don't know).
You suddenly realise how much of your life is on your phone when your phone dies in your hands and tries to burn you as punishment. My train ticket home as on there (it was also on my laptop though I'd have felt silly holding that up to the scanner - luckily you don't need a ticket to get on at Finsbury Park and Hitchin station just opens the door and lets its staff go home in the night time. My audio books were on there and I couldn't take photos of the guests (well I could, using another phone) and also my access to train times and so much more.
When I got home I put my sim card in the old phone but my broken one suddenly started getting hot again. So worried it might explode and burn my house down (much more serious than losing a theatre full of nerds) I put the phone in a saucepan and put the lid on.
It was nice to have a full theatre for Paul Whitehouse and Amy Hoggart and the chats were mainly professional/sprawlingly rude and insane (you might be surprised to find out which way round). I think quite a lot of one of them will get cut out. I don't know Paul well, but he's a comedy genius obviously and I think this was the first time I met Amy who looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but has a powerfully sharp tongue, rode the wave of my inappropriateness regarding her grandfather and was impressively withering when it came to all my nonsense. She's awesome!
