London Flat Adventures

I succumb to the daylight robbery in the genteel guise of 'rent' perpetrated by greedy agents and even greedier landlords and sign over a weeks worth to take a property off the market. In all my wisdom (yep, all forty years worth this time), I have chosen a flat with no furniture instead of a fully furnished one, simply because the other one barely got any natural light, and made me feel claustrophobic coz it was narrow and long. Never mind that it was actually cheaper. Or that I quite liked looking out on the green stuff outside the window, or the rather charming communal gardens or even the basted porter. Nope, empty flat for some light and the option to terminate at any time with 3 months notice. Despite having scarified my hard earned earnings, I'm still wondering if I should've gone with Stephane's flat - furnished, with Internet and TV... and the faint inconvenience of having to stay there between June 20 and Sept beg/mid.... before seeking other pastures for my limitless luggage.

Naturally, the stress of moving unwomans me, so I spent most of Saturday in the shops in a frenzy of summer dress shopping. So now, I have a mountain of dresses, of which one I absolutely love, and the others answer to the 'handy to wear when I get back home' call. Riiight. That explains why I was loath to let the sales woman discard the one size too large, deep aqua dress that that reminded me of a jewel and am now deliberating between returning it or making inquiries as to a good ladies tailor who won't baulk at alterations!

I eye the tags balefully, wavering between just admitting they're now my responsibility and sending them back home to momma. Not exactly the highest on my list of ever growing problems, but hey, beats packing every time (yes, I am entirely cognizant of the pregnancy of that statement). Feeling a great deal of empathy with the preceding statement led me to walk home from a luscious dinner at Galvin @ Windows at the Hilton... a velvet pea velouté swirled around a luminescent and quivering poached duck's egg, followed by a decadently luxuriant risotto with peas, Parmesan, broad beans and asparagus, finished off with the dense sense of the Amazon in a chocolate tart offset by mango coulis and a fragrant cup of Darjeeling reminiscent of raindrops tipping off the edge of a leaf.

While I'm no longer in danger of giving birth to twins, I still do feel incapacitated by about six weeks as I survey bag #3 in the hope of leveraging my quid pro quo... 13 kg for checking them in online. Sadly, all I have been able to identify is a hard disk, a small painting, Champu's tankini and... well, that's it. Perhaps, I ought to send some of the new stuff back given that we just finished our 4 days of summer here in London... I'm now having an eclectic vision of what my furniture less living room could look like... air mattress, buttressed by the duvet and some pillows, a couple of crates for side tables, an artistic mountain of bags arrayed in a corner, and the Nakamichi taking the pride of the place on the floor opposite the mattress. I wonder if there's a vacuum cleaner in that flat. Guess June 5 will tell....