Showing posts with label moving office. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moving office. Show all posts

Monday, February 21

Home Wrecker


The business has moved out of my home which is great, the problem is that where there used to be people and desks there are now sad shabby spaces. For example I can now see carpet, a carpet that I've hated forever - I knew the carpet was hiding horrible, slightly damaged ceramic tiles and we couldn’t afford a new floor. A week ago I finally cracked and attacked it.

I became a thing possessed, ripping up the carpet, leaving shreds of stringy fibres stuck under the skirting, crumby carpet tape residue remained stuck round the edges of the room - it looked a lot worse.

On Friday I came home after a movie and a bottle of wine, I stood in the room and observed how my efforts had emphasised the way the wallpaper was peeling away from the walls. I picked at it and Lo! strips came away in my hands. I went at the walls as enthusiastically as I’d gone at the carpet. At 2am I stood back and surveyed the wreckage.

On Saturday I tried to escape the horror, I wandered into town, saw a linen tablecloth in a charity shop - sweet but a bit weedy, I bought it home and threw it in the washing machine with some dye to liven it up.

I went out again but when I came back the walls and floor still hadn’t repaired themselves, I took the linen tablecloth out of the washing machine - its delicate beauty was completely ruined, something had to be better by the next time I woke up - I found some rolls of lining paper.

By teatime yesterday I had painted over my badly hung wallpaper and the floor was scraped clean enough to throw a rug over it ... the tablecloth still has to be rescued, I’m feeling loads better but a bit tired now.

Saturday, September 11

Elephants Blocking My View


Another week and things have got far worse... We are supposed to be signing contracts and moving into the new offices in three days time, the documents are not in order, the rottweiler/solicitor for the landlord has suddenly presented us with terms and conditions that we cannot agree to.

This is last night's dream:

I am driving a mini down the road, as I am driving the vehicle grows bigger, becoming a monstrous sort of London taxi then even bigger, the driver’s seat stays in the middle of the vehicle and low down so it is harder and harder to reach the wheel - but I'm really trying to hang on, my view through the windscreen is now just the tree branches overhead, I can no longer reach the pedals. Somehow I am still driving and haven’t yet crashed. I’ve been driving for days, months even, so I pull myself together and figure that the fuel must run out soon, then I can stop and get out, maybe I’ll drift down someone’s driveway and then I can get help.

I am comforting myself with this thought when an elephant materialises in my lap.

Sunday, September 5

Antenatal Nerves


I found the ideal site for our office three months ago - I imagined that the process of moving to new premises would give me material for dozens of hilarious blog posts. All the clichés were there from the start; on-again-off-again deals, scandalous incompetence, rascally landlords, and the sound of heavy machinery gouging money from seams that I had no idea existed.

I had no idea how busy I’d be with emotional turmoil as I ricochetted between hysterical excitement at the thought of having a house that we can live in again ... and friends might want to come and visit ... and there wouldn’t be shit all over the table ... so I might want to cook supper in my own house instead of running away to do it in other people’s kitchens ...

then the paralysis when it occurs to me that it might not be real

We’ve got no budget left for this move so I’ve been scavenging where I can. I went to the local wood recycling yard a month ago, they had just received dozens of hardwood drawers that were being thrown out of a youth hostel, a truck delivered all of them to the back of my house that afternoon. I’ve also been doing quite a lot of ebay trading ... I now have a mountain of furniture and dead animal parts high enough to seriously block our light (that photo’s just the first section), the weather has become truly evil, with some flimsy tarpaulins I am desperately trying to protect my treasures from biblical rains and hurricane-force winds.

Last week when my solicitor had been ignoring my increasingly desperate calls for a full fortnight, I sat in my now dark house and wondered whether the whole move thing was all in my head, like some sort of grotesque phantom pregnancy.

Sunday, August 22

Castles In The Air


This year the number of people working in the house where I live has doubled and just as I was about to burst with the claustrophobia of it all - we discovered that the company was solvent enough to get a home of it’s own.

I went on the hunt for suitable premises, before setting off I asked Miss Whiplash, The Director and the Camera Boys what they felt would constitute the perfect place to work - then I made a drawing which I presented to various estate agents and held up against properties on my morning walks.

additional desirable features would include;
• it being no more than 200 metres from where we are now
• it should have a dungeon
• it should have a bar
• a boy should be able to run a zip wire between his bedroom window and the office window
• bacon sandwiches
• uniformed cleaning men
• plants
• a tea lady
• regular cake
• a decent printer
• windows and doors


I have found the nearly perfect place (we had to concede one or two wishes).
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