Unaccustoms

Local headline spotted today en route home from work: Rush to empty bins before Christmas.

Is this a random edict from a council bored of having to defend the amount of grit and salt there is everywhere, relative to the amount of snow and ice? Or is it some kind of Scottish custom that I've never heard of before? 'D'you no ken tha' Santa will nae come t'yoor hoose if ye hav'nae emptied yoor bins, Hen?'

The worst of it is that I have loads of recycling, which is all supposed to go in a trio of bins up the road. But they haven't been emptied for what seems like weeks and bags of cans, plastic bottles and cardboard are piling up on the pavement next to them like a scene from a documentary about the Three Day Week.

If I add all my recyclables to this growing mountain, will it be enough to guarantee the arrival of presents, mulled wine, far too much cheese, the billionth play of Fairytale of New York on the radio, whatever Pixar film hasn't yet been on the telly and goodwill to all men?

Rage Against the Machines

So, a golden age of TV is nearing its end. If by 'golden age' you mean 'the state of the four channels available to me, because I haven't sorted out cable, being stuffed with reality shows populated by hateful idiots'. This is, of course, my favourite telly. Whilst it may be fun and educational to watch lovely David Attenborough telling you all about the evolution of Komodo Dragons or somesuch, and to have BBC costume dramas on a Sunday evening, with big bonnets and handsome men in breeches making you feel vaguely cultured, there is a particular joy to be gleaned from waging a twelve-week hate campaign against those who've chosen to stick their heads above the reality TV parapets.

This autumn, I have been spoiled rotten. There's been Strictly, the X-Factor, I'm a Celebrity AND The Apprentice! I've barely had enough hours in the week to fit them all in. I'm drowning in a sea of bile and internet gossip about all concerned. I'm keeping myself warm by stoking the fires of wrath generated by Katie Weasel, Stuart 'The Brand' Baggs, Gillian McKeith and the like. And the brilliant thing is that you're part of an instant community - every Monday sees most of the office chatting about X-Factor (a show which I generally avoid like the plague - it's just karaoke with bigger production values - but which this year has been off-the-scale bonkers). The Guardian does some fantastically funny liveblogs about all the shows bar I'm a Celeb (well, they might have done that too, but I could only take so much of Gillian in the end). And the MMMC and I have regular text battles when it comes to who we fancy on Strictly - he seems to have an alarming fondness for the professionals with fake boobs, whereas my heart belongs entirely to Matt Baker.

So, in terms of People to Hate, who's given it 150%, and who's been lacking in meal-winning stars?

The Apprentice - now an out-and-out comedy, with no pretence that it's in any way a reflection of business acumen or the current state of the business nation. The contestants spend all their time either inventing rubbish products (sausages made out of string, sawdust and minced-up CVs; strange things to enable you to read paperbacks on the beach - er, that's what your hands are for, surely?) or having to sell other people's rubbish products (dresses made of old ties; DVDs of kids pretending to ski or drive round Brands Hatch). The other available hours in the day are dedicated to spouting absolute crap in the board room and bitching about each other in the car when the teams split up to tackle different parts of the task.

This year's crew of eminent business brains (and Stuart) have been hateful numpties to a man (and woman) - although I have a sneaking fondness for Posh Chris the Investment Banker because I think he looks exactly like the director Chris Nolan, when I was at school with him. Also him telling Stuart to 'Fuck Orf' this week was hilarious and I applaud his restraint in not hitting him, when offered the chance.

Winner: Stuart, for this week's total cringe-fest in the boardroom, when he devolved into a simile/metaphor (my brain was so addled I've no idea which it was) about a field-full of ponies as an example of how much potential he had, which had me actually hiding behind a cushion and screaming, 'Oh God, STOP TALKING', but which LordSirAlun somehow fell for, causing Bambi-eyed Twiglet Person Liz to get the Fired Finger instead. I can only think that LSA has allowed Stuart to progress to the interview round because of its unlimited potential for pure comedy.

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here - again, a show which I never usually watch because I think the idea of making people eat insects and be shoved into coffins with rats is inhumane and hateful, and the idea that it's peddled as prime-time entertainment shows how morally off-kilter we all are these days. But that was before Gillian McKeith decided to get involved. She was terrified of everything that moved, including her own shadow. She had no team spirit whatsoever. She was given to shrieking like a banshee and fake-fainting every time someone asked her to do more than tell them her name. She gave every impression of being a deranged witch, with no sense whatsoever of how massively irritating she was. 'You don't understand phobias!' she'd screech whenever one of the other contestants asked her why they weren't going to get anything to eat that night because she'd failed to even contemplate attempting another task.

There's only one question available here: why on earth would you go on this show if you're phobic of anything with more than two legs? Does your husband (who's, coincidentally, also your manager) want to cash in on your life insurance so badly that he'd actually finish you off on (semi-live) telly? It's a sneaky way of murdering someone, I'll grant you.

It gave rise to a brilliant comedy song, but I stopped watching almost as soon as I'd started, so Gillian did her best in the hate-stakes, but everyone else seemed OK. Especially eventual winner Stacey Solomon - you've got to love a girl who's just so cheerful all the time.

Strictly Come Dancing - generally speaking, other than finding Tess Daly dead behind the eyes, and wishing that they'd send Bruce Forsyth to a farm in Wales and get someone who's not a billion years old as co-presenter, there are few hate figures to be found on Strictly. Some of them aren't very good (hello, Peter Shilton), some of them stick around, inexplicably, for ages, whilst not really improving (hello, walking mahogany wardrobe Gavin Henson) and some of them seem like they're actually getting quite a lot out of it, so you root for them (Patsy Kensit for me this year). But this year started well for those of us who love to hate, with odious little creep Paul Daniels dancing with poor Ola, who won last year, so got punished this year. I hate Paul Daniels. I've always hated him. And him dressed in spangles wasn't going to change that. But luckily he was shoved off the Strictly floor, and has disappeared into obscurity once more.

Then, the megalith that was Ann Widdecombe became every reality TV producer's worst nightmare (or wet dream, depending on whether you're trying to uphold standards at the BBC, or you just want unlimited coverage for your show across all media outlets). She refused to try; her routines revolved around moving her arms by twenty degrees max, and being hauled around the floor by a rictus-wearing Anton du Beke (perhaps being punished for requesting a payrise this series or something?) She saw off dancers who were pretty good, and trying hard, who really wanted to stay. She refused, once the joke wore thin after week three to quit (like John Sergeant) and seemed to believe that she was hilarious. I got so worked up with hating her, and everyone who was voting for her, that I nearly blew a gasket.

Please, next year, can we not have a 'comedy' contestant on Strictly? Because it's really painful to watch, and you can't underestimate the viewing public's idiocy when it comes to voting for people like that to stay in.

Talking of which, the X-Factor has beaten all-comers this year with its Top Ten of hateable freakazoids. In no particular order, there's been:
One Direction - Justin Bieber clones who can't carry a tune around in a bucket, poor lambs. They will probably be ludicrously successful, despite having no USP whatsoever. I await the 'drink and drug shame' stories, whilst also feeling rather sad for them. Let's hope a couple of them manage to earn a bit through a two-year stint in Les Miserables.
Mary Byrne - a woman who believes that bellowing every single song somehow makes it better. Is in no way 'relevant', as Simon would say. She doesn't even have terrible hair and a tragic backstory like Susan Boyle (who can actually sing). She will probably be fine for the next five years, 'singing' on cruise ships and will front a collection of chiffon-sleeved black tent dresses for 'the more mature lady' in the back pages of You magazine.
Cher Lloyd - a girl who looks as though she'd first bully you out of your lunch money, then steal your boyfriend for good measure. Grow yourself some eyebrows and eat a pie, love. Then stop rapping because it hurts my ears. The judges, for some reason, adore Cher and seem to think she is edgy and a pop sensation. I remain bemused.
Wagner - the most demented thing I've ever seen on TV. Even Sharon Osbourne looked alarmed when confronted by him in the judges' house round - which is an achievement, given how much Botox she's had. Leonine, mad for bongos and 'ladies', with little to no grasp of any song he was singing, Wagner looked thoroughly confused every week when voted through to the next round. As were the viewers. Even Jedward looked more entertaining to me than Wagner. They had to have a double eviction, just to get rid of him. He'll definitely be on the Talk Talk sponsor ads next year and on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in some capacity.
Katie Waissel - surely the Grande Dame of hateable telly figures, Katie bestrode the world like a peroxided colossus. She was so irritating she ended up getting death threats, which, I admit, was a tad extreme. After all, she was just a middle class girl with a huge sense of entitlement and a belief in her own abilities that wasn't really reflected in her actual talent for singing. But there are loads of girls like that in Britain. Killing them all would be quite an arbitrary way of reducing the population and would take ages. She resorted to trying to boost her popularity by cutting her hair off and dying it brown, so that she looked like a Hobbit. This had the unfortunate side effect of making you realise she had disproportionately large ears, like a bat. I wanted to keep her in so that, closer to Christmas, they could re-christen her Katie Wassail, but I think that's a gag only I would've appreciated. After about four million increasingly plaintive 'sing offs', she was finally given the boot with Wagner. She'll probably end up replacing Christine Bleakley on Daybreak, or Christine-clone Alex on The One Show.

So this weekend, it's all over for the X-Factor pop poppets (a snore-off between cuddly Matt Cardie and good-but-searingly dull Rebecca?) and the Strictly guys and gals (it's Matt all the way for me; Kara is a brilliant dancer but seems to have no personality; Ssssssssssssscott tries too hard to be wacky and Pamela's piggy eyes annoy me, even though I think she's fine at dancing. Also, yes, I know she's married to BILLY CONNOLLY. Please stop telling me that). And just a week more of the Apprentices. Then I shall have to transition awkwardly into the 'goodwill to all men' frame of mind required for Christmas. Ah, it was such fun while it lasted.

Snow ho ho?

So, the weather update: Edinburgh is having the WORST WEATHER IT'S HAD FOR 50 YEARS. Yes, that's half a century. Thanks a lot, Scotland. I've been lovely about you and spend all my time saying to everyone I know how great Edinburgh is, and this is my reward? Traversing the streets like an arthritic snail, in an attempt not to go flat on my arse on the 3-inch thick ice? Giving myself chronic back ache by hunching my shoulders up against the wind and the threat of going flying? Reverting to the 80s by buying a snood? (Which, inexplicably, when wet, smells of horses, despite being made not even of wool, but is 100% acrylic).

All of this wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to leave the city. But my job means I have to go down to London for meetings. The last one necessitated spending six and three quarter hours on a train from Berwick Upon Tweed to Kings Cross (this should have taken about four hours). Then I had to do battle with a tube strike the next day. On the way back, we were storming along - relatively speaking - till they decided, with no explanation as to why, to kick us off the train at Darlington. Then when I eventually got to Edinburgh, I had to wait an hour for a cab. So I was in transit from 8.30am, when I left my hotel to go to Kings Cross, till 7.15pm, when I finally arrived home. And now I've found out I have to go down for another meeting on Tuesday morning - just when the weather's going to get horrendous again.

I love the way that the Government says, whenever the 'Britain in chaos' headlines have gathered enough momentum, and economists have worked out how much we're losing per day because of the snow (£1.2 billion this year, apparently), that there's no point spending money on infrastructure to avoid some of this, because 'we rarely have weather this bad'. Um, 1/ Large swathes of the country have been brought to their knees for the last three years, by my reckoning and 2/ Winter happens every year. Unless the shiny new coalition government are going to somehow rearrange the seasons so that we just have Spring, Summer and Autumn, followed by Spring again, it's pretty likely that there will be snow at some stage between December and March. Or probably May, judging by this last year.

How much would it really cost to sort out the rail network, for example? Versus how much you're losing in terms of people not being able to get to work, or spending three hours getting across London, then getting to work and pretty much having to set off for home again?

Or here's a nifty idea: why don't the Government phone up some chums in, say, Canada, and ask them how they manage to keep everything going? And then, you know, copy them? Because they have winter every year. Loads of it. And they look at our bits of snow, and our world-headline-creating grinding of a whole nation to a halt and they laugh. Not even behind their be-mittened hands. In our faces. Because we're idiots.

It's nice to have student riots to distract us from all this (and their riot fires to keep central London warm), but it will not make me any happier when I inevitably spend literally twice as long as I need to on a train from Edinburgh to London and back. And no, I can't risk flying, because I've seen what happens to planes at airports when it snows: you're left on an Easyjet for three hours, going nowhere, and then shoved back into the, now ironically named, departure lounge and left to go feral in Duty Free. I'm not risking that. At least if you sit on an East Coast train for long enough, you get given a packet containing two free biscuits. (It's a measure of how depressed we all were on that journey that we all went, 'Oh, wow, thanks!' when given these delicacies, and actually meant it sincerely).

The Weather Outside is Frightful

Everyone keeps telling me that the weather in Scotland is 'not usually this bad this early'. The MMMC told me that, and backed it up with a plea for me 'not to relocate' (chance would be a fine thing - I can't move much further than my front door at the moment). Yes, there is an absolute f*ckload of snow here.

I've never really dealt with a lot of snow before; I've never been skiing, for example, which is the only time you'd particularly need seasonally appropriate footwear for longer than two days. 'Dealing with snow' in London means skidding your way to the bus stop/tube station and then getting on whatever transport eventually appears. Then spending hours on it, wedged up against irate strangers, as you take six hours to traverse a distance that would normally take you twenty minutes. You arrive home wanting to kill nearly everyone, traumatised by the idea that you might have to do it all again tomorrow, and wondering why you have to go into work at all. The snow doesn't generally hang around for long, it just turns to ice on the pavements and filth on the roads.

The white stuff in Edinburgh, however, is totally different. I've bought actual walking boots in order to cope. (A friend of mine has been teasing me since I moved here about the fact that at some stage I'm going to find myself clad from head to toe in Goretex. My waterproof chrysalis starts here). The pavements are totally covered, and there's more arriving daily. Walking through it is actually fine, as it's really powdery at the moment, so it's OK. But I'm dreading that stage where most of it melts, and then it's just thick ice.

When I came up here for my second interview, my prospective boss asked me if I had any questions. 'Yes', I answered, 'I do. When it snows, do they grit the pavements properly?' She howled with laughter and said it was the most bizarre thing she'd ever been asked. 'But I want to know', I said, 'because they don't in London, and I've got a real horror of falling over and breaking a hip'. She laughed some more and then said, 'Yes, of course they do.'

Reader, she lied. They bloody don't. And today, they cancelled every bus in the city at about 2.00pm. All of them! Going nowhere! What the hell do you do if you can't walk home? I'm going to be spending a shitload on taxis for the next four months, I can tell you.

The Advent of Winter

It's a month today till Christmas! Does that make anyone else just feel, you know, tired? I love having a big family gathering, and sitting round the telly (having been watching X-Factor, Strictly, The Apprentice and now I'm a Celebrity on the sofa on my own, I'm desperate for a sense of community that's not reliant on texting my friends going, 'WTF - HOW is Katie Weasel still on this show?' and 'Gillian McKeith is the most annoying person I've ever seen on TV. And I've watched all the bad TV there is to watch'.)

But the inevitable magazine articles on day-to-night dressing ('add some sparkle and a pair of killer heels - plus a swish of black eyeliner and you're ready to wow!' is the extent of their expertise every bloody year), the high-street battles as you trawl the streets for gifts, and the endless 'should I buy my colleague a present? Will they buy me one? How much should I spend?' dilemma gives me a sense of exhausting deja vu. Not to mention the fact that in my job, we start planning Christmas in about March, which means that by the time it rolls around, I tend to be surprised that it's not happened six months ago, and already thinking about Spring 2011. Not as bad as a friend who used to buy Christmas stuff for TK Maxx, and had to buy all next year's Christmas decorations for the chain in January, but close.

Perhaps I'm feeling particularly Grinchy this year because Christmas heralds the arrival of Winter Proper. Now, last year's winter in London was bad enough. But winter in Scotland? 2010's was apparently epic. This year there's snow earlier than there's ever been snow in the country since records began (or something; no snow here today, though, just rather nice blue skies and nippy temperatures). So I am dreading at least three months of bone-shatteringly cold, wet, windy weather with added snow/ice+cobbles+hills = lethal, ankle-breaking conditions. I suppose on the plus side I'll be spending quite a lot of time on well-heated trains zapping up and down between here and London for meetings and hopefully some red-wine-in-the-pub sessions with mates. But I'm tempted to just pre-emptively christen it The Winter of Our Discontent and flag the fact that I'll probably be SAD, bad and dangerous to know come about March.

Bonfires and Vanities

Having previously noted that it was, gaah, October, it's fair to note that it's now, gaah NOVEMBER. Which is obviously how time works around these parts, but still, ruddy November. It's all a bit much. So, lots to catch up on, namely:

1/ The big, triumphant 40th birthday party
If you are planning to have a large, organised celebration, then I can heartily recommend this plan of action:
i/ Relocate to new city some three months beforehand, with limited friend/family visiting opportunities
ii/ Go on exercise regime like never before and sign up for revolutionary Callipers of Doom-based eating plan
iii/ Get as many friends/family in one place at one time, and combine with dress that makes you feel like Joan from Mad Men and dim lighting
iv/ Arrive late because it's taken ages to get ready. And also, y'know, it's your party - there's no point trying to make an entrance if there's no-one there to witness it
v/ Have everyone tell you you look amazing and living in said relocation city clearly agrees with you
vi/ Genuinely feel amazing - and also have such a good time that you don't need to drink, thus waking up the next morning feeling a thousand times more perky than you felt the day after your 30th.

I don't usually like being the centre of attention in large groups, but it was definitely the best birthday I've ever had - and I never thought I'd be saying that at the beginning of this year. The weather was so gorgeous the next day that I found myself sitting on my friend Mel's roof terrace, reading the Sunday papers over a delicious lunch, dressed in jeans and a vest top. A good omen for my 40s, surely (and fear not, I made up for this maturity and sobriety by getting catastrophically drunk at my friend John's 40th three weeks later, at which I also had a brilliant time).

2/ Cheerful James and the Callipers of Doom
It's the new, 7-volume exercise series from JK Rowling! Well, not quite, but it does sometimes feel like there are the baddies Who Must Not Be Named (carbs and sugar) who are constantly joining forces with the Dementor-like X-Factor, Strictly and Apprentice in the war for my time, energy and enthusiasm. On the plus side, I have Potions of fish oil, water and increasing numbers of supplements. I have little to no idea what any of them are supposed to be doing (I am apparently 'zinc loading' currently, for example), but I just nod, hand over money and chuff pills like it's finally the 21st century and I don't need to eat actual food any more.

This has resulted in - ta-dah! - me losing 6.1% of my body fat since I started the regime on the 13th September (I last faced the CoDs on the 20th October, so not quite sure what havoc parties, hangover food whilst waiting for a plane at Gatwick, the occasional muffin and binge-eating half a tub of Ben and Jerry's last week after a stressful day at work will have wreaked. Let's hope not much). I've put on 5lbs of muscle in the same period, which is, James tells me, merrily burning off 250 calories a day for me, all by itself. Crikey, I'm practically Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby! Well, hopefully without the dismal end in a hospital bed. But you know what I mean.

James has now started referring to my arms as 'guns' whilst I try to assure him that I'd rather just keep calling them 'arms'. Men love a label, don't they? They can't just say, 'I'd like to have nicer arms/better legs', they're all, 'I'M BUILDING MY BICEPS' and 'I'M WORKING ON MY QUADS'. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than the approach that women take, which is to look at themselves like those pictures of cows that you sometimes see in butcher's shops, with all the different cuts of meat marked out. They find areas, either large or small, to parcel up into packages of dissatisfaction, criticism and self-loathing. Which they then decide to torture themselves with for years and use to defuse and deflect any compliment anyone dares to pay them. 'My, you have a well-turned ankle', someone might say (if they've emerged, blinking, from the Victorian era). 'That's as maybe', you reply, 'BUT LOOK AT THESE HATEFUL THIGHS'. I'm working on just saying, 'Thanks!' whenever someone tells me I look nice. It's hard to break the habits of a lifetime, but at the moment, I definitely feel I'm earning it.

3/ My first outing as an Edinburgh hostess
I finally got round to having a house-warming party - only about 6 weeks after I'd moved in (and still with most of my possessions in boxes, hastily crammed into the myriad cupboards that are now at my disposal). The 'warming' part of it nearly became literal when, halfway through, there was a mighty banging on my front door and a man telling me that the laundrette next door was belching smoke and it might be a good idea to evacuate everyone. We duly poured out onto the pavement (largely, it has to be said, because the entire party - bar one guest - was female and we'd got over-excited at the prospect of firemen). There were FOUR fire engines (they don't do things by halves round here). It was all very dramatic; as it's also a dry cleaner's, my colleague remarking that, 'the thing about dry cleaners is that they're all full of chemicals, so that could actually blow up...' did make me panic somewhat, but luckily it didn't (there weren't any flames to be seen, weirdly). As there was so much smoke, however, it was decreed that as my flat was on the ground floor, and smoke-free, the occupants of the flats further up the building had to take shelter in my flat till given the all-clear.

Lucky I was having a party anyway, then. And a good, if odd, opportunity to meet some of the neighbours (being still in London mode, I, naturally, hadn't seen fit to break the ice by knocking on doors, introducing myself and inviting them).

The bathroom, which I previously thought was haunted by the spirit of an 80s hairdresser, as it smelled mysteriously of perming fluid, now smells of rather acrid smoke. It's not particularly an improvement, but maybe a change is as good as a rest when it comes to matters olfactory.

Age shall not wither her

Blimey, October already! How did that happen? Especially as, if you're a keen reader of this blog, you'll know that I'm turning 40 this month. In four days' time, actually. Eek! How did that happen? When I was busy making resolutions and plans for a big party, it seemed ages away. 'Ah, it'll practically never happen', I thought. But then, as it always does, time got on a very large horse and galloped away from me and now, here I am, savouring the last few days of my 30s. Or clinging on to them like a fat man with a box of doughnuts.

At any rate, I thought it'd be good to do a progress report on this year's pre-40 resolutions, so here goes:

1/ Undergo incredible chrysalis-to-butterfly transformation
At the start of the year, this seemed highly unlikely. I've done diets, I've done healthy eating, I've had regular run-ins with exercise, I've read countless diet books and articles about tricks one can deploy in order to lose the lard; I've had 'big occasions' to aim for, at which I would look better in the photos afterwards if I were slimmer. Some of them worked for a bit, some made me miserable (the accidental 'stress diet' of the first three months of this year, say), all of them, to a greater or lesser degree felt like a giant chore and made me feel deprived.

But moving out of London, and (not too sound to wanky about it) trying on a different 'self' in so many ways has done the trick. I can't say it'll last - winter weather being what it is, and a Catholic church-ful of guilty pleasure TV hitting the box - Spooks, The Apprentice, Strictly, X-Factor - I can envison falling off the exercise band-wagon with an almighty thump. In the meantime, however, I've been going to the gym like a maniac, partly because of James and his Callipers of Doom (they're a great motivator), and partly because for once, I actually like going. I'm also trying my best with the 'giving up carbs' element of the fitness programme (excellent: I now feel guilty if I eat a piece of bread - that part's not really progress) and have been ingesting fish oil and drinking water at a rate that wouldn't disgrace a killer whale. I haven't had chips in ages, I'm not drinking much (other than the odd glass of red wine) and I'm not craving chocolate that often. Although I very meanly made one of my colleagues go out for a packet of Jaffa Cakes the other day, as we were all obsessing about biscuits, and then I didn't eat any of them. Which I think is a major coup.

As a result of all this, the second time I got measured (10 days after my first encounter with the CoD), I'd gone down from 22.6% body fat to 18.something-%! How mad is that? Totally wasn't expecting it either, as I didn't feel any different. I'm now prescribing industrial-strength fish oil (get 'em from Holland and Barrett) and pints of water to anyone who'll listen. I've got another mortifying measuring session this evening. I'm wondering whether I should 'fess up to the raisin Danish I ate yesterday that was as big as my head. I was feeling in need of sugar, bored of being good and rebellious - not a good combo. I'm happy to report, however It. Was. GLORIOUS. Well worth the billionty calories.

My friend John just emailed, saying that he now has a vision of me, Lara Croft-style, in a computer game where I kick the shit out of various authors and agents, while trying to reach the golden pain au chocolat. I love this idea and have named it 'Points Mean Pralines'.

So, to sum up, I have lost some weight and I'm happy about it. It's not Natalie Cassidy, 'look I've shed so much lard that I can justify having an exercise DVD and a 6-page spread in OK!' levels, but I'm pretty damned chuffed (and I managed to fit into a UK size 6 denim skirt in Gap the other week. Their sizing is nuts, and I had a 10-minute battle to get the thing off again, but still, it was a fair old thrill.)

The downside? Turns out exercise and eating properly does work. No magic solution, just hard graft. And not much of a social life, unless you have lots of friends who are gym freaks.

2/ Finish off my flat
Yay, I did it! Albeit literally an hour before I moved out of it (and with thoughts that the walk-in wardrobe could still be made to look like something worthy of Living Etc one day, instead of just a strange cupboard with a second-hand hanging rail in it). Part of me wished it was me that was moving into it instead of tenants, but now I have more space than I know what to do with (a spare room; a mass of cupboards; a kitchen so large I get lost in it; a walk-in wardrobe that previously housed a piano; an actual entrance hall) and to my mum's delight, it's a 15-minute walk from John Lewis.

After showing her an estate agent's window when she and dad came to stay recently, she got really over-excited and started insisting I buy a flat. 'I've only just moved into this one!' I protested. That didn't stop her and my dad going on a parental ram-raid round John Lewis, buying me things (bless 'em). Including a rug - the first one I've ever owned. Turning 40: it's all about the soft furnishings. I felt like a fresher (new non-stick pan, new wine glasses, new cutlery, decent pillows to replace the rubbish ones in the flat,etc), especially as, after they'd gone, I had an attack of the Sunday evening blues which felt very much like starting a new term.

3/ Go internet dating
Well, admittedly, I haven't done this, but I think my real-world dates with the MMMC must count for something. Yes, he's still texting, emailing and offering to take me out, paint my walls (I'm assuming this isn't some modern sexual euphemism) and even, the other day, sorted out my telly for me, which had previously resisted all attempts to get it to actually produce a picture. All of this chivalric effort has still not resulted in me fancying him, which led him to text after our previous outing: 'Nice to see you tonight, obviously keen to see more of you [MORE? We see each other once a week! I can't imagine seeing anyone more than that, unless I work with them], but sense you just like being friends, which is also cool, but if reading it wrong let me know'. A gent to the last - doing the 'where's this going?' chat on text, rather than face to face - I love technology sometimes. A relief - and he's now revealed a hidden love for Strictly, so we spent all of Friday and Saturday's episodes texting rude comments to each other about the celebs, costumes, judges and presenters. He seems to reserve particular bile for Alesha. (Perhaps he had a thing for Arlene?!)

John, who gets today's prize for being funny, suggests I need a Highland Fling to kick off my 40s (can't believe no-one's suggested this was what my dalliance with the MMMC was), so I might yet join Guardian Soulmates and try to write a profile that suggests I have a personality, but not that I'm deranged. It's a tough line to walk, that one. (See Enormously Irritating Katie on this week's X-Factor; I literally screamed 'NOOOO!' at the telly when Cheryl put her through).

4/ Do something new
Although I didn't manage to attempt to tango or join a choir, try some life drawing or learn to drive, I think the whole 'moving job, house (twice) and city' covers 'do something new' quite admirably. Having such a big change is a good way to kick-start the new decade and I'm really glad I've done it.

God only knows what will go on the resolution list for 2011 (win Nobel Prize? Marry Prince Harry? Have my life made into a reality series?), but I'm very glad that this year's been one in which lots of things have changed - and mostly for the better.

Chasing Pavements

Best sight seen of late: yesterday morning, around 9.00am, I walked past two men in their mid-20s (jeans and t-shirts, trainers - y'know, normal), who were having an actual running race down the street. Complete with 'starting positions' and everything. Genius. I felt happy all day and then I saw a frog on the pavement on the way home! Quite a big one - kind of yellowy coloured.

So screw you, The Pope, I don't need to spend £12 million to see something unusual in Edinburgh.

Naming of the Rosies

So Jamie and Jools Oliver have finally had a son. They've called him 'Buddy'. Well, that's not so bad, I thought, until a colleague pointed out the middle name they've chosen for him.

Let's look at the array of horribly twee names with which the Olivers have saddled their offspring:

Poppy Honey Rosie
Daisy Boo Pamela
Petal Blossom Rainbow
Buddy Bear Maurice

Seriously, they should've saved themselves a lot of time and money and just bought four chihuahuas.

I am the Walrus

First off - very funny responses to yesterday's blog. 'You had us all VERY EXCITED and then disappointed again!' was a fairly typical reaction. 'Tell him to be more DANGEROUS and BROODING and then perhaps you'll fancy him?' was good advice - I imagined texting the MMMC and demanding that he stand atop Arthur's Seat, toss a caber off it, then bellow madly at the elements, before striding in a manly fashion down the steep, rocky slopes and picking me up bodily, with his wind-whipped kilt swirling round his knees like William Wallace (preferably without the woad). Either that or he should just ignore me for a week, and then I'll probably decide I passionately want to see him.


Anyway, news of the Other Man in my life, Cheerful James the PT. CJ and I have not had a date in some time, because I was flitting round the country (and France) and he was off on a course in Copenhagen. So I was almost excited about our session last night. Which, yeah, is pretty tragic, but now the Festival's over, and it looks like the weather is about to default to 'perpetual precipitation', a gal's gotta take her excitements where she can get 'em. But it turned out exercise was off the menu - instead, I was going to be CJ's guinea pig for all his new book learnin'. He'd been studying some bio-whatsit (I keep wanting to call it 'biomechanics', but it's not - I think it's called 'biosignature') which basically tells you why people store fat in particular areas, because of different hormone imbalances, etc, and how you can change that through diet and exercise.

In case anyone wants to try it, first off, you have to prepare for the mortification of having 12 - yes, 12 - fat sites around your body measured with those horrible calliper things. This included the mortification of having my chin(s) pinched by it, one of my boobs wrangled with (Me: 'James, is this just an excuse to grope ladies - whilst they're actually paying for it?') and him explaining that my back fat measurement of 28 should really be 17. Which meant that I have insulin problems and basically have to give up carbs. NOOOO! Why did I know this was going to be the result? Although, let's face it, the outcome was highly unlikely to be, 'The reason you're chunkier than you want to be is because you're eating too much fibre. Your body doesn't metabolise that at all well, unless you combine it with a lot of sugar and cake icing. I'm going to give you a programme of a slice of carrot cake every day, and then you'll need to top up with a brownie every Sunday - with Ben and Jerry's ice cream on top of it. It's the protein from the cream, combined with the sugar, that'll really work for you.'

No, apparently I have to ingest enough fish oil to rival a walrus. 'I eat loads of fish!' I said. Turns out for this plan, I'd have to eat about 30 of the fuckers a day. So I have to shunt down some crazy number of teaspoons of specially procured fish oil (lemon flavoured - like that makes it better) and drink buckets of water. Having tried downing as many cod liver oil capsules as I could get my hands on, and as much water as I could carry today, the regime is already pretty unwieldy. My work colleagues probably think I have cystitis as I need the loo every quarter of an hour. It's tempting to just take my laptop into the loo and work from there. CJ has let me off Phase 2 for the moment (giving up gluten, dairy and eggs, which will make breakfast a challenge. Not to mention every other bloody meal), so let's hope the Omegas and the H2O do the trick. Because it's very mean to suggest that you give up pasta and toast just as you're heading into winter - especially as, judging by the force 10 gale that was blowing up here last night, I'm actually going to need that insulating layer of fat.

Courtly Love

As part of my new life in Edinburgh, it appears that my Relocation Relocation fairy godmothers, Phil 'n' Kirstie, have also granted me a MAN. Yes, in exciting news from Purple Towers, it appears I have a Pseudo Boyfriend. Crikey! Wasn't expecting that.

I met him at a dinner party, which I'd been invited to via some string-pulling by my parents. (The hostess was the sister of an old friend of theirs). Hearing on the grapevine that I was friendless and alone, the call came through: 'We're having a dinner party! Would you like to come?' Well of course I would! The chance for free food and a good nose round someone else's house is rarely refused. I put on a frock, I bought a proper bottle of wine and teetered over rainy cobbles in unsuitable heels (anything other than trainers are, it turns out, classed as 'unsuitable heels' in Edinburgh, unless you're going everywhere by taxi). I arrived at what I presumed was the correct address. The house was vast. The building's entrance hall was akin to the foyer of the Natural History Museum, just minus a dinosaur skeleton. The flat's foyer (is it still a flat if it's 'over three floors'?!) had loads of glass cabinets in it full of china, like the V&A. I proferred my plastic bag with the bottle of wine in it, and slightly regretted the fact I was wearing a denim jacket and a backpack. I instantly felt like someone on a gap year who's been sent round to one of their parents' friends' houses for a decent dinner.

This wasn't really helped by the host (who's 20 years older than his wife), announcing to everyone when he introduced me that, 'We don't know her at all!' Umm, that's not helping with the impression that I just passed your house, saw you had people round and banged on the door hoping for some upmarket charity.

Anyway, everyone was very civil to me. I got told I was 'brave' a lot. People do this, I've found, when you tell them you've moved cities and jobs and you don't know anyone. I find it a bit odd - it's not like I'm a doctor in a war zone, or Tony Blair's security guard at a book signing - but I just nod and smile and put on my cheerful, 'Well, you know, I'm doing my best!' face.

It was a bit of an odd fact that everyone (out of about 12 people) seemed to be on at least their second marriage. One such couple, Hamish and Plum (!) had recently got married. For Hamish, it was marriage no. 3, for Plum, marriage no. 2. Both had several children. Hamish looked to be at least mid-50s and Plum looked like a well-preserved late 40s (she was the sort of woman who does a lot of aerobics and wears floaty chiffon tops with large 'statement' necklaces for dinner parties and has expensive blonde hair). 'How did you meet?' I asked. Hamish then told an extraordinary story about how they'd met through the Telegraph's internet dating service. Their first date was over lunch, after which they were so mutually blown away that a flurry of texts, phone calls and emails ensued before Hamish had to go on a business trip a week later, to New York. From New York, he decided he simply couldn't bear to be without Plum for a moment longer. He phoned her and asked her to marry him. She said yes. AFTER A WEEK. They hadn't even had a snog! It was like wandering into a copy of OK!

The chap sitting next to me, who I'd been having quite a good chat with, looked at me, his jaw agape. 'Well, d'you want to get married?' he asked. 'Yes, are you free on Tuesday?' I replied. He emailed the next day to apologise, saying he thought a proposal was the only option, and asked me out for a walk with his dog. So Jane Austen! He came and picked me up in his car and everything. Having had many jokes about how his car was massively uncool, second hand, etc, I was expecting him to turn up in a Fiat Punto. In fact, he drives a BMW. In what world is a BMW the height of uncool? Very odd.

Anyway, we had a very pleasant day together, and I seem to have seen more of him over the last few weeks than I normally would of my best friends (the hazard, perhaps, of not knowing many people here). As he runs his own business (a management consultancy) and only reads wanky business books, he thinks my entire life is glamorous and fascinating. Which, of course, is fine by me. I've decided that my role is that of his Cultural Advisor, and have been supplying books (which he emails to tell me he's started; I'm slightly worried he thinks of this as 'homework'), trips to the Festival and a film. (The Illusionist, if you're interested - it's set in Edinburgh, it's really beautiful and unbearably sad. It's not a great 'date movie', but I wanted to see it. And I was adamant, if only in my own head, that this was not a date).

Yes, for there is the great tragedy of the man who has come to be known in my office as The Mild Mannered Management Consultant. (A moniker that makes him sound like he has a superheroic alter-ego, who of course I would fancy MADLY). I just don't fancy him. File under 'gift horse, looking in the mouth of': he is nice, he is kind, he pays for everything (despite me begging him not to), he picks me up and he drives me home (he lives totally the other side of town). He emails, he texts (he even sent me a long text in French, when I was in France the other week), he thinks I'm great company. But he doesn't make me laugh, and that's a deal-breaker for me.

However, he hasn't yet made any moves in the 'passionate embrace' department. Which leaves me with a conundrum. Is he A/ playing a very long game, akin to a Chaucerian demonstration of courtly love? B/ just the kind of man who likes driving women around and paying for things, entirely platonically or C/ actually entirely friendless apart from me? It's all rather confusing. And no-one wants to be the person who embarks upon the 'Just Good Friends' chat whilst the other person is thinking, 'Ooh, get you! I wasn't aiming for anything other than Just Good Friends, actually'.

The unfortunate effect of having a love life that's akin to the Kalahari Desert, however, is that all my friends and family have decided that as someone's finally asked me out (more than once), he's The One, and I must marry him. I spoke to my mum and sister after our first 'date', who cackled like a pair of witches and immediately started planning the commissioning of special marital tartans (the MMMC is Scottish). 'Can't you force yourself to fancy him?' everyone keeps asking, as though I am actually a Jane Austen heroine, who needs urgent saving from a life of penury by a well-meaning, well-off but horribly dull vicar. No! No, I can't. That's kind of the point of a boyfriend: it's someone you fancy. Otherwise, they are just a friend.

I might have to start internet dating to take the pressure off.

Political Correctness gone, if not a bit mad, then fairly cracked out

I found out recently that you're not allowed to call 'temps' 'temps' any more. I've no idea why (it's not, after all, as bad as my habit of referring to work experience people as 'workies', is it?)

No, the PC term for temps now is 'mobile workers'. Which, if you are one, has the unfortunate effect of making you sound like a prostitute. Who owns a car.

Middle Class Dilemmas No. 2

What do you do when, in an effort to be healthy, you've chosen a salad from M&S, which you then finds contains not only a staggering 510 calories, but even worse a cholesterol-busting 32 grams of fat? That's, the labelling informs me, 46% of my daily allowance, lard-wise. All it consisted of was about 5 small bits of feta cheese, a few lumps of unripe avocado, a few seeds, some cous cous and a bit of dressing. I decided the bulk of the calories were in the dressing, so was sparing with that, but really, I might as well have just had half a pizza. Or a curry. It's no wonder people think dieting is a waste of time.

Putting the 'rail' into BR

As with many things in life - cricket, rugby, enormous greasy breakfasts - trains are a thing that we invented and now everyone else, pretty much worldwide, does them better than us. I travelled round a bit of India a few years ago with a friend and we marvelled at their superlative trains. The first one we got on, in Delhi, left exactly on time, and was the most comfortable form of transport we'd ever been on. 'Why can't British trains be like this?' we asked ourselves.

We were later to discover that the fact this train originated in Delhi, rather than coming from elsewhere, was crucial to its punctuality. The next train we got on was an awesome six hours late. Which, naturally, they don't announce when you arrive at the station - they just tell you in 20-minute bursts that it's delayed. There's only so long you can spend watching monkeys scampering around on a train platform before you feel bone-shatteringly bored. And that's before you climb aboard for a ten-hour journey. Still, in general the trains were great; it announced on the outside of each carriage who was supposed to be travelling therein (this seemed hugely organised. Largely pointless, but organised). The bunks in the sleeper carriages were perfectly comfortable. And it all probably cost about a fiver, no matter how far you were going (we'd got a company to book all our trains and hotels for us, so we didn't have any stress at all; certainly not the kind where it takes you three hours of internet searching to find your 'ideal' hotel, because the two duff reviews out of 20 have convinced you that every place must, in fact, be a hellhole; or you've discovered that on exactly the day you want to be there, the rooms have mysteriously trebled in price.)

When you travel on BR, however, which I'm increasingly going to have to do, there is nothing that fails to piss you off. My latest return ticket cost a whopping £183.50. I probably could've had a long weekend in Prague for that! Needless to say, because I hadn't booked the exact date and time of the return portion, I wasn't guaranteed a seat. 'I'll see if I can book it over the phone', I thought, on the morning I was due to travel. I spoke, of course, to someone in India. He ran through all the details - type of ticket, what it'd cost, when I'd bought it, when I wanted to travel - and then said he couldn't book me a seat. I'd have to go down to the ticket office to do that. (He probably had a quick chuckle to himself as he thought of his own, superior, trains). WHY? The whole process is automated. On computers. A computer which has exactly the same information in Delhi as it does in Durham. So, I had to cab it down from the office to the station in order to guarantee having enough time to buy lunch AND travel 3/4 of a mile down the platform in order to secure an unsecured seat.

Then, you get on the train and whip out your laptop, because you are a busy executive. Well, that's what everyone's pretending to be, whilst watching DVDs and catching up on gossip blogs (ahem). I'd like to point out that it's summer hours, so I'm technically off work. Screw you, The Man! Anyway, I digress. Despite the fact that they've managed to sort out free wi-fi (which is a total miracle to a Luddite like me), they haven't managed to put a plug socket next to every seat, just some of them. Why? Why do they do this? It's not like they're Ryan Air and they can charge you extra for the plug socket (in the same way that you don't get a refund on part of your ticket if you never manage to get a seat). There's nothing (as far as I know) to indicate socket-free sections. There's just the joy of a double seat with a table, almost immediately tempered by the lack of a socket, and thus the worry that your laptop is suddenly going to die, right in the middle of that very important Powerpoint presentation that you were struggling with.

Then there are the 'refreshments'. If I've paid the better part of £200 to get to Edinburgh and back (which takes at least four and a half hours each way), then is it really too much to ask that I can actually get a filter coffee on board? For less than the price of my mortgage? I'm sure if you take out a second mortgage and upgrade to First Class, then you've probably got Mr Arabica himself grinding your beans, asking you exactly how frothy you want your milk and making little pictures of you in cocoa powder on top of it. But here in Cattle, even if you go to the refreshment area, rather than taking your chances with the trolley (and I, on this journey, am perched within spitting distance of this culinary oasis, which looked, to my naive eyes, to have an actual coffee machine), what you end up with is powdered coffee. Powdered coffee and that shit milk in tiny plastic containers, the opening of which is guaranteed to leave you with spurty milk everywhere (and which you always have to use two of. Why don't they double the size of the frigging things?) For this hateful beverage, I got charged £1.70. £1.70!

I wanted to throw the fucking thing back in the server's face. I know it's not her fault, but a small piece of her soul must surely die every time she enacts this transaction. 'Hi, I've added some water, which seems to be at the ambient temperature of the sun, to some granules. Yes, you have to add your own milk and take your chances it's not going to end up down your front. Yes, you'll also have to either balance the two irritating half-amounts-of-what-you-need,-milk-wise and a stirrer on the top of the coffee, or have an annoying bag. Which will be too much hassle to recycle, so you'll just throw it away, adding to the mountain of landfill. Can I have £1.70? [Please don't ask me why it's this much, I haven't had any training in dealing with Rail Rage.]'

Is it any wonder that, even though I love travelling on trains, the time difference is negligible (once you've got yourself to/through/from the airport) and there are all the eco-benefits of going by rail, the £35 Easyjet fare looks really, really appealing? Yeah, they charge you for baggage, but most of the time I'm only going to need a wheely suitcase. And yes, going through airports is a nightmare if you're both guilt-ridden and neurotic, what with stressing about your shoes, your belt, your keys, your phone, your toiletries and the fact that you accidentally forgot that you had a free badge from an Edinburgh Festival comedy show in your handbag. But I'm starting to think it's a small price to pay for the fact that you can get a coffee, an actual, proper, perfectly potable coffee, before you get on board. Even if you don't have a designated seat on the plane either.

Culture Vulture

My less-than-laugh-a-minute dates with Cheerful James are currently being eschewed for actual-laugh-a-minute dates with comedians. (Is it wrong that, because CJ had to cancel one of our sessions because of illness - his, not mine, which was a turn up for the books - I am actually missing having various bits of me aching all the time? Yes, it is wrong. It's thoroughly aberrant.) My comedic 'dates' are almost as sweaty, though, given that they mostly take place in extraordinarily hot and cramped venues for an hour at a time. Last night's was in some sort of container thing and even at 8.00pm on a temperate day, was pretty grim by the end.

However, so far, all my Festival events have been at least a solid 3.5 out of 5, I'd say. I've seen: Mark Watson - overpriced at £18 for an hour, but some very funny bits, including the part where he leaped off the stage and chased a couple who left after ten minutes. Turned out they were in the wrong show, which, as he said, was quite an achievement, given we'd queued for about twenty minutes outside; then queued some more in the venue; then got ourselves settled whilst Mark tapped out very funny messages on a screen; then the screen changed to a massive visual that said, 'Do I Know You?' (the title of the show) and 'Mark Watson'. With, naturally, Mark Watson then standing underneath it. I try to read his blog every day, and basically I love him, so the medium score I'm tempted to give was based mainly on the fact that I'd been to see him trying out material for this show at Christmas time in the Soho Theatre, so was familiar with quite a lot of the material. (And also that an hour's not enough - might just have to shell out for one of his tour dates later in the year, which will be longer).

Laura Solon - I saw her last year, and thought her character-based one-woman play was very funny. Perhaps because it was based around publishing, and seemed uncannily accurate. This year's was more hit and miss (a story about an ex-model turned TV presenter trying to produce a documentary about a legendary owl on an island called Steven) and had an oddly old crowd in. Perhaps because it was on a Saturday afternoon? Who knows. Anyway, enlivened by a spotting of Stephen Merchant on the way out. (Also seen: Frank Skinner, who looks freakishly young. Some cosmetic attention, there? So unlikely, but seemingly true.)

Matt Green - also saw him for the first time last year. My friend and I agreed afterwards he should be much more famous, as he's sweetly funny. (We also agreed we both wanted to be his friend. He's so cute!). He's currently most recognisable as the supermarket staffer who grabs a box of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes from a customer, shakes it and says, 'You can't have that one, it's broken'.

Dan Antopolski - never seen him live before, but a great show. Very daft, loads of terrible puns (which I love) and weirdly Matt Green was sitting right behind me! Also, a couple of fantastic songs, including a rap at the end centred around those laser things you can get at B&Q which measure distances - this incorporated an inspired bit where the awesome 80s Mr. Mister soft rock extravaganza 'Kyrie Eleison' was repurposed as 'Carry a laser' and he killed himself laughing. I always like it when comedians make themselves genuinely crack up.

Josh Howie - took a punt on this as I got given one of his flyers literally as my sister was saying on the phone to me, 'You should go and see Josh Howie, he's good' and his show was due to start ten minutes later. Cleverer puns, and a slightly odd show about the years he and his girlfriend (now wife) spent living with his gran because she had a large house and they couldn't afford a deposit for a flat. It felt like he might be better without a 'theme', which was ultimately a bit restrictive. I think I'm right in saying that he's Ab Fab PR supremo/fruitbat Lynne Franks' son. Which is a nugget of trivia that I like - he's perfectly normal looking (verging on nerdy), so the idea of him being a male Saffy is rather pleasing.

Tonight I'm off to see a play that's about boxing (will it be hard hitting? Arf), before more comedy on Saturday/Sunday and next Tuesday and Wednesday, when I've got a few things booked. I'm also enjoying taking unfeasible numbers of cabs everywhere (three yesterday) because they're so cheap compared with London. It's so decadent and I feel like a BBC3 talent scout or something. Well, apart from the fact that I'm paying for nearly all my tickets, and they're getting everything for free. Including the cabs. It's at this time of the year when you feel you're definitely working in the wrong bit of the entertainment industry...

Inception

I saw Christopher Nolan's mind-bending film recently - and then felt I had to remind everyone I know that he was in my A-level French class - a fact that might be more exciting for people if I could say that I actually spoke to him at all in those two years. But of course I didn't, because at the time I was mortifyingly shy and couldn't speak to anyone. Bit ironic that I ended up with a job where I regularly had to pitch to and work with quite a few big-time-famous-types, which required high levels of 'fake it till you make it' confidence. But that's all by the by - I am very happy that Chris Nolan now has a stellar career, whilst I'm still holding out for a lottery win and, frankly, giving up working at all.

Anyway, aside from a somewhat depressing compare and contrast in the career stakes, the film has understandably made me worry about my dream life, in the same way that for a month after I'd seen The Trueman Show, I worried that my entire life was being faked for TV. Because since the move north, my dreams have become just ludicrously odd. Someone surely must be messing about with them for nefarious purposes.

I've had a spate of them in which an ex lurks about, being moody and ignoring me (much as he did when we were going out, actually), with a vague air of menace, like a watered-down Moriarty. In the last one he was about 15 feet tall and dressed like Marilyn Manson (with those ludicrous shoes and everything). I dreamed that I was scuba diving and faced with a Great White shark; however, the shark that got me was a massive, googly-eyed thing that looked like Marty Feldman with six rows of teeth (I've never been scuba diving and now I'm certainly never going to). Then within the last week, I've had another brace of celebrity dreams: first up, a dream in which JEREMY CLARKSON chatted me up in a spectacularly creepy way. I woke up in a cold sweat, nearly screaming. Clarkson! My absolute bete-noire. I'm still haunted by a 4-sheet poster campaign on the Tube advertising his loathesome books, which exhorted his fans to 'Read Clarkson. Think Clarkson. Act Clarkson' - a truly terrifying manifesto.

Last night's dream involved me attending a party with My Future Husband David Mitchell. Yay! Despite the fact it didn't seem to be fancy dress, we were both dressed as cowboys. I was managing to be a total twunt by a/ quoting bits of his sketch show back at him and b/ texting a friend updates on how it was all going, on DM's mobile, as the battery on mine had died. Even in the dream, I was thinking, 'God, what if I don't manage to delete these and he reads them? He's going to think I'm mental'. The dream ended with him having an epileptic fit, and me standing around feeling useless.

Why is my subconscious so unsupportive? Dreams are supposed to be fun - you imagine you can fly, you come up with brilliant business ideas, you wake up humming 'Yesterday' and realise, if you're Paul McCartney, that no-one has actually written that song before. Mine just involve me being made to feel small by an ex and then feeling like an idiot in front of celebs. I might have to hit up the old school network and see if I can get Chris Nolan to write me better scripts.

The culture show

As all media types will be aware, the Edinburgh Festival is in full swing. As I suspected might happen, when you're actually living here, if you avoid the area around the Pleasance entirely, then you can practically remain oblivious to the whole thing. In previous years, when I've been up for a holiday and gone to five shows a day, then tried to be all spontaneous at night (aka 'drink like a wino till four a.m'), it's felt like the whole city is obsessed by the Festival and that everyone is spending every waking hour attending shows, reading about shows, booking tickets for shows and then discussing with you what shows you've seen. Or which comedians you've spotted loitering in the Pleasance courtyard and wondered whether if you tried to talk to them, they'd be welcoming or narky and dismissive.

However, if you're a/ working and b/ have been so slack that you haven't actually booked anything to see till week two of the Festival (and right at the end of week two at that), then it's just like someone's suddenly bussed in an extra 10,000 people. Most of whom seemed to be on the Royal Mile when I went out to get lunch the other day. Any female performer under 25 and promoting their show seems to be dressed either as a wench or a tart. There are a lot of basque/fishnet combos which probably seem an excellent idea at 9.00am when it's sunny, but less fabulous when at 2.00pm every day you're deluged by the daily monsoon rain for half an hour. Also, if you thought your tart gear was startlingly original and was going to make your show stand out, then sadly it won't - you're now one of 3,000 young women wandering the city dressed as a slapper. (Insert 'and that doesn't include the ones who live here and dress like that normally' gag here).

So far, the only Festival show I've been to was a baroque music concert in a church - very grown-up. The last music event I went to was a quartet in a gallery, which I'd thought was going to be quite restful. In fact, it was an hour and a half of them playing modern compositions which sounded like someone throwing pots and pans down a stairwell - and at such a frantic pace that one of them reduced his bow to a load of shredded string. I quite wanted to tear my ears off - and when I saw a couple who were sitting over the other side of the gallery indulging in a really OTT PDA session, I wanted to poke myself in the eyes too.

Luckily this week's music was much better - some stirring choral action, and some excellent medieval-style brass instruments in the mix too. And the tickets were free! Result. Next up: Mark Watson, Dan Antopolski, a play about boxing, Laura Solon's new show and Matt Green, which should be a good mash-up of the familiar and the new. I'll be in the swing of things, but without the chronic hangovers of yesteryear, which is probably a good balance.

Fat(s) Furry Catpuss

I was very sad to hear today of the demise of my friend Dan's cat, Fatima, with whom I enjoyed many a week in the Barnes/Mortlake area, when Dan was away on holiday and Fatima was not. Fats (who was in fact positively slimline) was mildly crazy, shed hair like a bastard, had an insatiable appetite and wasn't really much for being stroked or sitting on laps, but she will be much missed.



In tribute, I think Dan's 'Under the Paw' profile of Fats couldn't be bettered: http://bit.ly/bJJUQO

Awarding myself a Chufty Badge

Typically, the weather has decided to really give it with both barrels, just as I was about to leave the office (persistent drizzle will, I suspect, morph into bucketing-it-down very soon, as it did earlier today). So I thought I'd postpone the inevitable trudge through town trying to hide under my tiny umbrella. I am, however, going out for a drink with a POTENTIAL FRIEND, which is exciting indeed. And another POTENTIAL FRIEND has just offered me complimentary tickets for some baroque music do-dad on Tuesday night (he's doing the PR for it). Not to mention the sister of an old family friend, who's invited me to a dinner party on Thursday! Gracious, I'm practically Jaime Winstone or Daisy Lowe (both of whom seem to be ubiquitous party fodder in the pages of the tabs/ES mag and the like, without anyone being that sure about what they do. Still, they're both very pretty in their various ways, and I'm sure are largely harmless. They certainly were at the party I saw them at. Ha - just because I'm not in London any more doesn't mean I can't still name-drop).

I am also avoiding moving from my chair because earlier I had another session with Cheerful James, the King of Exercise and I'm now crippled. Having not done anything for a week, since my free session with the Rival Personal Trainer (I think Cheerful James was a bit jealous when I said I'd been putting my biceps about with another man; he told me the way his rival had taught me how to swing a kettle bell around was all wrong, for a start), I was expecting the worst, and he certainly delivered. I don't think it really helps when you've eaten breakfast at 9.30am, you start the session at 2.00pm, and you haven't eaten anything in the meantime. That's my excuse, anyway.

The session did at least start well, with CJ telling me that my hair was looking particularly shiny today. Aww! I love him! Well, I did until the point that he made me do something simple yet thigh-shatteringly awful on the cross-trainer. I then nearly had a heart attack on the rowing machine; I wanted to give up, but didn't have the breath available to puff out, 'I want to give up'. Still, that's what it's all about; paying someone to stand over you to force you to carry on, when your natural instinct is to have given up at least half an hour ago.

I can see why people get really into it, though - having someone act like you're the most important person in the world, and nothing could be more key to them than blasting your back fat into oblivion (and that this is a worthwhile use of an hour of their time) is nice. And being told you're doing really well - even if you suspect that you're not, particularly - is also nice. It's not that often you get told you're doing really well after the age of about, what, ten? So, in honour of my friend Ed, who often used to tell me I had lovely shiny hair, I have awarded myself my first ever Chufty Badge for Exercise. A Chufty Badge is something that Ed invented; it's a self-awarded gong when you feel particularly proud of an achievement. Perhaps especially a fairly minor achievement.

Now I just have to fill in Cheerful James's questionnaire on what my 'goals' are. Given that they run to such general, unspecific things like 'lose weight and tone up', which is what everyone puts, one of my friends suggested, 'Become the oldest person on the 2012 GB Olympic team'. I'm tempted, just to amuse myself. Especially if I can aim to be on the curling team - as everyone knows curling is basically just really enthusiastic housework, but on ice.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Eagle-eyed readers will clock the fact that there were no blog entries in July. No! None whatsoever. Is this down to a life of endless socialising in my new city? A lack of time due to hunting down the best haggis and munching on deep-fried Mars Bars? Of turning down handsome, kilt-wearing swains with a polite, 'Thank you, kind sir, but I am new in town and a lady must protect her reputation'? No, of course it's not - it's the usual idleness, combined with being a bit knackered, what with having a new job an' all.

So, to catch up, here's a run-down of What's New at Purple Towers (now with added tartan):
1/ I took my vow that I was going to 'walk everywhere' when I moved rather too literally in the first week, when I wasn't working. I think I averaged at least four hours a day. I somewhat regretted giving my trainers to the second-hand shop before I left London.
2/ As a result, I am now the proud owner of new, go-faster-and-tone-while-you're-at-it trainers which have 'unstable' soles which are supposed to... oh, I don't know, somehow make you use muscles that have lain dormant for years to counteract this wibbly-wobbliness. Shove in a cobbled street every five minutes and I'd imagine that the effect is trebled at the very least. They make you bounce along like Tigger, so even if the weather's not exactly matching up to the summer that everyone else in the country appears to be having, it's hard not to feel jaunty.
3/ I'm now walking 40 minutes to work, and 40 minutes back again. Yes, every day, even, one day, in a massive downpour. I have to carry a backpack (again, newly bought) to carry my 'proper' shoes in. Tackling steep, long hills in heels is not to be advised. I now blend in with the locals, all of whom have backpacks with 'walking to work' shoes and 'being at work' shoe options contained within. It's the first step on a slippery slope that ends up with me clad in Goretex coats and with a pair of sturdy walking boots. The other day, I caught myself looking in the window of an outdoors shop and thinking, 'Hmm, that Northface jacket looks rather appealing'.
4/ All of this, however, is not sufficient exercise for the brand new me. No indeed, not only have I joined the gym, and am actually going because I pass it on the way home, and my only other evening option is watching TV, but I have also signed up with a PERSONAL TRAINER. A personal trainer! Me, the girl who was always picked last for teams at school! Who didn't even achieve BAGA 4 (seriously, could my PE teachers not have tried a bit harder to salvage my self-esteem by just giving me that? It's not like they would've been struck off the register or anything).
Yes, James from Belfast is being paid, at great personal expense, for ten hours of his time in one-hour chunks, to transform me from a sofa slug into Linda Hamilton in the Terminator films. I'm not sure he knows that's quite what he's supposed to be doing; I think he'd settle for me not laughing every time he tells me how to do something because the idea of me doing actual, proper, presided-over exercise, is so ludicrous. But so far a/ I'm not hating it (which is a major result) and b/ by dint of doing tricep dips and push-ups on a Power Plate, I can at least get the lids off jam jars. I'm sure there will be more about my Damascus-style conversion to exercise soon.
5/ Yup, the weather is rubbish. On any given day, if it's less than six degrees cooler than London, I find myself a tad disappointed. It is grey, it is drizzly, there is staggering pea-souper mist last seen in Dickensian times. Then it will suddenly be REALLY HOT AND SUNNY for twenty minutes (confusion reigns) before going back to being drizzly and grey again. Apparently, they have summer in Edinburgh in June, and then that's your lot. However, as has been noted previously, this is fine by me. Having just spent two days using the Tube on a trip to London, in not spectacularly hot weather, if I'd stayed put till July 5th, I'd have gone mental and done something murderous, so utterly unbalanced would the heat and humidity have made me.
6/ My office is surrounded by a quantity of tartan shops that is, frankly, comedic.
7/ Visits to London will partly be treasured because of their lack of bagpipe music. There is a shop I pass twice daily which pumps out a tinny bagpipe version of 80s classic 'You're the Voice' which will erode my sanity very quickly indeed.
8/ I miss the variety of London architecture. Everything in Edinburgh kind of looks the same - it's like they took a look at the average day and went, 'How can we make it look as though the sky and the earth are as one? I know! Build everything out of dark grey stone!' I'll get used to it, but it's weird when you come from a city that looks as though it's been assembled by a mad student who wants to try out everything they learned at architecture school, all in one street.
9/ I have not had haggis yet, or tried deep-fried Mars Bars. I do, however, pass a flashing neon sign every day advertising the latter, should I feel the need to indulge.
10/ NO-ONE has called me 'Hen' yet. Why not?! This is an outrage. Everyone is, however, very friendly, apart, ironically, from the man who teaches the yoga class I go to on a Sunday morning. He seems to be very angry about having to teach us, gives the impression that everyone in his class is doing everything wrong and is, in short, extremely unrelaxing. I miss my Streatham yoga teacher, who was awesome.
11/ My favourite Edinburgh firm so far is a lawyers' outfit called McSporrans.
12/ I'm trying to blend in by eating porridge for breakfast every day. I'm making it in a microwave, but I'm sure it still counts. No desire to drink whisky just yet, though.
13/ Having 'Scottish' telly is still confusing me. Ergo, I've gone into default mode, and am watching re-runs of Friends for the 808th time. The irony of not really having any actual friends here yet is not lost on me. I also had to suffer the episode the other day where Rachel Freaks Out Because She's 30. Try turning 40, love, I thought darkly.
14/ I'm looking forward to complaining about all the horrid Festival People cluttering up the city now that I'm no longer one of Them and am instead (almost) one of Us. I love a good moan.
15/ I have found the best lunch known to man - and all for £2.50. There's a cafe across the road from the office which is populated entirely by old people and students. It serves soup and the fluffiest, most divine cheese scone you will ever have encountered, for less than the cost of a f*cking Starbucks Frappuccino. It is apparently a Christian cafe and I think God has blessed the cheese scones especially. I know, cheese scones + paying for a personal trainer = doolally madness, but I don't care.

So, after a month, I reckon I'm doing OK; I have waged a daily battle with my bed, ('Not on the bed!' still rings in my ears) and I'm trying to think of myself as A Person Who Does Exercise. I even went to the gym on my day off in London, and somehow managed to wangle a free session with a Personal Trainer. Albeit one who, when I said I'd been a member for a number of years, asked, with admirable bluntness, why he'd never seen me before, given he'd been working there since it opened. 'Because I didn't use to come very often!' I trilled gaily, to a look of utter confusion. PTs don't seem to understand that you can pay staggering amounts to remain a member of a gym, whilst doing one yoga class a week and occasionally using the steam room. Fools! Everyone knows that's how gyms make their money. Especially my new gym, which is the size of a football pitch, with gleaming machines as far as the eye can see and exercise studios which are twice the size of my old flat. It's sort of daunting, but at least you don't feel like people are looking at you when you're quarter of a mile away from the nearest person. Next up: booking Festival festivities and establishing good/cheap/good and cheap bars and restaurants to show off my local knowledge when friends come to visit. And making some new chums to replace my Friends.

'Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed'

When you're Moving to a New Life in a New Country, you imagine checking in at an airport, with enormous, J-Lo-style trunks full of clothes, furniture that is too important or sentimental to leave behind in Blighty and gifts for the natives. I may have watched Out of Africa a few times too many and substituted 'an airport' for 'the docks where your ocean-going liner is moored'. You also imagine a collection of well-dressed well-wishers, clutching hankies and smiling bravely through the tears.

Either way, you don't really think you'll be sitting under the departures board at Kings Cross on one of the hottest days of the year, with a rucksack you've had since your early 20s, a small wheely suitcase and a large canvas bag that was free with a magazine five years ago (hitherto used for the recycling), representing all your worldly possessions. On your own. The friend I was staying with prior to my departure had had to leave at 8.30am to get a train to Bath for a hen weekend. So I'd spent my last morning in London tossing things into whatever packing receptacle would accommodate them, whilst sighing - it felt as though I'd been packing for months, rather than a two-week at-home-and-at-work blitz - shuffling aimlessly from one room to the next and feeling a bit lonely.

I'd battled my way to the taxi office, building up a hefty sweat in the course of five minutes' of dragging my possessions along the pavement. I dropped my keys off at the estate agents' with only a minor twinge of guilt as I thought about the selection of random items that I'd left in the hallway of my former home, which I was supposed to take to the second-hand shop the day before. But which I'd been too debilitated by a leaving party hangover to face sorting out.

(As a sidebar, I'd had the most awesome work leaving do in the world, ever. A feat of organisation, planning, design, speech-writing, love, care and attention to detail, it featured, in no particular order: a speech which my boss had actually tried out on one of my colleagues beforehand - which had bullet points and everything; a fantastic card in which I'd been immortalised as Kerry Katona, for reasons which I won't go into; a print-out of the email one of my colleagues had sent to the designer of the card, asking him to 'Tango me up a bit' so that my face would match Ms Katona's hands in the pic; fantastic presents; the most amazing turn-out in the pub; a hilarious pub quiz that was ALL ABOUT ME - my ego shot off the scale; a selection of past colleagues and a This is Your Life-style mystery guest - my friend Julie, who was over from Canada - and then free champagne from the landlord, Paul. If I hadn't been feeling overwelmed before, then I properly was by the end. It was one of the loveliest things that anyone's ever done for me, and a Top 5 in the Nights to Remember stakes).

All of which was a good excuse to think, 'Ah, sod it' and leave my new tenants to wonder at the complexity of an absent landlady who leaves behind a purple plastic filing drawer, a copy of an old Sex and the City book (commemorating the series, not the grim cash-in films), a container full of spices and vitamin supplements, a large, green, plush toy hippo that I'd inexplicably stolen from an ex-boyfriend and a very tired-looking winter coat. This was added to the variety of possessions and clothes that now reside in the basements and cupboards of three of my friends in London, ensuring that no-one will forget me - no, you shall be confronted with the remnants of my Clutter Collection on a daily basis! Sorry about that.

Anyway, Kings Cross, midday on a hot Saturday in July was suddenly transformed by the appearance of my sister, her boyfriend, my sister's dog and an entire posse of friends and family that she'd organised to be there. My friend John was joined by Carolina (she of Operation Clearout), Emma and her three daughters (my godchildren - all of whom looked confused by the fact that they were at a train station, yet weren't going anywhere, and weren't quite sure why it was a big deal that I was).

It was quite a party atmosphere - cue lots of 'team photos' taken by an obliging stranger. Suddenly, I felt as though I were a Victorian explorer on my way to paddle down (up?) the Amazon. Especially when I got my entourage to cart various bits of baggage onto the train for me. Before I hastily shooed them off, terrified that the doors would shut and they'd end up trapped on the train and also starting a new life in Edinburgh. Or at least Peterborough. Although with pretty much just a rucksack and a bag of shoes, perhaps it was more like being waved off by my extended family for the gap year I never had.

The other two girls at my table must've been quite perplexed by a group of 30-somethings and three small children waving at me through the window as the train drew away, with me a blubbering mess. Expecially as Carolina had made me a packed lunch, with Tupperware and a Petit Filous and everything, which made me start crying all over again. Of course, being English, I didn't explain to my table mates that my Richard Curtis moment was because I was starting a New Life in a New Country. I just whipped my phone out and started texting my friends and family, telling them I was missing them already.

Trains and planes and automobiles

Get ready, World, I'm about to start blogging from the TRAIN! How modern is that? Well, it would be about a million times more modern if I hadn't spent the last half hour trying to figure out why EastCoast's wi-fi (whose connection, the icon tells me smugly, is 'excellent') wouldn't log me into any given website. So, I tried the classic solution of 'turn it off and on again' and voila! It works. After first logging me into the back end bit of the site in Swedish, then revealing another set of comments for me to moderate, 75% of which were in Chinese. I have no idea why I have so many Chinese commenters - it's not like I didn't switch my culinary allegiances to Thai about two decades ago, and that was pretty much my only knowledge of, or affiliation with, China and its numerous peoples. Apart from the fact my friend Michelle cycled round a large part of the country relatively recently - but she has her own, vastly successful blog detailing that, so I doubt there's a connection.

(Talking of connections, I'd post the link to Michelle's blog if I didn't think that looking for it would mean that the above paragraph would inevitably be lost in the ether). But I can assure you it exists, is very excellent and has about a bajillion followers.

Anyway, for those who're used to knowing exactly where they are at all times by dint of sat navs or their iPhones, and feel unnerved by not knowing where other people are, I can tell you that I've just gone through Darlington. Which, if my eyes didn't deceive me, has a door marked 'Chaplain' on the platform. I used to live near Darlington - I don't remember it as being bad enough to warrant actual religious comfort on either entering it or preparing to leave it.

And I would walk 500 more

More reasons to be cheerful about leaving London. Last night I had one of those evenings which you tend to write off when you've been in a city for about eighteen years, but when you're just about to leave said city, it becomes more of a carefully presented package of everything that you find irritating about it.

I'd suggested going to a fancy-ish gastropub with a friend - I'd read some great reviews of it (Fay Maschler gave it four stars!), it wasn't far from where I live, and I could walk there from the office. Problem number one was the fact that the street it's on, the South Lambeth Road, is very long. And I'd started off at the wrong end of it. If I'd gone to Stockwell tube, then it was literally five minutes' walk round the corner. From Pimlico, however, it took me about forty minutes - which, in high heat and high wedges, wasn't ideal. I arrived feeling frazzled. 'Still', I thought, 'lovely food awaits me, hurrah!'

The menu, however, was shorter than Ronnie Corbett when he's sitting down. There was nothing I particularly wanted to eat. This is so disappointing when you've revved yourself up into a froth of culinary anticipation all day. One of the specials for a starter was 'radishes with butter'. Radishes with butter? How the hell is that a dish? I hate radishes anyway. The other specials were a chicken for two (with chips - does that come in a basket?) and some lamb thing that required at least five people to eat it. In the meantime, we were brought two very small pieces of slightly dry white bread, and a miniscule amount of butter. I was also on tap water, as I'd ruined myself at a leaving party on Saturday night and booze was no longer my friend.

I gazed at the menu. It was going to have to be two starters and a pudding. I chose some chilled pea and mint soup and smoked salmon with cucumber and horseradish. The soup arrived in a shot glass, with a teaspoon. I was being charged £3.60 for something that surely can't have cost any more than 20p to make. And we had to ask for more bread (this time, two pieces of brown - better, but still: bring us more bloody bread!) I think it's the '60' on that price that really wound me up - £3.50 is an unreasonable price for a shot glass of chilled soup, but the extra 10p seems to be totally thumbing its nose at you. 'Yes, we'll charge you a really stupidly inflated price', it seemed to be saying. The smoked salmon was fine, if what you want is a plate of smoked salmon, with some tiddly bits of cucumber and some horseradish cream. They could've bothered to make it look nice, or provided some, you know, bread with it or something, though. All the reviews had raved about such exotic treats as foie gras toasties (surely the ideal foodstuff for my limbo-land week between South and North; poncey Southern crap expertly melded with the down to earth fayre that I'm expecting north of the border?) But no, I ended up with three mouthfuls of cold soup, some smoked salmon and bread, and a scoop of pretty ordinary ice cream. Also served in a small glass. Had they got chronically over-excited in the glassware section of IKEA or something?

I'm not exactly a stranger to London pricing after all this time, or to being overcharged for mediocre food (I did, after all, go to boarding school, where the food is resolutely horrible, despite the thousands that your parents are paying in order for you to attend). But such high prices for what's essentially a not-particularly-gussied-up-gastro in Stockwell? On a really horrible main road? That I do object to.

And then the women's loos were horrible as well. Why on earth do gastropubs serve pseudo-upmarket, fancypants food, and then not bother to do up the loos? It's a real disgrace. I read somewhere the other day that if the lighting in the women's loos in restaurants is flattering, then the women will stay for dessert. And if it's not, then they insist on leaving. Which I can well believe. So they're not only being lazy by not doing up the loos, they're also losing a lot of money and custom every year. I'm sure I'm not alone in favouring returning to restaurants, bars and gastropubs where the loos are nice.

All in all, I felt pretty cheated. And then I spent twenty minutes waiting for a bus to get home, because the driver was changing shift, and the stop where he was supposed to meet his replacement was closed, so he went wandering off to look for the next driver. I finally got on, only to be chucked off again ten minutes later at Brixton. 'Would you all like to get on the bus behind this one?' the driver asked. Not really, thanks, I've just waited twenty minutes to get on this one. I did as I was told, and spotted lots of seats on the back row. 'Seats!' I thought, 'at least I've got a seat.' (Shot) glass half full attitude, there. I sat down and promptly burned the back of my legs on the metal part under the seat, which had got searingly hot. Bloody, bloody London! Even the buses are out to get you.

Still, on the plus side, I'm now loving the idea of Edinburgh even more, as my new boss wasn't going to be there when I start next week, which she thought would be weird for me, so I've now got three days off, which I'm being paid for! Result.

I would walk 500 miles

So last time, I thought that London perhaps didn't want to let me go (the mice, the locking myself in my flat, the lack of offers from potential tenants, the raft of friends shouting, 'DON'T GO!' at me). All this has now changed (apart from the friends shouting, 'DON'T GO!' at me. It's a bit tricky, that, having accepted the job, signed on for not-one-but-two flats and given the keys to my flat to the estate agents). But don't think I don't appreciate it, because I really do.

Yes, it's true, I've rented out the flat, which, despite the fact that my estate agent assured me would be the outcome of employing them, still feels like somewhat of a miracle. Four days had passed. They'd had twelve viewings (twelve!) and yet no-one wanted my flat, despite the fact it was in possession of a 'resplendent' sitting room. The shock of seeing my flat in the front window of KFH as I went home one evening was only eclipsed by their description of my sitting room as 'resplendent'. If only I'd known! I'd have spent my time eating caviar and feeling like Marie Antoinette, rather than eating pasta and pesto and feeling pretty ordinary. It's a wonder what a velvet sofa and a light fitting from John Lewis with a vaguely chandelier-y feel can do for a room's prospects.

The estate agent was clearly panicking. I was thinking, 'Bloody hell, mate, it's only been four days - plus I've got two more weeks before I move and I haven't started packing yet - give it a chance'. He was making noises about dropping the price. Gah, if only I'd had that kitchen floor put down two years ago, like I was supposed to, instead of two weeks before I was due to leave! But then, I received The Call from one of the estate agent's colleagues. 'I'veGotATenantForYouAndThey'llPayTheFullPriceButTheyHaveToMoveInThisWeekend', she garbled. 'Huh?' 'There's a couple who really want your flat. They're desperate [ah, so they don't adore my resplendent sitting room and want to have a wonderful time eating caviar and feeling like Marie Antoinette, they just really, really need to move. That's a bit disappointing, frankly]. They'll pay the full asking price. But they need to move in this weekend, not next weekend. Can you do that?'

Hmm. Well, let's see. My plan had been: throw as much crap into boxes as possible and shove it into the boot of my parents' car this Friday. Then spend bits of the weekend and next week finishing off (although probably, let's face it, next Friday. With a corking hangover from a leaving party and a matter of hours before my train to Edinburgh was due to leave). On the plus side, I'd be getting a week's extra rent. On the minus side, I now had to find another place to stay, and would have to really kick the kitchen floor man's butt, get carpet cleaners booked in, and, um, pack everything. A quick phone call to my friend Vicky who lives literally across the road from me, and who has a spare room, ascertained that yes, she could put me up. Mission Impossible was about to be launched.

'Yes', I said to the estate agent, 'I can do it. Let's do it!' Her relief was audible (actually, she was probably just thinking, 'YES! A week's extra commission! I am KFH's Employee of the Week!') This will be fine, I thought. Fine! I only have to fill in a billionty forms (half of them asking things like, 'What's the make and model of your hoover?' 'What about your hob?' 'And the oven?' 'Fridge?' 'Dishwasher?' 'Iron?' I'm lying about the last one, but I've never met such a bunch of Label Mabels, honestly). Then call Allied Carpets three times ('ARE YOU COMING ON SATURDAY MORNING OR NOT? YOU'LL BE BRINGING HARDBOARD AND LINO WITH YOU, LIKE I'VE PAID YOU FOR, YES?'). Then find a carpet cleaning company. Then get someone to paint the bathroom, put up a smoke alarm and paint the back wall of my sitting room (thank God for my endlessly patient cousin). Then pack! Like I said, fine - after all, it's a one bedroom flat and I'm letting it furnished, how hard can that be?

I spent all of Friday and ¾ of Saturday trying desperately to put all my possessions into boxes, bags, and the backs of cars. By the time my parents arrived on Friday afternoon, I'd already had a trip to the second hand book shop and two trips to the second hand shop (on top of, I think, two previous trips to the book shop and at least four trips to the second hand shop). This time I took what must have amounted to thousands of pounds' worth of CDs. In common with the hundreds of photos I threw out, because I couldn't bear to haul around pictures of people I'm no longer in touch with, dating back to 1994 (not to mention the collection of photos of me with massive blonde permed hair and an alarming selection of violently-patterned MC Hammer trousers), the CDs had to go. I decided that if, in the future, I actually missed owning such varied delights as Sting's greatest hits and some mid-period Jah Wobble, then I could probably download them from iTunes.

I know they say it's one of the top five stressful things to do, but it bears repeating: I absolutely hate moving. I always think, ‘oh, I don’t really have that much stuff’ and I honestly felt I'd made a huge effort on the recycling/second hand shop front (something I hadn’t managed to do last time I moved), but it was a ruddy nightmare. Thank God my parents managed to get loads of stuff in the boot of their car; then my friend Claire managed to get most of the rest of it in the back of her car; she’s got a miraculously huge basement area, so it’s all shoved into a corner of that (for me to totally forget about).

All that remains is to re-pack all the stuff that I’m taking up to Edinburgh, as of course by the end of the packing process on Saturday, I’d despaired and was throwing things randomly into orange recycling bags, as the industrial-strength black bin liners I’d bought had mysteriously vanished. I was also dealing with a kitchen floor-fitter who was the most narky, miserable man I’ve ever had to deal with (he looked at the kitchen and went, ‘It’s very narrow, isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s a galley kitchen, they tend to be like that’ – also, someone from Allied had actually been round to measure it, so I didn’t know why it was such a surprise. Plus, London kitchens are generally pretty small, it can’t be the smallest one you’ve seen. And it’s not my fault you fit floors for a living, mate.) The carpet cleaning man, who was Polish and very nice, clearly thought I was insane, as he arrived at about 9.30am, by which stage I’d cleared the sitting room, but the bedroom still looked like a bombsite. I assured him it’d be fine and continued manically throwing things around. Thank God Vicky came over to help, as I was also panic-cleaning, as I hadn’t had time to book in a proper cleaner, and also couldn’t afford it. We just squeaked it by the time the woman came round to do the inventory at 3.45pm. I think the tenants were due to start moving in an hour later.

So, the answer to the FAQ's is now as follows:
1/ Hurrah, I’ve sorted not one but two flats in Edinburgh
2/ AND I’ve rented out my flat! Yay
3/ Relocating is massively expensive when you have to rent out a flat through an agent. If I offer you a job in the future, then bear that in mind
4/ Yes, I’m bricking it about the new job, and not knowing anyone in Edinburgh
5/ Please don’t ask me if I’m going to miss everyone – I’ll just start crying again. I’m a total mess – even England being woeful at football nearly set me off, despite the fact I loathe football, footballers, craggy-faced idiot-hole Fabio Capello and those vuvu-wotsits that someone was blowing most of yesterday evening in the house next door
6/ If by ‘are you all packed?’ you mean, ‘does your flat looked the tidiest it’s looked in the entirety of you being there, because all the stuff was moved out of it, the carpets were steam cleaned, the kitchen floor finally got installed and you actually cleaned the oven?’ The answer is a really big ‘yes’

To do, or not to do, that is the question

So, yes, I've been a very negligent blogger of late. Apologies to anyone who reads this who has assumed that I've a/ moved to Scotland and decided to leave all of my previous life behind me or b/ collapsed under the weight of 3.5 years' worth of newspapers, magazines, unnecessary homewares and the like whilst trying to ready myself for The Big Move. When I gaily chucked in my notice at work, I thought it'd mean I'd have 3 months of languidly tapping out essay-length missives about all and sundry. You'd be bored to sobs with my daily witterings on the things I was going to miss about London, and my musings on the many years that I'd been a resident of the Big Smoke. How was I going to cope without Selfridges, without Liberty and without the Tube, etc? What joys awaited me in the 'burgh (as no-one calls it)? Would having to read *shock* real books mean that I could no longer indulge in the downmarket delights of Heat and Grazia?

But as usual, my vision of how life is going to be, and how life actually is was massively out of whack. Yeah, sure, within 4 days of me handing in my notice, my boss had asked me for a list of all the meetings I chaired/went to/was due to attend. And then booted me off them all. Which felt a tad harsh, but then who actually wants to spend their time in meetings? I suffer from meeting narcolepsy - 5 minutes after sitting down with an agenda in front of me, I practically black out with boredom. So having at least 3 hours freed up every day has meant that I can stare blankly at my 'to do' list for even longer.

When I rashly decided to move to Edinburgh, my 'to do' list ran:
1/ Find place to rent in Edinburgh
2/ Rent out flat in London
3/ Send email to friends and family to see if they can facilitate either of first 2 points

Totally achievable! Loads of time! Kick back for the entirety of May! Plan a holiday! Practise Olympic-level procrastination!

It started off well: I found a huge flat within my price range to rent. I went to Edinburgh (sporting a cracking black eye as I'd come a total cropper on a paving stone the night before. My sister supportively told me I looked like 'a battered wife'. What the estate agent must've thought, I've no idea. Probably 'double check the crockery inventory when she moves out - she looks a bit of a bruiser') and it was the first one I saw. It's so massive that the walk-in wardrobe (!) currently houses a piano (!!). I know! My whole flat could fit into that cupboard. A minor problem - the incumbents weren't moving out till the middle of September. So now I had to look for 2 flats - which of course is great when the period you need a short-term let coincides with the Edinburgh Festival. When even the estate agent said that he sofa surfs and rents his flat out for a vast amount of cash.

Luckily, the family/friends pleading netted a result on that front. So, just my flat to sort out, then. After a lecture from my dad on, essentially, not being a numpty and handing the whole thing over to an estate agent in order to avoid having to sort out a plumber at short notice from the opposite end of the country when something inevitably springs a leak a week after I've left, I finally bit the bullet and went into the estate agent's at the bottom of my road. He turned up on Monday to value it. He made lots of positive noises, and kindly overlooked the fact that I still don't have a proper kitchen floor or proper bedroom curtains and the bathroom still needs painting. He gave me an enormous folder full of forms to fill in. He said loads of people were looking, they'd have no bother renting it out and when could I get the keys over to him. He was very nice and he had very long eyelashes and very shiny shoes. I nearly hugged him.

I now, however, have a 'to do' list that's quadruple the length of any list I've had in my entire life. It includes such varied tasks as:
1/ Book in for an 'EPC' assessment. An energy report that no client my estate agent has ever had has ever thought/wanted to ask to see. This will cost me £50.
2/ Fill in forms for my mortgage company which will grant me their 'permission to let' my flat. This will not change the terms of the mortgage in any way, shape or form. For this privilege, I have to pay them £225. It's no wonder people hate banks.
3/ Get some sort of gas certificate, certifying nothing is going to blow up.
4/ Ditto on the electric front (this of course has to be done by different people).
5/ Work out whether to have my flat professionally cleaned. God knows what that will cost.
6/ Dash into work then straight back home again in order to have keys cut because there are already people wanting to view the flat. Yes, at midday today. Ooops.
7/ Try not to create an enormous festival of paper strewn all over the floor every time I endeavour to pack anything - because strangers will come round and see it.
8/ Repeatedly call the kitchen floor people and check that they have ordered the lino and might come round to fit it before I leave the country. (Doubtful).
9/ Worry about painting the bathroom.
10/ Call the plumber and beg him to sort out the bathroom, the gas certificate, the boiler and anything else he can think to charge me for.
11/ Call my parents and beg for money.
12/ Wonder if I'm going to be able to work out how to put up the curtains that a friend has given me. Resign myself to asking friends who're coming over for lunch on Sunday to help on that front, rather than bring a bottle of wine.
13/ Call gas/electricity/TV license/water/Council Tax/gym to cancel everything. Inevitably write date in diary a week before I'm due to leave when I have to call them back to confirm that yes, I really am going and could they please actually close the account.
14/ Panic about how many boxes will fit into my parents' car.
15/ Try to rehome/throw away/recycle more of my possessions.
16/ Panic about not knowing anyone in Edinburgh.
17/ Call the handyman who came round on the 25th May to give me a quote, who still hasn't given me a sodding quote.
18/ Strike off most of jobs for handyman. My tenants will have to make do with the slightly horrid doorknobs I've put up with since I moved in, I've decided.
19/ Worry about whether the mice who moved in whilst I was on holiday will have 'left the building' by the time the tenants move in.
20/ Shout, 'Fuck off, you fucking little fuckers!' at the mice as they whisk by, apparently untroubled by me, and the poison I have put down. (My friend Richard's advice was to buy a cage from the pet shop, kit it out and then leave the door open - so it just looks like your pets are having a run around. Aww, pet mice! Sweet! It's starting to look like a good idea.)
21/ Regret the fact that the sight of a mouse running along the top of the radiator caused me to let go of my door in shock when I came in, causing the latch to get jammed. Which resulted in me having to shove the door shut, and then not being able to get it open again. Which cost me £90 in locksmith's fees.
22/ Wonder if, in fact, my flat doesn't want to let me go and this is its way of telling me.
23/ Redirect mail - another £17.
24/ Try to re-jig contents insurance to reflect my new landlady status.
25/ Try to arrange to see friends/experience all that London has to offer/go round all my favourite haunts. Whilst panicking about not having packed everything.

I think you can agree, it's a challenge for someone who procrastinates quite as badly as I do to work through this list, ticking things off. (So far, I'm doing very well on the panicking side). How on earth do people manage when they emigrate? Or have to move more than a one bedroomed flat? With children? It's truly beyond me.