Katie and her mental meanderings

I think I can understand the appeal of caravanning. Don’t panic – we aren’t getting one – but we have been popping down to our new flat quite a bit to get it ready for our holidaying tenants and the first lot are currently staying there. It has been hard work doing up the flat – not that much needs doing to it but it is up 3 flights of stairs and we had a lot of furniture to move in, and a lot of packaging to move out.

But it is small and compact and after not too much angst it was ready and looking welcoming for our first guests. It is much more fun to housekeep in a small space with no clutter and everything easy to find. I can see why people like having a compact little holiday home. It has also prompted a bit of decluttering at home (well, that and having a cleaner come occasionally and her needing to be able to get to the floor, and packing to go to Greenbelt).

My computer screen at work has turned green. It has done this twice already, and gone back to normal, but it is very nausea-inducing. This is not helped by the fact that I think I have an ear infection, and am feeling dizzy anyway.

However the lack of students on campus means I got an ultra-speedy appointment at the GP, which is where I am off to now. I am going to try not to keel over on the way there – dizziness is a very embarassing complaint.

Oh well, it’s a good excuse to work from home.

We are interviewing for a new admin person – I will be one of the people most involved with this new person, and I was involved with shortlisting. I was told the original interview day and time (10 a.m., 17th July) but it was only by chance that I was told this had been changed. I then had to specifically enquire when the new day was and was told either 7th (today) or 8th August. So I transferred the original time to today’s (and tomorrow’s) date in the diary. No further notification was sent. To be fair, I could have pressed for more information last week had I thought about it, but I knew I needed to be in the office at 10 today so was just getting ready to leave the house at 9.20* when it occurred to me to call and check.

The interviews were starting at 9.30. And no-one had told me.

Now, I’m sure I could have pressed harder, but I am a little p***ed off that no-one told me. And one of the other admin staff asked me “wasn’t I doing the interviews?” and agreed with me that annoyance was perfectly justified. So I’m not sure now if this is just unprofessionalism on the part of the person who arranged the interviews, or the fact that they didn’t agree with my shortlist.

It’s not a big thing… not worth getting stressed over… just annoying.

*yes, this is normal

We have been down at the London pad over the weekend, putting some final touches to it (you can still tell that some very careless builders stomped all over the place in their boots and didn’t put down dustsheets when they painted, but it is habitable, and what’s more, holiday-in-able for our first guests).

One thing that we have been forced to take seriously is the issue of rubbish. The flat is in a block of about 15, which makes it too big for wheelie bins and recycling bags or boxes, but too small for “estate schemes” with skips and their own recycling bins. We have taken to spending a lot of time on Camden’s website trying to work out where to recycle things, religiously separating recyclables (very noble, I’m sure, but there are fairly comprehensive recycling bins in the next square, which is great), taking a small bag of rubbish with us almost every time we leave the house, to put in a pavement rubbish bin, but also going out at the dead of night with larger bags to find odd places to leave them (an abandoned shopping trolley outside the supermarket, for example). When you are moving into a place and buying furniture, towel rails, picture frames etc. etc. you generate an awful lot of both polystyrene and cardboard. Theoretically, cardboard can be recycled, and we took almost a full car load to the recycling centre last time we were here, but we didn’t have the car this trip.

So it’s hiding in the wardrobe. Out of sight, out of mind. Er, I think our tenants might want to use that. Oops.