I’m worn out. And so are my shoes. I managed to poke a finger right through the sole of one this morning, so took advantage of the half day we were pencilled in for at work while the burly types arranged our new desks on our new floor and scooted up to Covent Garden to look around Neal’s Yard.

Urban Outfitters was having a sale, and had some plated with ‘Happy Fucking Birthday’ on them, which would have been a very tempting purchase if I’d known anyone about to pass a significant age. There was an alarm clock, too, in bright orange (a good start) with a kitten on the face (even better) that miaowed rather than rang to wake you up.

What more could you want?

I’m very tempted to go back and get it for the kitsch value alone.

Clothes-wise, it was a dead loss, so I walked through the rain towards the office, stopping in every bookshop along the way.

I like our new office. We can see people on crutches going into and out of the hospital across the road. Of course, this makes us all feel very smug, and it makes me feel better about my aching legs, which by tonight were wobbling like spastic jelly. I feel so worn out. I can’t wait for the weekend. Those two long walks yesterday, on top of swimming and lugging around crates of magazines seem to have sapped every bit of energy I have left.

Fortunately our nice IT people made us a very fattening cake to welcome us to our new office, and even spelt out the initials of our magazine on the top in white chocolate buttons, pressed into the deep dark chocolate topping.

That’s probably the most fattening thing that’s been in that office for years. Up until yesterday it was home to a womens’ slimming magazine. In moving out the writers seem have left us a strange assortment of womeny-type stuff as a momento. Ryvita in the fridge; wart cream in the cereal cupboard; a ginseng and bilboa (sp?) face mask on the breakfast bar; factor 25 sun screen in the glasses cupboard.

They’ve also left behind the poshest set of mugs in the building, so I have been enjoying my tea out of Bodum crockery and feeling vaguely snobbish.

Met up with Ja after work to talk about potential flat-mate-ism in the autumn. He and I are both looking at getting somewhere in London, and it would be far better to rent with someone you know than move in with anonymous axe murderers.

We grabbed some Japanese (food, not people) and nattered about locations and prices. Actually, I barely ate and ordered the smallest thing on the menu: apart from the cake we’d all gone out to lunch to celebrate our new abode and I was still feeling stuffed. It was a fun night, though, and after we’d finished eating we walked down through Covent Garden (back in to Urban Outfitters, but still nothing more appealing than the fucking birthday plates) and on across the river to the south bank where we grabbed coffees and hunted out an open public toilet.

Why is it that whenever London gets whipped around by a cold blasting wind and your bladder shrinks to something smaller than a sparrow’s colon they’re suddenly all closed or locked or so swimming in urine (remember the holes in my shoes) you’d really rather not venture in and get your socks wet.

Hmmm…

Anyhow, all in all, a successful and fun day. It’s left me feeling wiped out, though, and I’m doubting whether I’ll be up in time to do battle with the hippos walking up and down the lanes of the pool tomorrow morning.

We’ll see.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2004 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.