It’s December which means that as usual Gordon is off doing extreme things as a way of avoiding the Christmas shopping:

Just nipped into a cybercafe in Varanasi, so thought I’d drop you a quick note! Having a wonderful time - India is quite amazing, although full-on! The traffic is constant noisy chaos, and the incessant horn honking can drive you a bit mad, but it’s worth the effort! We had a good flight to Delhi, then headed out on an overnight train to Varanasi, which was actually okay, even though first and second class were fully booked, forcing us to travel third class! We got a bunk bed and AC though. No beer though, and the bunks were three high!

Varanasi is absolutely amazing, although quite possibly the filthiest place I’ve ever been in my life! The streets are paved with cowpats and as you know the river ganges is both a sewer and final resting place for countless dead bodies! So just like the thames I guess… That said, many of the locals bathe in it, drink it and even brush their teeth with it! Yuk! The foreign travellers are really funny too - as I’m sure you can imagine, a large percentage have really bought into the whole spiritual thing and are fully dressed in the orange garb - my Karma must be very low in comparison!

I was doing okay on the delhi belly front and have had some really tasty food until earlier today when it really kicked in. We’ve got another overnight train back to delhi tonight, so I hope it’s not gonna be too bad, as the train toilets ain’t pretty! We then change at delhi and head off to Agra to see the Taj Mahal over night, then back to Delhi the next day for our flight onto to Tokyo via Singapore. Busy busy!

I, on the other hand, have had a weekend of domesticity. Saturday started at Sainsburys (I know there’s an apostrophe in there, but it looks wrong, so it’s gone) for rice and custard and veg. A fairly awful combination when you write it like that, but there you go.

Trevor, Jon, Graham and Roger were slated for dinner and there was nothing better matching in the house.

So, I dragged them all home and started to cook. Actually, to be more accurate, I started to bake. The bread first, so it had time to rise before a trip to the oven, while I got on with doing desert. I thought there would have been plenty of time. I started at two, after all, but at six I was still at it, and ten minutes after we were set to sit down in was finally done.

All in all, it went quite well. Mushroom risotto, my new favourite dish, made very very slowly, with a Mediterranean pepper salad. The salad could really have done with being warm, I think, but it wasn’t so bad.

After that we sat up talking until well into Sunday, and so the next day proper started not much before lunch. A nice long sleep bookended by meals. That can’t be bad.

That left half a day for sorting out the flat. Finally. The walls are painted, the carpet has been cleaned. The bathroom and kitchen have been scrubbed.

Unfortunately ’scrubbed’ is more accurate than I would have liked. I’d bought some kitcheny stuff that you pour into a bag and then zip up the top with your grill pan inside. ‘Don’t scrub,’ it said on the side of the box. ‘Just wash off the burnt on dirt in warm soapy water.’

LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE

SCRUB SCRUB SCRUB SCRUB

LIE!!!

The long and the short of it, though, is that I’m now all done. I switched off the lights and locked the door for the last time at precisely 18h00, Sunday 12 December 2004, almost seven years to the day since I moved in. It’s ready for renting; I have finally moved out.

That’s not to say I’ve properly moved into the new house yet, though. The flat keys may be off my keyring, but my mail still hasn’t been redirected, and there are still piles of my stuff here in the house waiting to be sorted. It’s been a long trawl, then, but slowly it’s (I’m) getting there.

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