Concourse despatch

In further tales of limited connectivity, I am in St Pancras. The wafflechild has just left me with many imprecations not to lose any more vital things or get lost and only just stopping short of writing my name and his phone number on my forehead in magic marker. He's not wrong. I have been horribly, pathetically chaotic in the last couple of days. Useless. I suppose the enforced competence of moving house is starting to dissipate and my brain is reacting by returning to its usual sluglike consistency. Also, we did have quite a lot to drink and danced to the drag queen beat at Chez Maman until my stomach ached from laughing.

Ah, Chez Maman. It is the size on an average bathroom and entirely black. Maman and the girls descend down a rickety precarious staircase to riotous applause and lip synch from the top of the bar to Shirley Bassey and The Gossip. Maman is seriously burly. "I would recognise those calves anywhere" said Wafflechild as she sashayed down the ladder for her second number. A wild eyed Irish man told us that I was like Joan Collins and he was Doris Day. We had huge fun. I fell into a coma on the Ektorp at 3 and woke up with a face full of dribble and an eye stuck shut with caked eyeliner. Marvellous. I would go back in a heartbeat, especially now that we know the secret code to get back out. Especially for that.

Tonight is Pochyemu's legendary TWITTER PARTY. to put faces to many many pseudonyms and tiny avatars. I can't wait. What with the gin, and the drag queen sweat, and the bar full of chain smoking (and stroking) beautiful small men, I am wearing a very special scent for the evening, named for the occasion by Lucy Fishwife as "Eau de Slutte Hors Taxe". It's packed full of alluring amnesia, lost keys and money and pathetically dissolute waffleness. I have malnutrition spots from my diet of cookies and melted cheese and some kind of carbuncle in the corner of my eye that might be sequin burn. I hope it is very very dark. I will report back as fully as my ailing brain will allow, but now I have to seize the moment and run off to Anthropologie. For as many house style trinkets as I can stuff into my capacious handbag.

Hurrah! London!

Moving, Moving, Moved

I am in the FNAC, temple of all things audiovisual. They do not, contrary to Belgacom's lies, have a Wifi network. I have no idea whose wifi I am stealing, but it works occasionally. I am rapidly losing my sense of humour about this whole connectivity thing. Dull. How are you internet? I miss you. It's lonely here in 1983 without you. Wafflechild keeps getting his iphone out and staring at it folornly, telling me all the magical things it could do if we weren't, well, in Belgium.

Apart from that, sweet baby Nathan but the last 24 hours have been EFFICIENT. My gay adoptive son is like a home furnishing whirlwind, braving not only Belgian public transport, but also my driving and Belgian Ikea (where we both incurred paper cuts deep enough to require several stitches and bled all over the collection area before staunching the flow with a 65 cent hot dog, famous for their antiseptic properties) and THEN building flat pack after flat pack in a whirl of ratchet screwdrivers and Allen keys. He is AMAZING. A techno/practico/brico genius. Clearly his days of slavery in the cruel art factory he used to occupy were not wasted. My rôle has been to stand back, open mouthed and admire. It has been bloody brilliant, I can't imagine how I could ever repay him, having no skills in any domestic departments whatsoever. Maybe some mean biscuits? And of course a trip to Chez Maman's transvestite cabaret tonight. If I ever let him out of flat pack hell. Hmmm. I am tempted to just keep him. He is unbelievably useful, a bit like a home help for the elderly and permanently confused, he has got my heating working, showed me how to work my Mac, set the time on my stereo and remembered several times where I put my keys.

The Salmon Palace is starting to look like a real home, albeit one situated deep in a Marks and Spencer smoked salmon mousse. The move was extraordinarily, even brutally, fast. I only flinched a couple of thousand times as the three village idiots tossed stuff around cavalierly. We were finished before the Wafflechild had even found his way out of the Gare du Midi (much harder than it sounds, actually) leaving more time for hardcore flat pack action (if that phrase doesn't occur in my keywords, I will be extremely disappointed). The table has been a total revelation, allowing us to sit and drink tea whilst we mock the crack three man fence building team, particularly the taciturn Boris and his chainsaw happy, dog baiting, one handed press up performing awesomeness. I have a Romanian orphan tv table thing liberated from Ikea's Bargain Corner, a kitchen bench type thing, curtains... None of it would have been even remotely imaginable without Mr Houser. I would just be sitting in a nest of cardboard boxes eating biscuits and whining. He is truly a boy wonder. He should be canonised Saint Thomas of Uccle. Truly.

In other news - and truly, I promise, normal service will eventually be resumed on these pages, rather than feeble despatches from the outer limits of the 1980s - Brussels is entirely filled with drunken students at the moment. I should probably know what it's all about but the whole of the lower town is sticky with spilled beer, piss and vomit, and lorries full of peculiar people in decorated labcoats with beer mugs tied round their necks are staggering around showing me their genitals. Peculiar, but entertaining. Anyone know what it is?

I have to go. But before I do, let me edify you with the news that a BELGIAN, our Prime Minister "Herman Von Rompuy" (an assumed name if ever I heard one) has now been elected King and Lord High Emperor of Europe. He gets to have a throne on the top of the Atomium and robes made from the national flags of the 27 Member States. Or something. I dread to imagine what this will mean for Belgian government, so if you don't hear from me for a while it probably means I have been called upon to run Belgium temporarily. Don't worry, I have an Allen key and I know how to use it. Well, I don't but I know a man who does.

Pathetic Trolley Fallacy

I'm in McDonalds in an insalubrious corner of Brussels. Interesting French RnB soundtrack, and by 'interesting' I mean 'pierce my eardrums and end this misery now'. It's half nine at night and I ache all over from exploits I may describe later. McDonalds smells of tramp and I've just had to fend off the attentions of "Terry from Miami", who after bellowing "CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE" at the girl on the till, has turned his attentions to asking me why I have no husband. I can only assume Belgacom has some vested interest in making me morbidly obese and miserable. How much longer, Belgacom? Also, it is at times like this that I wonder quite how well reasoned my daily blogging compulsion is. Enfin, bon. I am not here to reflect on my skewed priorities, not tonight anyway. I want to tell you about Colruyt.

Let me tell you about Colruyt. This is a special treat for Jeremy who is missing Brussels. Missing the smell of crazy person, dark, gloomy bars full of beer and motheaten small dogs, the omnipresent waffle vans, the sandwich filling called "cannibal".

I went to Colruyt today. Colruyt - I am too tired and pathetic to link to its website, though I imagine it has one, powered by a hamster on a wheel and a tape recorder - is a discount supermarket. First you have to say discount right. After me: "deezcoont". Thank you.

Colruyt is not merely a deezcoonteur, however. It is also a Belgian Institution. It is a technical, physical impossibility to live in Belgium for more than a week without someone telling you that Colruyt has the best meat in Belgium. Certainly, the meat is treated with a bizarre reverence there. It is displayed, lovingly, behind a glass window and in order to buy any you have to - get this - fill in a paper order form and hand it to the unsmiling phlegmish assistant. They may also ask you for a copy of your residence permit and six months bank statements. Perfectly normal. Then you have to go away. Sometime later, they call for you over the tannoy. Probably in phlegmish. If you answer a set of security questions correctly, you may have your meat.

Back me up Belgian residents - true, no?

Ok. Next! The Colruyt trolleys are rightly famous throughout Belgium for their tricksy approach to, well, movement. They are way worse than the most wilful hoover for bolting with you. You need to finesse the trolley. Brute force does nothing. Basically, if you try to impose your will on a Colruyt trolley it will aim directly for the most vulnerable, young or elderly, or merely furious, person and CRUSH THEM. You will be powerless to stop it. Today, I was inducted into the inner circle of Colruyt users however, when a shelf stacker kindly took me aside as my trolley tried to eat his shins and flay him alive with its Boudicea chariot wheel style action.

"Ne regardez pas les rayons madame!"

Don't look at the food displays.

Er. Ok?

"Pourquoi?"

(Why)

"C'est bien connu, il faut regarder tout droit et le caddie suit. Si vous regardez les étalages, le caddie FONCE DEDANS. Il y a eu des études là-dessus".

(It's well known that you have to look straight ahead, then the trolley follows. If you look at the displays, the trolley heads right for them. There have been studies on the topic).

"Euh, merci?"

He was right though. I feel oddly privileged. I am one of the Colruyt illuminati. Now you are too. Lucky, no?

The rest of the shop, which is easyjet orange, and made of concrete and tramps, works on the basis that you must buy in bulk, so I did. I took a photo of my siege mentality Colruyt shopping, with weepette for scale. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not. I took a picture of the Ektorp too. You can compensate for having to buy 10kg of rice by eating your entire dinner from the trays of samples laid out. Colruyt on a Saturday is like an ambassador's reception, except with more beer. There are trays of nibbly things everywhere.

Last Colruyt fact for today: The absolute, very first thing on the shelves as you walk into my Colruyt (yes, I feel a sense of ownership now that I have been upgraded to trolley whisperer status) is GORDONS GIN.

Tomorrow is move day. I have boxed up everything I could remember. I found all sorts of peculiar artefacts - my sister's hospital bracelet from her birth, a shark's tooth, several child's teeth in peculiar places. I will be very glad when it's done, and I can collapse on the Söfa with my gay adoptive son, who is visiting, in an amazing act of filial devotion, and drinking Colruyt gin. We might even go and have steak and chips at Johnny Halliday's favourite café. If we do, I will bring my camera as it is a most blogworthy sight indeed. Hurrah!

(Oh, whoever sent me the book of Wendy Cope poetry, thank you so much. There was nothing to indicate who it was from, but it was hugely welcome. )

Day 1 in the Salmon Palace

Ok, this will be short and pointless and brought to you by the power of sugar (I am in Haagen Dazs. I can't even spell it, let alone manage to order, but the waiters are so extraordinarily slow, that I can sit undisturbed sucking up the sweet sweet wifi for, it would appear, hours).

I am in the new house. Well, not this minute, clearly, as explained above. And it's really quite ok. I LIKE it. I spent yesterday evening wandering around, bathed in a warm salmony glow from the walls, followed by the weepette, who is not coping quite as well as I am with the move and will not leave my side for a second, but patters next to me from the loo to the Ektorp to the kitchen, his protuberant anxious eyes fixed on me, feebly whining.

The house now contains a babyfoot table as well as a large floor cushion and the Ektorp. I am tempted to just stop there, and bask in the minimalist joy of living a 19 year old boy's fantasy life (well, ok, I don't have enough video games, food, or pornography probably, but you know what I mean). As soon as you start noticing what's missing you could be stuck furnishing for ever - dustpans and brooms and dishwasher product and god only knows what else. Why bother? It will all creep in soon enough. Stuff has a habit of doing that.

It's too early to really miss the boys. This is a hiatus. It'll get hard once they've spent a week with me and I have to part with them again. Hard for me, just as hard for them, probably equally hard for the CFO dealing with the fallout. I remember myself how hard those transitions were, and for me it was only ever weekends and holidays.

For now, though, it's peaceful in the house, and lively when I go out, which is blissful. When I walked the dog at seven this morning, there were PEOPLE in the street and SHOPS OPENING. Shops! Excuse the caps, but after three years in Belgium, I thought I might never see the like of this again. The Italian deli down the road is open late, and the Pain Quotidien opens at 7. I love it. I may never cook again, which will be an immense relief for all concerned.

Tomorrow I go back to pack up, and on Thursday the removal men come. But it's ok. I hope it stays ok. I hope, perhaps tomorrow, to get enough wifi to write something that doesn't read like a slightly stilted postcard. Maybe even do some pictures. It's been ages since we had an visual light relief on these pages, other than owls (I'm not knocking the owls. I wouldn't dare knock the owls). I hope, when I get home - yes, home - the dog hasn't eaten all my shoes and crapped on my bed. I hope the boys are ok, I hope the CFO is ok. I'm keeping everything crossed, and eating ice cream and brownies for dinner. It's a start.

Flashing Panther despatches

Where were we? Oh yes, I was being a miserable cow, and you were being so lovely I cried repeatedly reading your comments. The CFO responded to my pathetic whining by telling me, helpfully, "You are looking very sexy at the moment. Just, not today".

Yesterday was better, even though, like demented masochists, the CFO and I went to an ideal home exhibition type event. I had free tickets, okay? And god knows, we both need Stuff. It was taking place next to a wedding exhibition, so we could have been even weirder, just. In any event, it was not remotely poignant because it was so hideous that whenever we crossed paths we would just make terrified, hysterical faces and laugh manically. I got lost several times in dark, echoing halls full of shiny white leather sofas and rows of jacuzzis and sent him frantic text messages which he ignored, presumably too fascinated by the many methods of water purification and jars of colour change glass beads on offer. Despite the manifold temptations of a larger than life sized white plastic panther covered in tiny flashing lights, neither of us bought anything and there was not even any free stuff to take, though the spawn were thrilled with their free pair of Nintendo sports socks.

Today is my last day living in this house. Fuck! I don't really believe it as I type. Piles of my crap are scattered everywhere. I'm sitting in a chair that came all the way from York with me, staring at the weepette, who shows no inclination to move, drinking tea out a mug Prog Rock brought for me on his last but one visit. Of these, only the weepette will come with me tomorrow. Some more stuff will follow on Thursday when the lying bastards, sorry, removal men are coming. Until then I will sleep like a capsized beetle on a gigantic cushion in a completely empty room, without even the werewithal to make a cup of tea. I quite like the thought of this. Well, not the tea part, but the rest. Just me, PG Wodehouse, a blanket and a stupid, stupid dog.

Given that Belgacom are lazy feckless bastards and are not installing my ASDL until 30 November, posting may be a little erratic and take the form of dull monologues about my fellow customers in some WiFi hub of the damned, like Mcdonalds. Always assuming I can get my pretty new toy to work (I have succumbed to the inevitable and bought a Mac. I even had to call M to work out how to click on it, and I fell at the first hurdle of setting it up because of having no internet connection to connect it to. I think this could be a long, slow, stumbling process, much like moving out).

In self-realisation and overcoming adversity news* (set, please, to a soundtrack of Destiny's Child "I'm a Survivor" or similar), I built my very first flat pack today. I BUILT A FLAT PACK. Yes. Admittedly the end result looked like a child's first woodwork project, but it made me feel like an Amazon warrior queen or something. I used my very own hammer for satisfying thumping into place type action and everything. When I had finished, and was sweatily surveying my handiwork, Fingers sidled in and gave it a cursory glance, upper lip curled.

"Look Fingers! I did it!"

"Bof"

"Bof? Really? Just bof?"

"Oui"

I suppose it gives me something to work towards.

*If you aren't into overcoming adversity, then this cross-eyed owl really isn't for you.

Freakblog interlude

I'm fighting with my body at the moment. I hate it. It makes me angry and sick and I want to hurt it, scratch my legs over and over and make them bleed, pinch my sides, thump my upper arms until they bruise, squeeze my stomach until it's covered in red weals. I feel fat, and disgusting, puffy and featureless, like a dumpling. I can't bear to wear trousers, because I can feel them on my waist, which I hate. Anything tight is out of the question. I stand in front of the wardrobe in the morning and despair. There's nothing loose and anonymous enough for me. If I could, I'd stay in my dressing gown and tracksuit bottoms all day every day.

I look pretty much exactly the same as I did last month, or the month before, or in September when I posted a succession of pictures of possible outfits for a meeting, or even six months ago when I was briefly and gloriously body confident. That seems utterly outlandish now. I can't even imagine wanting to take a picture of myself. I don't want to see myself in a mirror.

Of course, none of us needs to have a psychology degree to realise that this is just stress finding an old, familiar path to escape down. I know that. I know I am massively, ridiculously, stressed in all manner of ways, including several I don't, can't, even discuss here. This is a hard, painful thing we are all doing and since it's my decision, I have to make it be ok, somehow. So every day, I go running around with a tape measure and a tool kit, for fuck's sake, and go to hardware shops and carpet shops, and discuss fencing and decide what to bring and what to leave, and continually make decisions. I suck at making decisions. I mean, I really REALLY suck. My decisions - in the practical sphere at least - are shit. I just go with whatever the person opposite tells me to go with. Wall mounted tv or free standing? Do I want someone to come and measure up for carpets or are my measurements accurate? Left or right opening fridge door? Freezer on top or bottom? 25 boxes or just 15 for the kitchen? I. Just. Don't. Know. The first one you said? No? Ok, the other one then. Just put down whatever seems best to you. I don't even know whether any of it will matter, but I'm certainly acting as if it won't. Nothing matters much mid-apocalypse.


So here I am, angry and frustrated with myself for all manner of things, taking it out on my body with wearying predictability. The wiser part of me knows that this is the absolute worst moment, and that as long as I am getting some sleep and some nourishment, I am probably doing as well as I can. I just need to hang on as best I can, and wait for things to improve. That wiser part of me would point out that despite all the pressure and the sadness, I haven't had the slightest bulimic urge. That I'm eating enough, albeit crappily, washing, dressing, functioning. That it will pass. It really will pass. It always passes.

For tonight though, I might just have a little cry. Maybe swear a bit. That's ok isn't it?