Emerging, blinking, into spring

The Crook O'Lune this Aft O'Noon #whyiammovingbacktolancashire
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

It's been a bit of a long dark winter, to be honest. It's had its upsides -- not least the discovery that this view appears on the cycle path from Halton to Caton -- which, come June, will be the location of my local Co-op. Just when it feels like this is the hardest thing I've ever done, the reasons for doing it reassert themselves big time.

But there have been some downsides too. I had a little meltdown just before Christmas. I was cycling back to the Interim Bungalow in the dark and the cold, having just failed to get a project agreed by the technology board at NGO X, and on the same day having had a really disheartening conversation with someone who I'd been pinning a lot of hopes on for another project, and I burst into tears. The project should have been agreed, but I hadn't put enough time into it. The conversation should have gone better -- I have since learnt that he's a man not known for his listening skills, but I could have prepared better for it. A third project should have got external funding and didn't -- nothing I could have done about that but now we needed a Plan B, and I hadn't given that any thought at all for weeks. And there were other things, that people who work for organisations with blogging policies don't write about on their blogs. Work was looking shit from all directions, basically. I hadn't seen it coming, and I didn't know what to do.

I am generally one of those people who steps into a vacuum, says 'oh all right, I know it's not technically my job, but then it's not technically *anyone's* job, so I'll have a go at sorting that out'. Several of those projects landed on my desk that way. And usually that's fine, but there were too many of them, they were all going wrong, and -- crucially -- I didn't have any expansion space. I have been working part time for five years and it's one of the best decisions I ever made, but before Lancaster Cohousing came along, before I was selling a house and living in two places and grappling with logistics and managing a website and a document collection and coordinating an allotment group and trying to do all this by bike and bus and train... if I needed to do a bit more, then I did. I think all part time managers do -- they check their email, they make themselves available, they spend a couple of hours here and there on their non-working days thinking about things that need thinking about, writing things that need writing, generally aiming to cover the gaps while not losing their precious work-life balance.

But I can't do that at the moment. I felt like it had been raining for about two months then there was a huge mudslide.

And then there was Christmas, which was also kind of dark. What I really wanted to do was sleep, and hang out in my pyjamas watching Inspector Morse. What happened was we had Christmas Day with ex-housemate S, her Quiet Young Man, his parents, Tungsten & Particle, all three of M's offspring, his ex-wife, and her mother. This was not my idea, and I initially resisted it pretty assertively. But it was our last Christmas in Oxford, and in the end I went along with it because both M and ex-housemate S like having a house full of people at Christmas, M really wanted to see his children on the day, and this was the only way it was likely to happen. I didn't think there was a way I could reasonably avoid it without making a statement that I didn't want to make (nobody who likes Christmas ever believes that some of us really would be happier on our own with some sherry and a good book) -- but I was tired, I was stressed, I drank too much and it was generally not my finest hour. Boxing Day was no fun at all.

It was all linked with the wider malaise though, which itself is all linked with bigger, deeper changes, and maybe it was worth going through it -- as several days later my head cleared and a possible way forward emerged. I talked stuff through with my manager right at the end of December, and we made some decisions that weren't that easy (giving stuff up is hard, especially if you are the one who made it happen in the first place) but I think will see me through this transition year, work wise, and then we will reassess.

Not out of the woods yet, but the light is returning and the crocuses are out, so optimism is easier. My new house has a roof and windows, and is no longer an abstract concept. And I've joined Pinterest, to help me start imagining what Lancaster Jo's life will be like.

joella

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 6. 28 Beaumont Street

When I first moved to Oxford, I registered at the Kennington Health Centre, which was fine. There was the one deeply embarrassing experience when I went for a smear test and I still had my diaphragm in, and then had to count on my fingers how many hours it was since I'd had sex to see if it was safe to take it out, but that was hardly their fault. But when my Significant Ex and I moved to Cowley Road, we switched to one of the practices based at the East Oxford Health Centre. And that wasn't so great.

I never had a problem with the GP I usually went to see, though I never warmed to her. She was always a bit rushed, a bit distracted, not the sort of person who has the time or the inclination to pick up on the things you're not saying -- but I was young, I was reasonably healthy, and it didn't matter that much. But there was another GP at the same practice, the one my Significant Ex went to see about his mystery abdominal pain, who was an arrogant arse. 'It's an ulcer,' he was told, and sent away with a giant bottle of Gaviscon which made no difference whatsoever. The pains came more frequently, bent him over double and took the light out of his eyes. You don't want to see anyone in that kind of pain, and you certainly don't want a GP who says 'well, you clearly think you know better than me, so what do *you* think it is?'.

In the end, his mum took him to A&E, and they diagnosed acute gall bladder inflammation. Which is rare in young men, but HAD, in fact, been picked up by his previous GP, at the Kennington Health Centre, who unfortunately sent the referral letter to number 127 Our Road instead of number 227 Our Road just before we moved, and the people at number 127 hadn't sent it back. So he missed the appointment, then he moved GPs, and the new one did not deign to investigate that closely. Three months later he had his gall bladder removed -- they would have taken it out there and then, but it was so inflamed by that point it would probably have exploded.

I wrote a letter of complaint, but I was young, and I was reasonably healthy, and I never sent it. I wish I had. But both of us left that practice as fast as we could. We joined 28 Beaumont Street, on the recommendation of a friend, who said 'I think you'd like Dr F'.

I did like Dr F, and I still do. In fact I reckon moving to 28 Beaumont Street is one of the healthiest decisions I've ever made in my life. Dr F is the doctor I see most often. She has a certain brusqueness, but mixed in with that is a great deal of experience, especially in women's health issues, and a great deal of humanity. She's a qualified homeopath as well as a GP -- I had a homeopathic consultation with her once about 10 years ago, after a laparoscopy revealed there was nothing specifically wrong with my patently sub-optimal urino-genital system, so there was nothing specific that Western medicine could offer apart from 'keep taking the codeine, love' or putting me back on the Pill. She prescribed sepia. I can't say it fixed me (and I do basically think that homeopathy is bunk) but it did get me thinking about my menstrual cycle and its effect on me in a much more holistic way, which in turn meant things did get better.

Over the last 15 years or so she's also referred me to a knee clinic for an MRI scan on my dodgy knee (not much to be done), a podiatrist for my dodgy feet (the main cause of the dodgy knee - they made me some orthotics which I usually remember to wear when walking any distance), a breast clinic for ultrasound and a lump biopsy (turned out to be benign), a dermatology clinic for a strange mole on my foot (they took it off but that turned out to be benign as well), an endoscopy clinic for my digestive issues (congenitally sluggish, but no intervention deemed necessary), an eye clinic for a scar on my eyeball that was picked up by the optician (turns out I have a scar on my eyeball), and most recently for a pelvic ultrasound to have another look at that sub-optimal female area (still a bit shit but nothing really bad going on, so back to a review of 'other options'). Plus the odd course of antibiotics to deal with UTIs, sinus infections and the like.

This all makes me sound like a raving hypochondriac, but we're talking about a decade and a half here. The main point is that I think if over that time there'd been anything really wrong with me, a) I'd have gone to talk to her about it, and b) she'd have listened, and got a second opinion and/or more information if she deemed it necessary. I know that's what GPs are *supposed* to do, but that's not to say it always happens*. There are some skills you've either got or you haven't, and she has. I think she rocks. She's a Girton woman, I think that might be part of it.

Many of her colleagues are very fine too. The nurses can take a smear test almost as fast as you can say 'Ow!', and have blood out of you before you've even noticed. During my latest review of other options, Dr F gave me a very clear explanation of the reasons why 40-something hormone levels can wreak havoc on a person's life, and suggested I talk to Dr M, who knows a lot about progestogen management. Dr M rang me while I was waiting for a train at Radley, and we had a detailed conversation about coils and implants and progestogen-only pills which prompted M, sitting on the bench next to me, to seek more knowledge of such things himself. I don't think he'd realised there was so much to it, just that for mysterious reasons I was spending more time than usual in a sobbing heap.

Cerazette is what she recommended for starters -- ten weeks in and I've been hardly sobbing at all.

But extra-special mention must go to Dr S, who I went to see in the Dark Days in the New Building, when I was (basically) in a total state. I came down with a sore throat and tried to make an appointment with Dr F. She wasn't available, so I opted for Dr S instead. He called me in and I started telling him about my sore throat and how I thought it was tonsilitis, and I probably needed some antibiotics. Hmm, he said, and how are things at home? Well, all right, I said, bit stressful (these were dark days for M as well, all his children had fallen out with him and he was very upset). And how are things at work, he said. And I found myself telling him all about it.

Jo, he said, you don't need antibiotics, you need sleep. And he wrote me a prescription for Temazepam and signed me off for a week, which, looking back, is one of the single best things anyone's ever done for me. A month later I went back and said 'these Temazepam are BRILLIANT, can I have some more?' and he said well, they are rather addictive, so you can have one more lot, but that's it. That was over five years ago and I still have a few of them left. I use them for very special occasions when I need to wake up into a benign world.

And that, I think, is what I love about 28 Beaumont Street. They hear the things you aren't telling them. I'm not a great one for league tables, but I did check out their score in the NHS Quality And Outcomes Framework. Generally on a par or just above the average results for the PCT, and generally a little above the England average, which, knowing Oxford as I do, is just about what I'd expect. But their Patient Experience results are 99.7% -- 14% above the PCT average, and 27% above the England average. Which is basically about can you see the doctor you want when you want to, and do you get enough time with them. If you can say yes to these things, you're doing something right.

I can see that once we've moved, travelling over 200 miles to see my GP isn't going to be feasible, and they probably wouldn't let me stay on the books even if I wanted to. But on the grounds that you're nowhere without your health, I will miss that practice more than I care to acknowledge.

joella

*I once had to get the morning after pill on a Saturday, and the GP I went to see took my blood pressure and wrote the prescription on his doorstep. The GP I had in Cambridge tried to put every female student who went to see her on the Pill (presumably so her Saturday mornings would be uninterrupted).

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 5. Woodside

It was September 1994, and my Significant Ex and I had been back from travelling for over a year. Since the previous November I had been working in Andover, living with my parents, who had accidentally moved there a few years earlier, and spending a chunk of every Friday night and a chunk of every Sunday afternoon driving myself to Oxford and back by 2cv to see him (and to not be in Andover). It was workable, but it was not sustainable. He was working in Newbury, so in theory we could have moved there and I could have commuted, but a) why would you live in Newbury, or indeed anywhere near it, unless you're the kind of person who has a horsebox and a Range Rover, and b) I hated my job. So I started buying the Oxford Times every weekend, and taking it back to Andover to scour the jobs pages.

I applied for anything that looked even remotely like a job I could do, but I didn't get very far. These were the Major years, and it was still all looking a bit grim. But then I saw a job for a Production Editor at a small publishing company based just outside Oxford. I didn't know what a Production Editor did, but I applied anyway (when I was drunk, but that's another story) and duly found myself arriving at Woodside to be interviewed. By P, who read my CV, said 'well you seem bright enough, let's see what you can do', and gave me an article to copyedit on screen. I was very nervous, and dimly aware of movement behind me. I later found out he was making 'she might be the one' gesticulations at C, who was working at the next desk and trying to make him stop.

I was the one. Although it turned out C wanted to be the Production Editor, so I got his job, which was Reporter. It was a bit easier to understand what a Reporter did, so I didn't mind. What I was Reporting on, though, was in the main totally baffling, being the European information industry, which in those days was still largely dial-up leased line databases which were searched with their own command line languages. There was Telnet (but only in the morning, before America got out of bed). There were obscure data protocols called things like Z39.50. There were CD-ROMs, but most computers didn't have a CD-ROM drive to read them. There was email, but it was mostly Compuserve, where you didn't have a name, you had a number (mine was 100632.151). It came down the phone line. If you had a modem/phone line splitter, you were pretty cool. If that was what you thought cool was.

Fortunately, I did. Because from all of that, came the internet, which (if you don't count the pr0n) is still about the coolest thing ever. And because I got to work at Woodside and Report on it (and on some other things -- I was Managing Editor of Library Manager magazine for a while, and not a lot of people can say that), I got to watch the world wide web emerge from its geeky chrysalis, spread its wings and change the world. And write about it. It was ace.

At some point during this period though, I split up with my Significant Ex. For related reasons, there came a point where I had to leave Woodside. But, as Lloyd Cole once said about Charlotte Street, it was never my intention to stay so long.

Many of the people I met there, though, are still part of my life. We had a Woodside Editorial Dream Team ("for a time, in the mid-90s, almost nobody in Europe knew as much about this shit as we did, probably") reunion last Christmas, with attendance from Oxford, Abingdon, Nantwich, London and Arizona. C and I used to argue like cat and dog (including about which of us got to be the dog), but these days I am properly genuinely fond of him. M developed the software for Index to Theses, currently (tho' not for much longer) run by P, and C is also involved, doing something involving abstracts that I have never fully understood. When P turned 60 a couple of years ago, he invited us all to a Works Outing in London, which involved sewers and speedboats and sherry and was altogether excellent. I have made many good friends at NGO X, but the IWR* years, and the people associated with them, will always have a special place in my heart.

And in my last months in Oxford, I have by chance come back to live near Woodside. By slightly less chance, M still does little bits of work for various of the spin off businesses that grew up when the mothership imploded, as it was always going to once it was bought by Big Publisha. One of them ended up back at Woodside, as it was always going to, what took it so long? But then we heard that the building had been sold, and was (is) shortly going to be demolished, to make way for five "luxury homes". Because we need more of them.

But you can't fight progress, and M and I duly made a short (but brutal, as it was by bike, and anyone who ever cycled to Woodside will remember that hill) pilgrimage to see J and L during their last week in the building, and to say goodbye to the place. I hadn't been there for years. Maybe not since I left in 1999. When we arrived, the first person we saw was Dave Bond, the handyman-cum-caretaker who once cut through the ISDN line to London and nearly stopped us going to press, resurrected from retirement to clear musty rooms of their history. We sat in the office that Big Publisha Clive once extended so it would accommodate his ego, and caught up on the old days with two people who were old hands when I was but a Bright Young Thing. It was like a timewarp, but in a good way (apart from the dead flies), because the vast majority of my memories of the place are happy ones.

The doorstep I used to smoke on with J the receptionist. The tannoy through which she would announce "Sandwich lady's here, everyone! Sandwich lady!" and we would pile out the door to buy brie and cranberry on multigrain out of a Boars Hill yummy mummy's BMW boot.

The unheated swimming pool we would jump into every sunny lunchtime from May to September, still the best lunchbreaks I have ever had. The cherry tree Dave the Rave and I would lie under after jumping into the pool, nursing our vodka hangovers.

The server room occupied by a series of unpleasant men, with the honourable exceptions of Yasser, a Palestinian asylum seeker who was IT guy when I arrived and who presided over a collection of PCs that nobody ever bothered screwing back together, so often did they need to be taken apart, and Michael -- Irish, mostly stoned, and willing to supply you with dope, so he was, as part of his unreliable service.

The garden room, where important meetings (and job interviews) were held, now full of dead flies. The editorial office, where Library Manager guest editor J V W, from the featureless interior of the US of A, fell asleep face down on her keyboard one afternoon, causing C and me to email each other in silent hysterics, wondering what we should do if she'd actually died. The small archive room known as the library where we used to record our phone interviews, which Marketing wanted to expand into, sparking a 'Today the library, tomorrow Poland!' guerrilla poster campaign.

The residents block, home to random self-employed people (including, for a while, the newly separated M, who slept in his office on a camp bed), transient lost souls, and an alcoholic postman called John who would boil lumps of meat in an aluminium pan for hours and hours and hours, until the whole ground floor stank of cheap dead pig.

Which was a slight improvement on the smell of dead rodent, which we had to deal with one winter when something died under the floorboards of the editorial office, and we spent several weeks typing in fingerless gloves, on account of the cold, and burning joss sticks, on account of the stench.

And yet, and yet, it was my first proper job, and without it I would not be the woman I am today. Whatever kind of woman that is. Oh, and it's where I met M. If you hadn't worked that out already.

joella

*I link to the website reluctantly. It's not even half the publication it used to be, and that's not just because I don't write for it anymore.

The hidden stories of Bletchley Park

Photo: bletchley park decoding goodness by insert_user_name, on Flickr. Shared under Creative Commons: click photo for more info.

Taking a little break from writing long posts about leaving Oxford to write a short one about Bletchley Park. If you haven't seen Codebreakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes then (at time of writing) you still have six days to watch it, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

A few years ago, there was a special Cambridge alumni day at Bletchley Park which included a talk from Turing's biographer, someone who explained how the Bombe actually worked, a social historian who talked about life there, a demonstration of the Bombe in action, a look at the Colossus, and some other things I forget. I thought I'd take M as a birthday present, him being a mathematician and all. When I first tried to book it was completely sold out, but I put my name on the reserve list and when someone cancelled at the last minute we were offered their places.

It was generally a pretty weird day, as the majority of my fellow alumni present were of the elderly imperious entitled variety (I am very uncomfortable belonging to a club that has people like that as members), and their wives. I did not enjoy the smalltalk. But the big talk blew my mind.

I came away thinking why isn't visiting this place part of the National Curriculum? Why is it falling down? Why don't kids study Turing like they study Hitler?

What I didn't properly realise till I saw the Codebreakers documentary though was that the reason Bletchley was left to moulder away for so long -- and still struggles with funding -- is that so much of what went on there was so super top secret (and carried on being used in the Cold War) that even today we don't know the whole story. We did know about Turing -- and the government recently acknowledged that the fact that a grateful free world saw fit to persecute him to death after the war for his homosexuality is a source of national shame -- but there are others whose work was never recognised, who went on to live in postwar obscurity.

This documentary is an important part of beginning to recognise their incredible contribution, and the fact that a large part of what won the war was maths. It's all fascinating stuff, but what brought a lump to my throat was a bit near the end where someone explained why there was no German equivalent of Bletchley Park.

Firstly, the Allies weren't so reliant on codes, because there was more trust and less fear in the command structure, so messages could be carried and transmitted in different ways. And secondly, a lot of the best codebreakers were Jews or gays or wildly eccentric misfits. The Nazis were busy exterminating those minds, not valuing them. So it was recognition of the value of (or at least tolerance of) diversity that won the war too. We need to remember that.

joella

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 4. The train station

The first time I came to this fine city, it was by train. I was in the Lower Sixth at school, and had been identified, together with a bunch of others, as Potential Oxbridge Material. A minibus was commandeered to take us on a trip to Oxford to check it out.

Only I missed it. I can’t remember why, some fairly significant departure time mix up, I presume. I do remember my dad driving me to the station, and buying me a ticket. I was only 15, so it was a half, and trains were cheaper then anyway. So I travelled on my own, and arrived at the station with a suitcase (not on wheels, this was the 1980s) and instructions to ask for Queen's College, which is where we were staying. I can report that it’s a long walk to Queen's College with a 1980s suitcase.

I liked Oxford a lot, and duly applied to Jesus College to study law. I got an interview (which I went to by train) but I didn’t get in – I was still only 16 at this point, which probably showed, and I didn’t really want to be a lawyer, which probably showed too.

But that wasn’t the end of going to Oxford by train – my friend R had a friend who was in his first year at Magdalen, and he invited us to a party. Looking back, I am amazed that we travelled for three and a half hours to go to a party in the Waynflete Building, but that’s being (possibly, by this point) 17 for you. All three of us slept in his single bed, and lay around feeling peculiar the next day until it occurred to us to look up the time of the last train back to Preston, which turned out to be 20 minutes later. So we grabbed our stuff, and we ran. I can report that it’s a long run from the Waynflete Building to the train station. The train was in when we reached the station and we made it with about five seconds to spare.

There was a brief hiatus, but then I went off to Cambridge (turned out I was Oxbridge Material after all) and met my Significant Ex. Whose mother lived (and indeed still lives) in Oxford. There followed a series of Significant Reunions at Oxford station after long periods of apartness. Until my parents accidentally moved to Andover, these were generally me coming down from the north. In those days you could smoke on trains, and I did, but I had a self-imposed ‘no smoking after Banbury’ rule, so as to be more kissable on arrival. There was also a memorable arrival from the south the summer after I graduated, when ex-schoolmate-pre-housemate S and I caught the train to Oxford from Paddington after three days (THREE DAYS) on the Magic Bus from Athens to London Victoria. We had ankles like tree trunks and mild psychosis, and we were sweaty, smelly, hungover and ravenous. It must have been a delightful sight.

The station receded into the background for several years after that though... we went away travelling, and when we came back I got a job in Andover. It's technically possible to get a train from Andover to Oxford, but it takes twice as long as driving, even when what you're driving is a 2cv. So I never did, and then I moved to Oxford, and entered the road trip years of my mid-to-late 20s.

The station came back into focus again towards the end of my relationship with my Significant Ex. The night of the 1997 general election I was dancing at a Billy Bragg gig after-party in Harlesden until they threw us out about 3 am. After that we walked to Paddington, fuelled by vodka and adrenaline (and, I must admit, some speed, but these were the optimistic 90s and I was still young...). The first train to Oxford was around 5.30... I was the only one of the four of us with a ticket that could be used before 9.30, but the train manager was in as celebratory mood as we were so he let us all on. We arrived in Oxford at the dawn of a new era, and I should have gone home, but I didn't want to. So M and I dozed in the sun on the grassy bank outside the station until the pubs opened, and then we went for a beer in the Turf Tavern. I came down with a crash about 12 hours later, but it was a magical morning.

That grassy bank isn't there anymore, it was concreted over in the name of progress about ten years ago. But the train station itself gradually faded back into my life. My parents moved back to Lancashire in the late 90s, and for a good while there was a train that ran from Reading to Blackpool, so I got on it a stop after it started and got off it a stop before it finished. Perfect. That doesn't happen anymore, you have to change in Birmingham and deal with the Scottish Train, but it's still generally better than driving, so long as you can afford it and nobody turns themself into a fatality on the line the day you want to travel.

I also spent three years working for NGO X's UK poverty programme, which had a major presence in Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow, and a minor one, in the form of a single colleague, who lived somewhere near Pitlochry. All of the major stuff happened by train and Travelodge, the minor via sleeper and spare room. Early on I extended a Cardiff trip to Swansea to visit the Finnfans, who I hadn't really seen much of since Cambridge. I am very happy indeed that I renewed their collective acquaintance, and it all started at Oxford station.

And then there was Lancaster. The first time we went there, we drove, but most of our subsequent trips have been via train... most of the Lancaster Cohousing meetings are held in the Friends Meeting House, which is right next to the station, and it feels like the right way to arrive.

I like Lancaster station better than I like Oxford station, it has a Victorian solidness to it that resonates with me, while the Oxford building is somewhat flimsy, despite its Great Western Railway roots (I am a big Isambard Kingdom Brunel fan). But Oxford station has been the centre of so many journeys of my adult life, arrivals and departures both. It will always have a place in my heart.

joella

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 3. House move real time evaluation and learning points

What went well?

1. We sold the house. Ultimately, mission accomplished.

2. We sold the house to People A Bit Like Us. This is advisable, because (after the sale is agreed, at any rate) it means you can talk to them directly rather than do everything via estate agents, thus avoiding things becoming unnecessarily formal and oppositional. I'm not sure how you engineer this, except by leaving your art on the walls and your books on the bookshelves. This will put off quite a lot of people who are Not Much Like You. We felt our buyers were people we could trust, so much so that we gave them keys and let them knock a wall down before the sale was completed. Don't tell my dad, he'll have kittens.

3. We chose estate agents we could talk to. This was an unscientific process, led by me and based on gut instinct and gut prejudice (and not on cost). They're never going to be your mates, but you need not to hate them.

4. We chose a solicitor we could talk to, and our estate agents could talk to. This was based on a personal recommendation from a friend who is also a solicitor. Not the cheapest in town, but this is not an area where you want to focus on saving £100. Trust me. Even my dad liked her, and he's very hard to impress.

5. We gave quite a lot of stuff away to family and friends, and we gave even more stuff to Oxfam. We were reasonably organised about this and I look forward to learning how much our stuff sold for, thanks to the Tag Your Bag scheme.

6. Our timing was fortuitous and our friendships strong: the bungalow previously occupied by ex-housemate S, her Young Man, Tungsten and Particle was in a limbo state, and they cleaned the carpet, got the painters in and agreed to let us live in it in exchange for very modest rent, a bit of babysitting and some random gardening. Up north, fellow co-housers D and P offered us a part-time sublet of Halton Mansions, so we go from one-home city dwellers to two-home villagers at a stroke. Amazing. But maybe also karma - back in OX4, there were many people who lodged with us for a few weeks, a few months, a year because they needed a place for a while. We always felt good about being able to do that, but it's as important to be able to accept kindness as to offer it, and sometimes harder. However you look at it though, we feel pretty lucky.

7. We used a professional removals company. Those guys can shift stuff. I have moved myself, I have moved with man-with-van, and this was in a whole different league. This is the way to move house, people. We did our own packing, but if I could have afforded it I might have got them to do that part as well.

8. When it came to it, we were ready. I don't mean prepared, we weren't prepared (see What didn't go well). But in our waters, we were ready. It was time -- though I didn't realise that until afterwards.

What didn't go well?

1. I went to the Co-op last thing the night before the move to get cash to tip the removal men. The cash machine wasn't working so I bought a bottle of wine so I could get cash back. Then we drank the bottle of wine.

2. Partly as a consequence, the day of the move itself was 12 hours of hell. This was also because we were in no sense prepared: we'd been packing for weeks, but there was still stuff lying around in every single room in the house. The more we frantically threw things in boxes, the more stuff there still seemed to be lying on the floor.

3. Virgin Media cut our land line off a week early. Then they said they hadn't, but you know what, they had. Here's the short (and slightly redacted) version, written to the @virginmedia team when we finally got some joined up attention via Twitter -- surely the best thing EVER to happen to customer service.

The account is actually in the name of my partner M____. We are due to move house next week and had booked for all our Virgin services and our landline number to be transferred to our new address. This was originally booked for Monday 26 Sep then changed it to Friday 30 Sep when our move date changed. Our landline stopped working on Friday 23 Sep. Over several hours I spoke to several people in several teams who all told me something different. I eventually spoke to someone in the move team who said it would be reinstated by 7pm (this was about 4pm), and that she had done this by cancelling the move, but would rebook it. The phone was not working by 7pm and has never worked since. Another person told me it would require a technician visit and this was not possible for a week. By cancelling our move date we lost the ability to transfer our landline number as this requires five working days, we need the broadband working before then as my partner works from home, and we were told that it was not possible to have two visits, one to install the broadband and one to install the phone, even if we paid extra. We were not advised of this at the time our move was cancelled. We have rebooked our move, but we now have to tell everyone we know that we have a new phone number, having previously told them we would be keeping the same one. All the phonecalls I have made about this have been on my mobile, so I have had to pay a premium to call the 08457 number. Your teams have generally called me back when I've asked but I've often been in a queue for many minutes before this is possible. Additionally, there are dozens of essential calls I have had to make as these are the last few days before we move, to insurance companies, solicitors, utility companies etc. These have been a mixture of 0800 and 08457 numbers, which would have been free or local rate on my landline, but I have had to make on my mobile instead, thus incurring significant extra cost. This is why we are so unhappy with the service we have had from Virgin Media over the last week. Thank you for the opportunity to explain it and I look forward to your response.

A genuine real person called Billy sorted out most of this, and it turned out we *could* get our landline number transferred, but unfortunately we didn't have an unpacked handset at the time so we couldn't check that we could, you know, call people. And it turns out we can't. So that one's still going on *sigh*.

4. The removal men were due to arrive at 7.30 am. At 8.30 am the manager called and said 'we can't get our van anywhere near your house'. There was a long pause. I said 'well, I don't really know what to say'. In the end, they parked the big van where they were, and someone else arrived in a small van. There was a degree of relay shuttling of boxes. It was a bit like getting a chicken and a fox across a river. Let's just say a) I'm glad it wasn't my problem, b) I wonder why they sent the big van, given that they did come and look at the house, and they do do this for a living, and c) East Oxford student parking is not something I will miss. Not even a little bit.

5. Boxes. Back in, like, February, I bought some boxes on eBay. We filled those up. Then my colleague L moved house and brought us round a car full of boxes. We filled those up too. *Then* we started to panic, because we clearly needed loads more boxes. You can get them free from your removal company, once you have booked your removal. But we hadn't, because our solicitor said we shouldn't commit to a moving date until we'd exchanged contracts. This was wise advice as things were indeed delayed. But it meant that we had to pay £150 deposit for the boxes from our preferred removal company, on the understanding that this would be deducted from the final invoice. The very same day they delivered them we did exchange, rang up to book our move and they were fully booked for the whole week. So we had to use a different company, who were already £150 more expensive. So that added £300 to the whole experience. What joy.

6. Cleaning. Oh my god the cleaning. D, our buyer, came round at lunchtime the day we moved to get some keys. He said 'you will be cleaning everything, won't you?'. I said 'well... you *are* about to knock a wall down'. But he is new to the home improvements game, and he seemed to think that wouldn't impinge on the rest of the house, and -- reasonably enough -- he wanted to move into a house with a clean kitchen and clean bathrooms. So I cleaned them. For about four hours I moved through the house at top speed, dealing with dust and limescale and grease with an increasingly toxic range of chemicals. It seemed like the right thing to do, even though a) it nearly killed me and b) there'll be about an inch of brick dust on everything by now, and he will be weeping gently and wondering why he unpacked his crockery. But it wasn't for me to tell him.

7. While I was moving rapidly along the Ecover > Cillit Bang spectrum, M was shuttling backwards and forwards in a Comonwheels car, which he'd originally, and with characteristic optimism, booked until 3pm. Halfway through the afternoon we extended it until 6pm, but it became clear that we needed at least another hour. Unfortunately, by this point the people on the phone had gone home for the day, and we didn't have good enough internet on my phone to renew online. It's ok, said M, we can do it from the on-board computer in the car. So we filled the car with the final load, solemnly said our goodbyes to the house, locked the door for the last time and prepared to set off. At which point we discovered that we couldn't extend the booking. So we had to unload it all, open the house again, and unceremonially pile it all back in. Then M cycled over to the Interim Bungalow. My bike had gone in the van, so I had to get a cab. I sat in the back and had a little cry. But only a little one.

What will I do differently next time?

1. Clear!

Why was M baking bread two days before we moved? Why were we still using every single room till the very last minute? We should have decommissioned the kitchen, all but one toilet and all but one bedroom at least three days before we moved. There should have been nothing but boxes in these rooms and they should already have been cleaned. We were in denial. Maybe that's inevitable, but it would have been so much easier if we'd mentally extracted ourselves well before the removal vans arrived.

2. Trust my instincts more.

D was very anxious, as least as anxious as me, to do everything properly. He's clearly a person you can trust. But the system isn't designed to let you trust people, basically because until you have exchanged contracts either side can walk away at any time. And people do. But he wouldn't have. So we could have, for example, and said 'look, if we can't move on X day because your funding isn't in place, will you pay the removals penalty?' He was the one wanting us out quickly, and he was upset that we couldn't move the day after we exchanged, which is the date we'd originally agreed. But if we'd been able to book the removal date knowing we wouldn't be out of pocket if we had to reschedule, we would have done. It just made everyone's life a bit harder than it needed to, given that we were all in fact decent human beings. If you are one, and you meet another one, you can usually tell.

3. Start earlier.

As in months earlier. We knew we were going to move as soon as we put the house on the market. In fact we knew we were going to move the best part of a year before that. We boxed up the easy stuff -- the books, the records, the CDs -- thinking we were being organised, but any fule can do that. The hard stuff is the space under the stairs, the boxes in the loft, the shelves in the shed. We should have sorted this carefully and methodically, and got rid of most of it six months ago. Instead, we threw it into boxes which are now looming at us from corners saying 'This is your life, and you haven't got room for it anymore'.

But we have a little hiatus. A winter in the Interim Bungalow (of which more anon) where we will deal with this issue. We will.

And meantime, the main thing is, we're both SO MUCH HAPPIER now we've sold the house. It was no fun, but now it's done. Hooray for us.

joella

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 2. Foliage

We had the Finnfans from Swansea staying last weekend, for the last time, in all likelihood. 'I want to have a proper look at your garden,' said K one morning, after we'd eaten kedgeree and listened to Hounds of Love.

I went out with her. I was ostensibly checking on the laundry but I realised after a minute or two that I hadn't thought much about leaving it behind, this place that we made ourselves out of clay and stone and compost and circles, with help from books, from our friends, and of course from the plants themselves. I do love it. I will miss it.

I went back in for the camera.

The Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire. I went to Waterperry with my friend R especially to get these. They are spindlier and more delicate looking than most dogwoods, and it always feels somehow wrong to cut them back hard in the spring. But I generally do, and come winter it lives up to its name. Glorious little things they are. Brighten up the darkest of days.

The golden marjoram. Came in a pot as a present from R&T, who are the kind of people who bring you pots of things when they come for lunch. I planted it out without much hope for it, as the soil is heavy and there's quite a bit of shade. But it survived and then thrived, and every summer we make garden pesto with fistfuls of it. Also a star player in my fish soup.

The water lily. I can take no credit for this. M wanted a pond v badly, and when we were building the patio he went out to the garden centre and came back with a large round bowl, which we sank into the clay and filled up (including a bucket of pondwater from over the road). The water lily took several years to get going, but suddenly there it was, floppy leaves for the frogs to hide under and jewel-like pink flowers emerging in late summer.

The pond grass. No idea what this is called. We bought a basket with three or four different pond plants in it, and this is the only one that made it. It loves our pond, and is gratifyingly tall. Makes the pond look more mysterious, and us look like we know what we're doing.

The Boston ivy. This grows up the shed, and every year till this one I have diligently pulled its tendrils away from the roof to stop it taking over completely. This year I didn't have the heart. The shed is (faded) green, and I bought the Boston ivy for its autumn redness. It needs a bigger shed, ideally, but the basic idea works.

The day lily. I do like a day lily. I fell for them one hot summer when I semi-accidentally went to visit the national collection of them, which is somewhere in Oxfordshire. They're kind of scruffy and very much here today gone tomorrow, but they can put up with anything and come in interesting colours. I used to have some crocosmia next to them, but I accidentally dug them up. They should really be in the sun, and mine aren't, but they do still produce sprigs of orange and purple flowers. I bought them with the garden vouchers M's mum gave me the Christmas she died, and when the flowers come out I always think of her.

The Sorbus 'Joseph Rock'. The summer we moved in, I cleared the back corner of the garden. It was full of buddleia, brambles and what I now know was a rambling rose, which with hindsight I should possibly have cut back and left, as it provided excellent screening of the difficult 'behind the shed' area, but which was totally out of control and extremely thorny. There was definitely a gap to be filled, and when my mum came to stay she suggested a small tree. So we went to Notcutts in the 2cv, chose this orange-berried rowan, rolled the roof back and drove home with it waving above the back seat. I planted, staked and tended it carefully, and it's an autumn beauty, but it's a bit overshadowed by the sycamore behind it, which grows like topsy. I think probably the sycamore should go, as it's basically a giant weed, but have never been able to bring myself to cut down an actual functioning tree.

The Nandina domestica, aka heavenly bamboo. This was my leaving present from my colleagues in the NGO X internet team when I moved over to work on knowledge management for the UK poverty programme in 2003. I had admired it when on a garden centre trip with Plumbing S, and she engineered its purchase. I love it because it's just so interesting -- you never know what it's going to do next. It's been hit quite hard by the last couple of winters so isn't quite itself at the moment, but hopefully will recover to grow random flowers and berries another day.

The Cotoneaster. This little fellow was about a foot tall when I discovered him lurking in the ivy (qv). Initially unpromising, but he turned out to be extraordinarily good value -- a strange, frondy habit, very forgiving of hard pruning, bright red berries, strong evergreen foliage. Mrs Ahmed next door admired him one day and we got chatting. I gave her the label that was still wrapped round his trunk so she could get one of her own (so I forget which kind he is). It was the longest conversation we ever had.

The smoke bush. I first saw one of these in the garden at a party I didn't want to go to. It was indeed a rubbish party but worth it for the bush, which was very large and in full frothy flower at the time. I was fascinated by it. And went out to get one for no better reason than that, but actually it's also been excellent value -- provider of pea sticks in spring, great colour contrast and smokiness in summer and an important part of the multicoloured autumn dying of the light display.

The angelica and the lysimachia firecracker. The lysimachia was a donation of surplus from plumbing S, probably around the same time as the sumac tree (qv). It's taken slightly too firm a hold on the bed it's in, but I let it get away with it because I absolutely love the colour of it. Who knew there was a colour in between purple and green? And I don't normally like yellow flowers but somehow these work. And it fits in well with the angelica, which is normally established before the lysimachia gets going for the year. I did originally plant the angelica about five years ago, a tiny 9cm pot from Waterperry which grew into a seven foot monster that first year, before falling over in spectacular fashion. I planted a rheum palmatum the same year -- it didn't make it through the winter, but that summer it looked like some kind of prehistoric jungle out there. Anyway, the angelica has always been welcome. Its leaves are incredible. Such notchiness!

The sumac tree. Oh the sumac tree. About seven years ago plumbing S brought round a bare root sucker that one of her neighbours had given her because she knew I loved sumac trees, and now it is big enough for children to climb. It's a voracious grower, and has already suckered its way all the way over to next door but one, but it provides shade in the summer, a beautiful fractal skeleton in the winter, and its glorious autumn foliage is the single best thing about November.

The camellia. Was originally here and is a total joy in the springtime. Its flowers are bright pink and its leaves are glossiest green. They say you aren't supposed to plant camellias facing east, because the flowers get frost-scorched, and that does happen a bit, but there are hundreds of them so it doesn't detract from its glory. I barely prune it and never feed it, yet it seems to be the happiest bush in the land. Truly a blessing. Every home should have one.

The first of the dogwoods and the sambucus nigra. Bright red dogwoods are a bit municipal, but I can't get enough of them. There was originally a large boring bush right outside the back door. I never found out what it was, and after a few years we dug it up, liberating the camellia (qv), which it had been squashing. While it was growing into the gap, I planted a dogwood, and a few years later, a black elderflower. The latter wasn't such a good choice, as it's too vigorous for the space, but they look beautiful together, and frame the view from the conservatory all year round. There's also an old, old honeysuckle. I killed one of these by accident but the other survived. The flowers are glorious, obviously, but I like the berries too.

The ivy. Has possibly been here forever. When we moved in, the first thing we did was strim the thigh-high lawn (which back then covered most of the garden), and the second was pull out yards and yards of ivy. There were dense layers of it tangled through everything, but I gradually revealed a brick path and brick-edged flower beds, which had once been well cared for. It took days, the ivy-thinning, but I didn't get rid of it all. It still clothes some otherwise nasty breezeblock walls, and winds its way round washing line poles and terracotta pots.

There will be another garden. I know this. But this was my first one.

joella

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 1. Curtains

We may have sold our house. I say 'may' because we have accepted a low offer from our potential buyers, and they are doing a full structural survey. Who knows what further wranglings may result, even if I believe (as I do) that the faults of the house are as visible as its glories.

But we're far enough down the track to have instructed a solicitor. She was recommended by a friend who is also a solicitor. You may never be able to get an electrician if you're middle class, but you can source good conveyancing within minutes. And now we have forms to fill in, many many forms.

One of them is about fixtures and fittings. What is included in the sale? We get to tick and cross boxes (including putting prices on things we are prepare to leave but only if they are prepared to pay for them), and then if the buyers disagree (or want to haggle over a price) we negotiate via our instructed third parties. This seems potentially confrontational to me, and I'm not in the mood. And who'd take *light fittings* with them anyway?

So basically, my first thought was that I'd just tick everything. But then I got to the curtains.

We only have three pairs of curtains. Two of them I could happily never see again. But the ones in the living room are different. We bought them at Seasons Furnishings in Delhi in January 2003, a shop recommended by Plumbing S which was the devil to get to, not because it's hard to find, but because it's hard to find a rickshaw driver who will take you to a curtain shop that isn't owned by his cousin.

When we got there, M realised he'd forgotten to bring the window dimensions. So we used their phone to call the UK, woke up then-housemate S at 7 am, and made her get up and measure the window. She was really pleased about that.

It took us about 30 seconds to agree on the fabric, a deep red raw silk that we both loved on sight, and the deal was done. On the way back to our hotel we stopped in a market to buy shawls and eat momos from a street seller. It was chilly, we were happy, and the curtains were delivered to us two days later as promised, just before we were due to leave for the airport to fly home.

The red curtains have not been an unqualified success. They came with the cheapest, flimsiest possible curtain hooks, which we a) had to insert ourselves, and we did a bad job and b) have never got round to replacing. They fall out regularly and the curtains droop off the rail. They aren't very warm in the winter. And most pertinently, raw silk is a terrible choice of fabric for south-facing windows. The edges of both curtains have faded and shredded. We swap them round every couple of years (while still not replacing the hooks) to try and mitigate the worst of it, but they are basically now shabby chic, without that much of the chic.

But I love those curtains. And they're coming with us.

joella

NB The photo above was taken in 2004. That coffee table is no more (M put his foot through it one New Year's Eve), but the curtains look much the same on a sunny Sunday morning.

Heatwave memory shard

The river Nile. A felucca trip because that’s what you do in Aswan, or wherever we were, when you’re about 22. A captive market for the captain, also about 22. We met some people in a restaurant who also needed people to travel with, we tried to bargain with him. Two litres of water each a day, he said. Three, I said.

It was blazingly hot, Nubia in August. An insane time of year to spend four days on a tiny boat. Another felucca more or less kept pace with us, full of party backpackers having screaming fun, leaping off the boat in their shorts and bikinis when they got too hot, splashing each other. We were the sun-and-disease-aware kind of backpackers. We lay on deck under shade screens and sweated, for fear of bilharzia. There was no toilet on board, so we had to make a request to the captain to moor up every time anyone needed to go. Not now, he would say, until eventually he found a place he was prepared to stop, where we would scramble ashore and run across land as hot as fire to find a spiny bush big enough to shelter behind.

I hated it. I hated the flimsy plank and the morose, jet-black captain in his dirty off-white vest who had packed us in like sardines. But he probably hated us too, it must be more fun to sail a boat full of people enjoying themselves than people (one of us, at least) engaged in a constant balancing act between fear of thirst and fear of an overfull bladder.

There was dope on the boat, part of some sailing down the great rivers of the world fantasy we’d had. But that only made it all worse -- the heat, the thirst, the heat, the pressing need to urinate, the scary, scalding, dark yellow urine that resulted. So I stopped that after the first day, and just read my book, kept my movement and my fluid intake to a minimum, and willed the time to pass so I could escape from this circle of hell and return to civilisation.

But there were two things that lifted that felucca trip out of the ‘one of the top five worst decisions I have ever made’ category.

The first was a stop on the afternoon of day one, where the captain, whose English was sketchy at best, moored up the boat in what looked like the middle of scorched, heat-hazed nowhere and bid us all disembark and follow him. We shortly arrived at a walled compound in a small settlement, which turned out to be his family home. We met his mother, who seemed supremely old but was probably about 40. She was clad head-to-toe in shiny black, which I guess would age anyone. I remember it so clearly because I couldn’t understand how she could actually walk around in that heat covered in that much man-made fabric. I was disintegrating into a stinking, steaming heap in my clean cotton T-shirt and shorts. And then he told us that she had never been out of the village, had never been as far as Aswan (or wherever we had been a couple of hours earlier) or encountered electric light (or, say, an electric fan, or a refrigerator).

So he was quite the big man, bringing these exotic creatures for her to look at every week or so. I can now see there may be a more benign interpretation of the situation, but only if I cast him in the role of Enlightenment gentleman, and it's a bit of a stretch. She was the first woman I ever met whose life was so constrained. I remember her.

And the other thing I remember was the lentil soup. We were on a shoestring-budget, bring-your-own-sleeping-bag trip, but the food was sublime: better, I’d wager, than anything served to the tourists on the air-conditioned mega-cruisers whose wash rocked me in my overheated misery. It was cooked by the (all male) crew on a kerosene stove from dry ingredients, spices and cool-box (but clearly local) vegetables. And the first thing they served, lentil soup with flat bread, was one of the finest things I have ever tasted. I have still never tasted anything close, but I’m still looking. I now think there must have been cardamom, cinnamon and allspice involved, but there was also something lemony, and something fresh and green.

I wouldn’t get on that boat, or anything like it, again for all the tea in China. But when the mercury rises above standard north-European operating temperature, my amygdala does a little flip-flop and I wonder what became of the captain’s mother, and envy whoever is getting to eat that soup tonight.

joella

Oh, what a mess we made

Well, you couldn't call it a slow news month. Amy Winehouse has crashed and burnt. The press is not free. Europe is broken. There's a famine in parts of Somalia, where Islamist extremists are restricting aid agencies' access while people starve. Not all extremists are Islamists, of course, there are white ones too: in America they are about to piss on all the chips in the west, and in Norway they shoot children.

And I've spent some time trying to imagine circumstances under which a hotel maid would actually want to suck a 60 year old Frenchman off and you know what, I can't. I also can't really imagine that a 60 year old Frenchman could, but you know what they say about power and corruption.

I am friends with Professor Edith Hall, one of the cleverest people around and currently campaigning against the closure of the Department of Classics and Philosophy at Royal Holloway. A post in the campaign's Facebook group (here, if you want to join) highlights a talk she is giving today in Cambridge about the six basic 'rules' of competent decision-making in ancient Greece: deliberate slowly, take into account all historical precedents, don’t intimidate your interlocutors, listen to all viewpoints, verify all information, and think through all consequences.

We ignore these things at our peril, and we should know that by now.

Oh, and no one's bought our house yet.

joella