Tales of the Urban Burbs #3

Topic: Yidaho
The quiet got to me. It really really got to me. Pastel, torpid silence. Bare rooms, bare walls.
No phone, and my mobile dying without its battery (charger left the other side of the Thames).
I'd gotten into a routine of two cold baths a day, interspersed with massaging and pummeling of Malice's knobs and pipes. Inbetween getting to Crystal Palace to blog, begging for friends to house-sit during repairs or deliveries, and trying to assemble a flat-pack bed, things were becoming desperate.

Krystal came over while I was at work to let the bed delivery men plate up their parcel of joy for me.
Assembling the bed was a construction job of the utmost importance - I assembled the bed, slowly, carefully, remembering the sudden nocturnal crashes of the last one. I'd spent four years plummeting earthwards whenever a particular plank slipped out of joist. It was one of those occasions when I regimented not only the parts, but the washers, the nuts, the damn screws too, in a crazy jigsaw parody of what the frame was meant to become. Promised to reward myself with chip shop suppers.
Knackered from bed meccano antics, I fizzed onwards to put together the hi-fi. The complete silence afforded by Temporary New Abode has me flicking on teevee, radio, anything to hear a sound. I attached all the wires to the hifi while on the phone to Toulouse, who was making international calls from work. (gasp!) The hi-fi was a piece of piss - the next downside was that I've only brought one CD, but it's better than the silence pressing in. (All charity donations accepted; Maxinquaye is becoming old.)

After all that, tiredness was beginning to flake my brain into slivers, and I ran the car into a bollard I hadn't expected, just beyond my driveway. Yes, yes, yes, I know they're lit up with flashing harzard lights. Don't distract me from my whinge.
My fingers stank of grease and iron bolts. I nearly plunged down the stairs backwards while blogging too excitedly, and the consolation of more chips on the way home wasn't much enlivened by the metallic tang of iron filings.

But then two things went right.
In the morning, a welcome shock: Malice lurves me.
Malice offered up steaming boiling bubbling hot water. As hot as I can take it, she'll pump it. Hotter.
But she'll only do it at seven in the morning. (there goes my new lie in)
My other gift from the gods - the first, last and only time - I bought a Teddy. Starved of cuddles from psychologically damaged wayward felines, I was desperate. I bought Theodore Bear amid much cruel hilarity at my expense from the natives.
I cuddled him curled up on Pink Nasty for an hour, while watching Rotten in the Jungle. I took him to bed, too.
He has 2004 embroidered on his footpaw, to remind me I can only have him one year, then emotional maturity must become de rigeur. I'm to pass him on when the year is up. Being female, I can get away with this as if it's in any way psychologically normalistical. (Unless you actually know me, I suppose.)
Believe me, Theodore Bear has done serious sofa cuddle time for me already. Those cats should be nervous, because I woke up today still snuggling Theodore, to find jets of lovely hot water from Malice.

Things look up.