Let’s Start the Year (Again) Part 1: New Year, New Moustache, New Digs, Same Old Goals

I don’t normally write about my personal life, insofar that I don’t write about specific life events that aren’t tied to video games, films or toys I’ve bought. I am making the exception here.

2015 was going to be a big year for me – I decided that I would use this year to tie up a bunch of loose ends with various projects, and I was in a prime position to do so. A comfortable home in a nice area with a recognisably regular routine, and with no big expenditures lined up (outside of the Batman Animated Series line DC have been pumping out) the potential to save up for a proper place to call “home”, somewhere preferably big enough to walk five paces without bumping into a wall¹. I even managed to go through new year’s eve without poisoning myself like I did last year, which was nice.

As per the title, I did decide to change my moustache. This was fashionable…in 1895. I’m informed it’s called “the friendly mutton chops”.

As per the expected routine, our landlords wished to visit on a Sunday evening in January. We spent the weekend cleaning the house from top-to-bottom, figuring that there would be a quick inspection, some sarcastic comments about the state of the garden² and then another six months of peace and quiet left to our own devices.

The inspection was indeed very short, in that it never actually took place. The real reason for the landlords’ visit was to let us know that they were looking to sell the house and that they were giving us three months’ notice. The consolation was that they might end up selling to an investor looking to also rent the house, but it was a very big might – we couldn’t assume the best, ignore it and assume that someone wouldn’t be knocking on our door in two months waiting to move their stuff in. On the plus side, we had been looking to move at some point during 2015 so it wasn’t a massive shock, although we would have preferred to look around at our own leisure about six months down the line maybe³.

It quickly became apparent that, via the biggest letting agent in the area, most of the landlords in the area wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole because of two little feathery residents we adopted sometime last year.

These two. The one on the left can never work out how to get back inside the cage so he thought this was close enough (he’s a bit thick, bless him).

They are called Willow and Jigen, and I don’t tend to write about the finer points of bird care as there’s not a lot to say – they sit in a cage, eat fruit and seed and then defecate wherever and whenever they like. Sometimes they see something that excites them and make lots of noise. Sometimes they forego the bit where they see something that excites them and make lots of noise anyway. Regardless, whether it’s human nature to impose human personality on to other creatures or not, both are very individual creatures with buckets of personality – Jigen is a preening, loud-mouthed little moron with a beak like a vice and Willow is a nonchalantly calm, clever little thing who may or may not be a girl⁴. I was genuinely upset that I might have to lose our pets.

As luck had it, there was one letting agent who had a flat available and he was fairly certain that the birds would not be a problem. A month later, and we are now living in a sizeable flat, one that you could probably put our old home in and still have room to spare. It overlooks a park, and the best part is that I don’t have to maintain it (I understand that the council pay people to do that).

I have quickly learned that I am not a flat person. I am uncomfortable with hearing people walking across my ceiling and I am constantly paranoid about the birds making loud noises while we are at work during the day. I will probably get used to the former and the latter will probably be unfounded (the birds are quiet as mice 85% of the time), but my new goal is to find the Casa de Payne to live in for a good few years and make my own. I long for walls that aren’t all white and beige where I can hang whatever I like, whenever I like. If it had a garden, I would probably put some effort into it as it is mine. I want a room I can let the birds fly around in every other day of the week without worrying about upsetting the neighbours, and if it does upset them then bugger them, it’s my bloody house and I’ll do what I like in it.

That’s the long-term goal. Our flat is a home for the time being, but it’s not the home for me⁵. We’re here for at least six months and, depending on whether we grow to like it, perhaps longer until we find that special place to make our own.

With the housing issue sorted, I can get back to looking at less important things. In terms of personal projects, of which I have a great many, there are several things I intend to work on and perhaps even finish:

• Finish this website overhaul. There are several crucial problems I need to fix before the revamp is “complete”⁶.
• I have a blog post I’ve started about the website overhaul, it’s a techy article about the joys of making CodeIgniter and WordPress play nice together.
• Revisit all my blog posts and fix broken links, add images to the wordier posts and generally tidy up the posts that don’t look right since the redesign.
• Revisit my Discworld Noir videos. I have reams of annotation material from YouTube comments I need to add, and since reading all the Philip Marlowe books I’ve picked up on several references that haven’t been flagged up. Subtitles need adding to every video too. I may blog about the videos as I go through them, just for kicks.
• Recommence the Two Docs’ World Tour. To be honest this may be postponed indefinitely until other projects have been completed.
• Detulux Incorporated is coming back. That’s all I can say about that.
• The Right Bros. may also come back, depending on other projects.
• I have a Warhammer 40K army I would love to get painted up and blogged about, but this is a project ten years in the making!
• There are several blog posts that I started that definitely need to see the light of day in 2015, including the next instalment of Three Blokes and a Chick Watch and Spore Part 2.

Those are the ones I can list off of the top of my head. Before we get to those though, I have a few odds and sods to comment on and get out of the way…

P.S. The funniest part is, after all the faff moving house, our old home got taken off of the market anyway. Still, they did us a favour really!

Here’s a picture of me with Willow. A bird on the hand is worth two in the bush, or something. Not pictured: my fetching Batman pyjama leggings.

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | February 16, 2015 at 10:32 pm | Real Life | No comment

Tags: birds, moving house, oh goody let's talk about real life for a change