Saturday 18 November 2017

#316 Room ads and Jalapeños

Friday, 10:22am. I pulled back the covers and got up. I'd been semi-awake for about forty minutes but that was just a guess. It felt like I'd had less than eight hours. Bruno and Alex had courteously gone upstairs at four minutes past midnight. It had taken me another two hours to get to sleep. Proof that my difficulty in doing so hadn't all been down to their routines.

I put some socks on and walked back across the surface of the bed, banging my head on the light as usual and pulled back a section of one of the curtains, along with the two double duvets I'd hung over the curtain rail to keep the light out. After pulling back the collection of sheets just enough for the mid-morning rays to reach my two plants, I wedged the remaining parts of the duvets into the rail with an old T-Shirt. I then walked carefully back across the bed, grabbed a towel and my toothbrush and headed for the shower.

If I had to say what had inspired me to shower this morning and get dressed straight away like a responsible adult, rather than lounging around checking emails and uploading the blog post first like I often did, I'd attribute it to the couple of days I'd spent chilling in Kent. Or maybe watching The Martian the night before. Seeing Matt Damon surgically remove shrapnel from his own torso after being left for dead on Mars helped put my own circumstances into perspective.

I took a ten minute walk along the Thames. Made sure I ate a proper breakfast (cereal and toast), then opened up the laptop. It'd been three weeks since I'd started looking at rooms and not much else. I'd messaged seventy-five advertisers so far and had a hit rate of about one in ten. I'd been to eight viewings, half of which I'd shown an interest in. I estimated my odds of success in any one viewing at between one in ten and one in twenty. I could make that work.

I spent the next few hours looking for suitable places and messaging. A break for lunch. Periodic checking of my phone to exchange a message, or check one of the half-dozen Scrabble games I had on the go. As for what I'd do if I couldn't move, I had two options. Try and work from here and then move, or head back to Kent and work from there and then move. I wasn't quite at that point yet though.

During the course of the day, I identified eight rooms and wrote to the advertiser of each one. Two came back offering viewings. I could replicate that behavior every day this week with a view to seeing ten places. I could do the same next week if necessary. That would give me a fair chance. Fewer people would be moving out over Christmas but fewer people would be looking to move too. Dates didn't matter to me. I could sign tomorrow if I found somewhere. Sell some possessions. Bag up the rest and get out of here.

On my last night in Canary Wharf, I'd take myself out for a pizza. I'd done the same on my first night here. I remember standing outside Pizza Express painfully deliberating for a full ten minutes over whether to eat there or not. This time there would be no deliberation. When I found somewhere new, I was going to celebrate. It would be a milestone. A step on the critical path. Towards what exactly, I still wasn't sure.

3 comments

Fizzfan said...

Duvets for curtains is quite funny.

What’s your favourite Pizza? Im assuming it’s got Jalapeños on it?

Hope you get to eat one soon:)

Profound Familiarity said...


Yeah, my favourite would be pepperoni with either mixed peppers or jala... actually not jalapenos but those other lighter green chilies.

Ok now I'm hungry.

What's your favourite?

Fizzfan said...

I guess the same.