Michael Harling's Blog, page 22

Moving Stuff

We spend a lot of time moving stuff these days. It’s what happens when you live in a small place; you are always in your own way.
If you want to get some stuff, chances are it’s under or behind some other stuff, so you have to move stuff off the top of stuff to get at the stuff you want. And then you have to move the stuff you took off the stuff you wanted back to where it was or it will be in the way of other stuff that belongs in the place where you put that stuff.
It’s like living on a canal...

Residential Respite

It’s been a month since our move and, diminutive living quarters aside, we like where we live.
The town center was a convenient and agreeable place to reside, but Horsham is a growing town and, lately, it had become too rowdy for the likes of us. Here, I don’t have to jostle my way through crowds to get to the corner store. It’s peaceful, and secluded and you hardly see anyone, and the people you do see often say, “Good morning,” which still startles me a little. Instead of the bustling main s...

Settling

Well, we’ve moved. Or, to be exact, we are in the process of moving: we are still have stuff to retrieve from our old flat and there are still many things lying around on the living room floor, or in boxes, looking for a place to live. But the heavy lifting is done, the massive payouts are now just a painful memory and most of the initial maintenance has been completed – more on that in a moment.
We were without a phone or internet for two weeks after we moved in because, well, Britain. And we...

Moving UK Style

We are still in the throes of moving, and the strain on my nerves and wallet are reaching a crescendo. The only consolation I have is to remind myself that we’re moving, and that’s just the way it is. But then I think, should it be?
I know I haven’t moved from place to place the US for a long time, but when I did, I don’t recall it being so traumatic. In fact, I once moved seven times in the space of four years and, aside from having to move all my stuff, no onerous inconveniences,or unexpecte...

Lowering the Flag

The flag has come down.
No, it’s nothing political—not me getting steamed up over Brexit, Chairman May or the village idiot in the White House—and I’m still as patriotic as ever. The reason is, we’re moving.
It seems strange to be moving again so soon. We haven’t been in our new flat long enough to stop calling it “our new flat,” and now we’re going to an even newer flat. There are various reasons for this move—cost, noise, 68 steps up to the door, rubbish managing agent—but overall, I think th...

Triskaidekafication

We go to America once a year, which adds up to a lot of trips. For the most part—despite the occasional hiccup—we have been lucky.
We have been lucky with the flights. But this time, both going and returning, our flights were missed, cancelled, delayed and just not very comfortable (in a first-world complaint sort of way).
Long story short: Missed connection in Newark, next flight cancelled, next flight delayed, and delayed, and delayed.
This would not have been so bad if we had not been in Ne...

Bloody Hell

We just returned from two weeks in the States, but that will have to wait because I now find myself, for the fourth time in less than a year, having to roll out this caveat:
This is not a political blog, but today I am going to talk about politics.
Again.
The reason (this time): I have just landed in a country without a government.
For the second time in less than a year, the British political system is in melt-down because they called an election they did not need to call and got a result they c...

Reflections on Having Been a Writer

Some of you with long memories may recall that this blog was not started as a publicity platform for my books. It was quite the other way around. The books grew out of the blog.
This blog was begun before blogs even existed. Back then, I was uploading essays about my adventures in Britain to a web-log. That was in 2001. Blogs didn’t come along until 2004 or so, and I didn’t succumb until 2006. Even then, there were not so many blogs, and I was riding the crest of the wave. Accordingly, I drew...

An Era of Music

A year ago I wasn’t even in a choir; now I’m running one.
It’s not my fault, really.
I know I have a tendency to want to be out front, and often throw myself into things with misguided enthusiasm, but this time I swore to myself it would be different. I joined a daytime choir, and made myself content with being one of a group, a cog in the wheel, and applied myself to learning to be the best choir member I could.
I liked it so much that, after a few months, I joined a second choir. I was really...

My Final Say on Brexit

Well, we finally did it. David Cameron loaded the gun, and Theresa May has pulled the trigger. Article 50 was delivered to the European Union yesterday (well, a couple of days ago; I did write this the day after, but I was a slacker and didn’t post it until the first of April) and now we are beginning the job of extricating ourselves from the EU. A process that promises to be the most exhaustive and expensive divorce in history.
For people like me, there is nothing left to do but get on with i...