House Hunting

And so it begins. The Great House Hunt 2012.

What?.. Oh, yeah, I think I forgot to mention that I’m moving house. I told my landlady that I’d be out by the 30^th September so the pressure is on. And why? Well, as much as everyone who has been to visit over the past year has been lovely about it… this house is grim. It’s a grubby little student house, minus the students.

Moving house is such a pain in the arse. This will be my 8^th time in the past 6 years. I have now been in this house for exactly 1 year and 2 days (don’t panic, I’m carrying this on until I’ve done 52 posts) making it the place I’ve lived for the longest time since moving out of the family home. Mental. And even though I’ve been here longest it certainly doesn’t feel like home. Time to move on.

DEVELOPMENT: So I wrote the beginning of this blog a couple of days ago and since then I’ve been BUSY. I have now found somewhere new to live (pictures above and left)! It may be cavalier and a reflection on how much I don’t like the whole moving house process but I only went to one viewing. A lovely 2 bed flat just on the edge of Lewisham. I’ll be sharing with a girl called Dolly; she’s 24 too and works 9-5 Mon-Fri in central London. So, that’s that sorted.

Now I just need to actually sort out a way of physically moving my stuff – somewhat trickier. I have come up with one excellent solution though... So far I’ve got rid of 5 bin bags of belongings. Some to the charity shop down on the high street but most, unfortunately, has gone straight into the bin. I have three weeks to sort something out until I resort to Man with a Van.

In other news this week:

I’ve been on volunteer shifts at the Excel centre, Canning Town and West Ham. I now only have two shifts remaining until it all comes to a close. The whole experience of front line duties during the Games has been fantastic. I’ve done my bit and smiled and cheered and laughed and I’ve misdirected customers and I’ve lost team members and I’ve even surprised myself when attempting to recall my high-school French. I’ve met celebrities* (list below)! And best of all I’ve been fortunate enough to actually experience the whole thing as a paying visitor too.

My latest spectator experience came yesterday morning as I left the house at 8am on my first day off in 10 days. I was excited. After seeing Olympic football, handball and hockey and getting to visit the excellent Olympic Park I was finally on my way IN TO THE STADIUM. Once again, thanks to Twitter (I can sense some of you rolling your eyes!) I managed to secure a ticket to the morning session of the Paralympic Athletics. Now, I’m no expert on disability sports but I do enjoy athletics and had done a lot of swotting up of the classifications and variances in the rules compared to the Olympic events.  A lot of people had not. But not to worry, rather than sit there listening to them guess what each classification meant or why each sitting discus thrower takes all three attempts in one go I got chatting and soon had a collection of people at either side and in front of me cheering at all the right times and able to identify the difference between a T38 and a F33. My work there was done.

I left the stadium and the park for the last time. It's likely to be 2014 before I visit again, once it has been transformed into a huge public park for the people of east London. But the sun was still shining and I had the whole afternoon soak it up. I decided that I would do something I’ve been meaning to get around to for a year now. About 8 years ago (maybe even more..) my nan and granddad finally moved up to Bolton in order to be closer to us and my aunt and uncle. Before that though, we would visit every year in the summer holidays (and Easter some years too – bonus!) their flat in Forest Hill. Yesterday afternoon, I journyed south of the river, to my soon-to-be home borough of Lewisham. I was excited to find out what I still remembered and to see if I could find the place without the help of Google Maps.

As I left the train station I had a huge sinking feeling. I didn’t recognise a thing.

Turns out I’d left by the wrong exit!

As I came around the corner I saw the WH Smith we used to drag mum to at the end of the holidays in order to get our new pencil cases and the pub granddad used to frequent where he was affectionately known as Dusty. I carried on up the road and was pleased to see the local swimming pool has had a revamp and that the small public library was still going strong. I turned left and had expected to see a mountain-like road that Me, Naomi and Jess used to tackle as youngsters...turns out the road has a bit of an incline but is barely even a hill. I finally made it to Shackleton Close and my nan’s unforgettable fire engine red front door. Sadly, it looked a little run down but maybe I was just seeing things through more mature eyes. The estate still buzzed with life and I had a quick nosey around all of our favourite old hiding places. After a while I began to feel a bid weird snooping around taking sly photos so moved on but it was really nice to go back and feel like I knew somewhere I hadn’t visited in almost a decade, so well.

Still in Forest Hill and on this journey through my past, I decided to revisit a place we visited at least once a summer, the Horniman Museum. It’s still fantastic. I visited my favourite gallery, the Music Hall and visited the photography exhibition too. I ended the day in the gardens of the museum where I phoned mum to have a little reminisce.

This weekend I have my final two station shifts and will hopefully find time to visit the Thames Festival – a real sign that I have definitely been here over a year now as I’ve already written about that fesitval 12 months ago!

I’ll have to dash, there’s a lady at the door asking to look at my loft space. Ooow er!

Until next time,

Bren x


Ps, Lists of celebs I've spotted/spoke to/had a photo with during the Olympics and Paralympics:

Jamie Murray
Kelly Smith
Alex Scott

Huw Edwards
Matt Baker
Peter Hendy
Boris Johnson
and I even got a Tweet off Rick Edwards after bumping into him at the Excel...

Pps, This amused/depressed/didn’t surprise me this week:

More pictures from the week (all of the best Paralympic Athletics pictures will be on Facebook shortly):