Stuffs and things

Stop press! My sister and her husband have created a human life. It's amazing. There are pictures of little Julia at the bottom of this blog. She was born on 30 April at a quarter to eleven, and she has ten toes and ten fingers and a shock of black hair.

I stopped moving today. No, that came out wrong. I finished with the whole moving flat palaver this morning, and settling in to the new place. It was a little sad to say bye to my beautiful Art Deco flat after the final clean out. I was feeling a little morose pacing round the boxes in my new pad when I saw two yellow eyes peek out from behind the sofa. And then a face. And some whiskers.

So it turns out that I didn't move into an unoccupied flat. There's a kitten who has pretty much decided it's hers too, and we'll have to share. I'm sure we can work round our differences. For example, she loves to claw the blue armchair. I don't. We had an argument about it last night, but she didn't hold it against me this morning and we had breakfast together on the balcony. Gaining such a friend kind of makes up for the loss of Views.

Moving is also a time to take stock of all your stuffs and things, and marvel at all the completely useless items you accumulate as you meander through life. I already have two beds, a sofa, an armchair, a million dresses and twelfty bottles full of toiletries. Such a tiring prospect, having things. I kind of felt like chucking them all away instead of moving them, but then I do kind of need a sofa. Oh, I can't wait for the day I move out - I'll go all michael jackson and give all my stuff away. It will be great. But then, not sure who would be keen on a blue chair with claw marks...

Next week I'm flying to Trieste via Joburg, Madrid and Munich. Nice one. Then it'll be another three-day ramp up to the next publication and then it will be June! And then July, and then at the end of that month I'll be able to go and see little Julia and see what the fuss is all about.