Today spent more or less gutting my art room ready for the removal people to shift our stuff over to the new rooms tomorrow. My classes were thankfully re-roomed and covered so I didn’t have to worry about the misery of the last week of term when everyone just wants to be entertained. And hell, I aint no damn entertainer. The amount of crap in the room was pretty amazing and we filled a large wheelie bin in no time at all. Twelve years of accumulated stuff, loads of which has never been touched in most of that time. We found old disks and manuals for things like Prime Art and a word processor for the old Acorns. It was like from a different world… very odd. It went in the trash of course although part of me wondered if I shouldn’t have taken it home and stuck it on eBay.

So 12 years of my life in that room. It was kind of scary thinking about it. I took down the drawings of the two tutor groups I saw through the entire five years and thought about how old the first bunch would be now. 23 I guess… How time flies.

I took down all the stuff from my part of the wall, and had to use a scalpel to slice off some of the older things that had been stuck to the paper that covered the pin board. So down came Daisy’s drawing of me as ‘a very tall man’ (it was drawn on a length of masking tape…) and the Power Rangers pogs that were glued to the paper, and the strip of Appliance stickers that had assorted other things stuck on top, like the Daphne and Celeste ‘U.G.L.Y.’ post-it note that I snagged from Erica all those years ago at a party in Haringey. As I recall that was also the night that Erland Oye shouted us a taxi back into the city centre. Lovely chap.

So yes, the wall came down. It’s always a sad moment, but even sadder this year because EVERYthing came down. Even Lily’s lovehearts and Claire’s refreshers. And the ‘pope’ card. And the big Belle and Sebastian in Manchester poster… And Pam’s valentines card. And the photos of me by the Fire Raisers shelter and in my dress.

I don’t have a section of wall to call my own in the new room yet (not until they get their shit together and properly fit display board to the walls, anyway) so I will be unable to move any of those things into a new position for some time, and maybe this well give me the strength to have a totally new beginning. We shall see.

And as one wall comes down, another goes up… Mark is still building our garden wall. He hopes to be finished tonight! Or this week at least. Yay!

I was thinking earlier this morning how at the moment I feel like one of the riders going up the Tour climbs, suffering like hell and being kind of blinkered on the summit and reaching it ahead of the cut-off time. I’m just looking at Wednesday, 3.30pm. That’s my summit of L’Alpe D’Huez. Speaking of which they do that on Wednesday themselves, so that’s kind of fitting.

I’m sure there were other things I was going to write but they seem to have escaped me. Oh yeah, I know, I remembered a bit of a dream I had last night. For some reason me and Em were walking through a field and the soil was kind of patterned with the image of a face, kind of like walking on a Warhol multiple painging, only in a field. And in soil. It was very strange. Then we were walking through the streets of Troon and it was kind of creepy. Then the alarm went off and I woke up.

No-one is updating their blogs much. Grrr. Except Sethe did a super job the other day and posted a whole load of things rescued from old journal entries and such like and that was cool. Made me almost want to look back at my own. But then I figured that might be depressing.

Almost as depressing as someone ignoring your IM’s. Sigh. Oh well, I’m off to watch Le Tour anyway.