Wednesday 17 April 2013

(Almost) scuppered by Worthing

I moved home 3 weeks ago. This seemingly unrelated event has threatened to scupper my trip.

I have moved from Brighton to Worthing. It's not Worthing's fault. No one wishes you well when you say you are leaving Brighton for Worthing. It's more like you have told them some bad news, like you've put your back out or your kitchen flooded. They presume that moving to Worthing has not been a choice, but rather a necessity resulting from some unfortunate circumstance as if the notion that anyone would move to Worthing by design is an unfathomable concept. This converation ultimately leads to the one (and possibly only) positive thing that people can muster when told that you are moving to Worthing: 'You get a lot more for your money in Worthing'. This is true. I have moved from a one bedroom, ground floor flat to a house. A whole one. With stairs. That's what you get for your money in Worthing: stairs, fucking loads of them. I haven't counted them, but at this moment I feel like I should. It's bugging me now. I really want to go and count them, but I won't because that would be giving in to the ruminations and you wouldn't know anyway as it is not really possible to indicate the passing of time in writing.       I'd have to leave gaps like that to suggest that I have been elsewhere and that time has passed in my absence. Or I could be deceiving you and be tapping the space bar having never left my sofa where I am sitting with my right leg elevated and an ice pack strapped to it. Yes, see, there is a point to this: having lived a largely stair-free existence for many years, the new physicality of stair ascent and descent has revealed something new; my right knee makes a terrible crunching sound when I climb stairs and is swollen and sore after 19 days in my new house. Bollocks. I am so unfit, I need an ice pack after the return trip from the bathroom for a wee. This is not looking good.

Spookily, stairs feature quite heavily in the show itself being the cause of my mental disintegration all those years ago, so its apt that they should try and fuck me over again.

Anyway, I'm still going, gammy knee or not.

I'll be looking out for a bungalow on my return.