Today threatened to be another achievement-less day but in the end was a small step forward. At the very least we went to a friend's new flat and ate tea bread and biscuits and drank tea. It was raining very very hard outside so I had a spoonful of sugar in my first cup. Even though there were biscuits. And I don't ordinarily take sugar in my tea. That's how yucky it is here.

We are now the owners of both a mains voltage detector (it is particularly good at detecting static electricity, but we're not letting that put us off) and an rcd as a sort of belt and braces attempt to prevent Mr MacLaren from being fried whilst undertaking DIY.

And we now have one of the two pan shelves up. It looks like this and will soon be joined by a second one to run the length of that part of the wall.

Unfortunately between getting the shelf home and getting to putting it up we seem to have lost the screws that connect the metal poles to the wall brackets...ahem. So it's going to take another trip to IKEA to get that second shelf up. However even half of a shelf is a *good* thing in terms of sorting the kitchen. Although all that drilling was very noisy.

We also tried our hardest to think about shelving and units and so on for the living room. We both drew some pictures. I dredged hard and found a place in my brain where I know how do draw in perspective (Mr MacLaren: "just use isometric, it's much easier!" ) and almost managed.

I even found some shelves I quite liked in the OKA catalogue and then essentially the same ones in Ikea for a sixth of the price. Mr MacLaren drew some pictures that sort of used those shelves.

And I also spotted a completely different but nevertheless appealing set in the Ikea catalogue (would look great with our red walls shining through) but unfortunately our room is too small. How this is possible I don't know; how big do these people think our houses are? Our living room is anything but small!

Altogether...baby steps further forward. We still don't have a sofa or any firm decision regarding shelves (what a pain that flats built 120 years ago don't conform to IKEA room size protocols) but we feel somehow further forward.

I am totally fed up and flat. It has been raining non stop for about 48 hours now; the last day it didn't rain at all feels like weeks ago.

There is so much about the flat that makes me unhappy. We seem to be incapable of leaving the kitchen tidy, never mind clean; there is always crap on the side board, bits of packaging and grains of rice and flour and the pull of lids from milk. I try to tell myself that this is all a downstream consequence of not yet having put the shelves up for the saucepans; that the pans are making the sides cluttered or are taking up space in cupboards that would be better used for other things that are instead on the sideboard. In turn the sides are already cluttered and busy so we don't bother our arses tidying or cleaning things properly. 

I can see that I'm sliding into my old procrastinatory ways, that things like an empty cardboard box on the side make me so unhappy that I run away and hide in a hole rather than simply putting the damn thing in the bin. I find myself internally blaming Mr MacLaren for it all because his mess justifies my mess and instead of just dealing with my mess I chalk it all back up to him.

Our new kitchen, as a room, is great, it is exactly what we wanted from the room. But even though we have more cupboards than in our old place I find the layout of the units really crummy. I don't feel like anything is properly in its best home yet. It all feels so unnatural. I don't remember feeling like this in the old flat- although it did take me a while to fully accept that the fridge wasn't a cupboard- but maybe that's just rose-tinted nostalgia.

The front room is a big fat disaster. Since I last wrote we have done exactly nothing to it. By creating a washing line set-up in the window we have conveniently absolved ourselves of any pressure to get the pulley installed. We are, at least, now doing washing so the washing basket looks more normal but I still feel like I have nothing to wear as now more than 50% of my everyday clothes are marooned in a vast pile once euphemistically crowned the 'ironing pile'.

We tried to go shopping yesterday, for shelving for the living room, to get our books and cds on so that we can start unpacking those boxes at least. I got up later than I should, which held us up by about an hour. That wouldn't have mattered so much except that we had to come back as we were giving Mr MacLaren's mum and dad lunch as it was his mum's birthday. It went really well and they were most complimentary about the food and we even had tea and shortbread, but by the time they were gone the rain was *really* lashing down. We did try going out again but not immediately and we ended up getting stranded between buses (got off one and then the all the ones we wanted to get on were either too full or the queues too long because of the rain) and so we ran out of time. We ended up in a bar in order to use the wifi (which has got even flakier in our flat although it seems to be working this morning...still no progress with virgin) and spent the evening hanging out. That was cool but didn't serve much purpose and meant we were both a bit woozy and drunky when we got in and not really in a fit state to install shelves.

I am massively behind with the nigella challenge; both in terms of cooking and also blogging- there are seven recipes requiring written up which I have not done, some of which pre-date the flat move. With such a huge number to be tackled I am, again, procrastinating rather than actually dealing with the situation.

Work is getting me down by being at once hugely stressful and time demanding and yet also a bit boring. It's a year since they offered me the job but my future prospects seem less good now than they did then; yes I have my foot in the door but that merely affords me a view through to the firmly bolted set of double doors just ahead of me. Sitting in the vestibule is cold, draughty and unsatisfying.

I told my best friend over a fortnight ago that I was feeling stressed and miserable and needed a cuppa and a chat to stay stable; she wasn't available that week but she's not been back in touch since then (except to turn down a dinner invite because she was off camping) which leaves me feeling a bit forgotten. I'd like it if she even just checked in, a wee text, nothing more.  

And we have a fortnight until our flatwarming and an un-inviting flat. We've invited too many people for them all just to hide in the kitchen (a most successful tactic so far). So there's nothing for it but to get the living room sorted. I just wish the rain would stop and some inspiration would strike and some furniture would be found and that I would pull my socks (pink) up and get on with it rather than moping. 

This flat alternately excites and depresses me. Ultimately, it's a fantastic flat and we've done really well. Once unpacked and with a year or two of settling, it will be h-amazing! Right now it is swamped with boxes; even the 'unpacked' kitchen is really untidy because we haven't yet put up the shelves for the sauce pans so they are arrayed about the place. Equally we haven't established a proper home for our massive set of condiments and so they are overtaking one section of sideboard, bumping other stuff round and in turn taking over the place that would be best for keeping clear for bread making purposes (and other general cooking).

I *know* that once the pans have their own home the kitchen will be much closer to ready, to finished. We still have to build the two remaining chairs (currently in boxes in the living room) and then there's things like where to store booze and where to put the fruit bowl etc but we'll get there. 

We have at least one person, an old flatmate, coming for tea tomorrow night, and she is going to be our first house guest! Now it goes without saying that we don't yet have any furniture in our guest room; in fact it is mostly full of boxes just now. We've done what we can though, borrowing a double bed airbed from my brother (he says he 'hopes' there is a bung in with it...otherwise M is going to have an uncomfortable night!) and we've got a duvet and pillows. I am going to go up to habitat today and buy some bedlinen that I liked for the room. I figure it's somewhere to start with how we style the place!

Our bedroom looks a bit like an ikea showroom; despite their being bought several years apart and being technically from different ranges out wardrobe and bed match suspiciously well. So much so, in fact, that I'm a bit nervous about what to do for a chest of drawers; too similar and we really will look homogeneous but different and it may look massively out of place. I suppose at the moment we don't really have anything in the room except for the furniture so that's all you see. Once we have soft furnishings....a light shade for example....we'll be able to put more of a stamp on it. Don't think that ikea had any chests of drawers quite big enough for my needs anyway! (We are currently using a chest of drawers that a colleague of Mr MacLaren's was throwing out. It's great, in that it gets the clothes off the floor, but it has really illustrated just how much more room we I actually need!)

And the living room....Well at the moment it it mostly jumbled boxes. I suppose it would be a start at least to organise the boxes. And the entire window is taken up with washing; we haven't yet put up our pulley as that will require going into the roof to establish where the joists are so that we can sight the roller wheels. At present we have the frame from some shelves in the bay of the window with the poles from our pulley arrayed between them. It works quite well which means we are no longer tied to weekend washing and the washing basket no longer looks quite so much like Mount Everest....more a mere Munro at present. Once we've got the pulley up we can build those shelves, which will give us somewhere temporary to put cds and books (about a third of our books, in all probability)(or maybe all our books but no cds or dvds) and then once the cds are away we can build the stereo (currently running off iPod speakers) and then and then and then....the list is long and endless.

We are still without our own broadband (or tv or telephone) because Virgin are being horribly slow sorting out a historic cockup (which has our neighbour across the stair listed as living at our address...until they properly sort out that he doesn't and never has we can't get our own internet installed (why can't they just send out a virgin engineer (permanently parked within 100 yards of our flat!) to the flat to confirm that there is NO VIRGIN CONNECTION coming into our property but ooh, look there is to flat 8, the one with their customer's name on the door) and sort it all out that way? Suffice to say, of course, we are still paying for our service. Naturally.

Don't get me started on gas and electricity. Scottish Power make virgin look like the absolute paradigm of customer service. Once we get our connection established and set up we are going to straight away shift our custom to Spark Energy who A) can't possibly be any worse than any of the big companies we've dealt with, B) are a small company based in the Borders and C) are committed to using 100% renewables by 2009. And their quote for the old flat works out much the same as we were paying before so I figure price-wise we're probably okay. 

Talking of which, I must go and bash my head against a raw brick wall phone scottish power before it's too late, again. 

Honestly, why does the sun vanish and the wind disappear altogether on the first day of the week where not only do I have washing to dry but also I don't need to cycle anywhere? All week I've been arriving at work pink and dripping because the sun has been splitting the sky whilst I've battled into whippy aroundy winds blowing every which way except for towards my work.

Today is grey and there is no wind. This isn't a huge problem for the washing, it'll dry eventually, but it is a shame for the bbq we're supposed to be going to later on. Sitting in the garden weather it ain't. (Except that Lawrence is one of those people who doesn't feel the cold, so I'm sure we'll still be outside. I shall wrap up very warm.)

Tonight we are off to a birthday party with the theme Space 2001 for which we'd intended to come up with some sort of Captain Kirk and his alien space babe 1970s sort of costumes. However we've organised nowt. Mr MacLaren isn't looking very Federation Compliant at the moment anyway...with his hair as it is at present he ought really to be aiming for a Gaius Baltar effect; sadly my hair is very much the wrong colour for me just throw on a slinky frock and be a zero effort Number Six

Hot damn we must get round to watching season three (sitting in a box somewhere)...but first we need to buy a great big tv...and before we do that we need to probably ought to focus on buying a sofa....aargh. More on all that in a subsequent post.

Now that we are in the new flat, I am cycling to work pretty much every day. I like this very much; it takes me fifteen minutes, even into the wind, and doesn't feel like a drag.

However I am finding the drivers in this part of town to be even bigger tits than I remember them being over southside way, back when I cycled to uni. This has been exacerbated in the last week by the arrival of lots of roadworks on my route to work. However, I swear a lot of these drivers pull into the side of the road specifically to stop me passing them, as if they can't bear for me to get through the lights quicker than them.

It seems that what I could really do with is some Howie's Birdie Gloves. Shame they're not selling them at the moment, eh?

I was in a shop yesterday, picking up some bits and pieces to help towards Mr MacLaren's birthday. There were signs all over said shop about how their shopping bags were no longer free but that as a consequence if you had one that wore out they'd replace it for free- standard bag for life stuff.

Now, given that I'd intentionally gone out shopping I'd been a bit dim and not taken any shopping bags with me. (I have some lovely ones.) However I knew there was no carrying of what I'd bought- it wouldn't be practical- and so when I handed my stuff over at the till I firmly said 'and can I have a bag too please'.

I'm fairly certain the woman made some noise of acknowledgement. She then proceeded to tot up my shopping. The shop in question has display screens facing the customer where you can see each item being added to your bill and the running total. My shopping came to £7.98 so I fished out £8.10 to cover the 10p shopping bag too. (I am paying for everything with cash at present but that's another story.) 

Then the woman asked me if I wanted a shopping bag. I sighed inwardly and said yes, I did, before she proceeded to explain to me, and apologise to me, at some length, that nowadays they were 10p but that if they did ever wear out I was only to bring it back and I'd get a new one etc etc she went on somewhat. I firmly confirmed that yes, I did want a bag, and duly handed over my money.

She looked at the money a bit strangely (perhaps, like me, no one ever pays with cash these days and she just wasn't sure what it was!) and then put it through on the till. Then she got out my change, looked more confused, considered biting her tongue, and then said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand, why did you give me that money??" as she handed me 12p change.

I had to break it to her that after all that spiel she'd not actually managed to charge me for the bag I'd specifically asked for which she'd then explained the pros and cons of to me ad nauseum. She said not to worry and gave me it for free. Sigh.

Twits, the lot of them. Still, I managed to do the rest of my day's shopping without requiring a single extra carrier bag, so that's something. 

with a hangover. well two, Mr MacLaren has one too. We went for a lovely meal at the Sizzling Scot late last night, just as we did on our first night in Caley Place. And we drank most (not all!!!) of a bottle of wine, and were making to leave, when the lovely friendly waiter (who we had tipped generously) offered us a 'wee nightcap, on him' and well let's just say they looked pretty hand poured...

gawd and there's still most of the kitchen to pack.