Nightjar wrote:

Père Lachaise is the best 'sight' in Paris.

Pepé Le Pew?

It seems he’s not as acutely ill as first thought. In fact, he will probably live for several years with tablets of some description. It’s hard to put into words how upsetting this is.

My mother seems to have aged about five years by catering to his every whim over the last few months. Now, I have to think his presence will loom over us for much longer.

And of course, he’s set a new standard - being waited on hand and foot. He’s already turned her into a rugby wife. When I’m back from holiday, her friend and I are going to speak.

She’s as horrified by it all as me, and more likely to be listened to. I was ready to say goodbye - I’d already emailed Twickenham about scattering him there (no can do btw).

I'm so tired. I've been carrying stuff in and out of hotels, and wrangling boxes around in storage units, all day.

Surprised you're not tempted just to dump a load at a local charity shop by now

Or an unattended skip.

It is very tempting. And money isn't the problem, I could have it all taken away for the price of 6 weeks' storage.

But I've got to keep this book on electrical circuits in case civilisation collapses and we have to rebuilt it. And I have to keep this etymology book in case a future authoritarian goverment makes the internet illegal. And I have to keep these chairs in case there's another post-COVID supply chain crunch and I can't buy new ones...

How can it be that you haven’t bought a flat yet? What are you doing? You must have spent thousands upon thousands on hotels by now.

It works out, storage included, to be £2500 a month, which would be the cost of renting a quite fancy place.

I can afford it

£30,000 a year is quite a lot. I presume the hotels and the petrol are company expenses, but the storage can’t be. It will have to be quite the house price crash - and therefore economic catastrophe - for it to end up saving you money not to have just bought a flat a couple of years ago, and still save the cost of two years of living this way into the bargain set against whatever you eventually buy.

They aren't company expenses. But I'm not aiming to save money. I'm aiming to have a lifestyle where, if I don't like my neighbours, it's easy to change them.

Lend us a fiver mate.

I can't afford it. My favourite Spanish omelettes have gone up to £4.20. (I heat them up by immersing them in boiling water from the kettle).

My Godson passed all of his GCSEs.

Well done him.

An ad hoc arrangement with hired muscle to threaten any unliked neighbours away from the area would be much cheaper than spending £30,000 a year on Travelodges.

Or if you really don’t want to run the risk of having neighbours that might not be perfect, you could buy a little cottage in the countryside and sit on your porch with a rifle.

I shall pass your congratulations on.

cosmictanya wrote:

spending £30,000 a year on Travelodges

Premier Inns if you don't mind. And that figure includes storage. The hotel component is only about £22k.

Well, it’s your life.

As to mine, I spent most of Saturday in Wolverhampton.

It seemed ok. Not at all what I was expecting. Tettenbridge or Tittenhall or something. It was a family I know. Not having been there before, I didn’t take my son but having now been, I’d have taken him if I’d known it wasn’t dreadful. It just looked like ordinary suburbia - I wouldn’t have thought twice if he’d gone off to the park or whatever, which is a definite improvement on my impression that it might not even be appropriate for him to experience it from the seat of a locked car. Knowing it’s hostile territory I had made a promise to myself not to discuss anything vaguely political with any local, and to just smile in a non committal way if they did, and that worked.

Oh yes, Tettenhall (locally pronounced "Tett-null"), perhaps the wealthiest part of Wolverhampton. It has half timbered buildings, a village green with lido and everything.

Several years ago there was a campaign for the "village" to split from Wolverhampton.

You should have paid a visit to Tanya's Diner on the other side of the city.