I am beat. Done. Shattered. Cream crackered etc.

I moved house yesterday. The removals men arrived at 8am, four of them, and I naively presumed it would be pretty straightforward. They were packing everything in my flat inc the 372m books I have amassed. I was just there to fanny about with the kettle.

Actually, yesterday involved six car trips between W12 and Crystal Palace where my very kind sister is letting me stay for a bit. Six hours in the car shuttling orchids and everything that I didn’t want to put into storage. Then I had to drive back to Notting Hill for dinner, then back to Crystal Palace again where I crashed out at midnight.

Today, I got up at 6am to write my Tel column, then went back to W12 to clean my old flat and say goodbye. Then I caught the overground to Hampstead to research a piece am writing about the ladies’ pond. Then I had lunch in Hampstead with a friend. Then I tried to get the train to Stoke Newington for dinner with another mate but the trains were all cancelled so I caught the tube and a bus. I am now here in a pub, drinking red wine like water before hopping on the train from Canonbury station back down to Crystal Palace again for the night. Tomorrow morning I’m getting a 9am train from King’s Cross to Pitlochry for the weekend for a piece I’m writing for someone else. One of my jobs today was to get keys cut so I have my own for my sister’s place. I got off the bus in Stoke Newington and reached the key cutting place at 6.31pm JUST as the man was locking up. And do you know what? I clearly looked so deranged, so exhausted, so sad that he opened up again just for me and cut them. And then refused to take the extra tenner I tried to pay. So there isn’t much point to this bleating about being tired apart from to say that if you need ANY keys cut OR shoes heeled, the place on the east side of Newington Green is where you should do it. The man should be knighted, quite frankly.