Exhaust Pipe

I've had a blank draft post called Exhaust Pipe sitting here for a couple of days. I don't know what I was going to write about. I am exhausted, but I don't own a car or a pipe. It was probably going to be something hilariously left-field.

We're moving house tomorrow.

We had our last walk into work this morning. Not the last walk into work ever, but the last walk into work from our current flat. We've been doing the walk for five years, so it was quite emotional.

When we first started the walk, this blog was only a few months old. Imagine that. Now the blog is as bearded and jaded and jade-bearded as I am.

Because it was our last walk (using that particular route), we had to say goodbye to those old familiar sights.

Goodbye, Murray's postbox.

Goodbye, woman-who-used-to-be-pregnant-and-now-has-a-son.

Goodbye McCoy, the crinkle-faced dog in the window of North Oxford Property Services.

Goodbye, some bush.

Goodbye, house-on-Winchester-Road-that-we-want-to-live-in-some-day.

Goodbye, car with the 'GNU' numberplate.

Goodbye, corpse. We'll miss you most of all. Even if you're not much of a corpse anymore. You're more of a lumpy puddle studded with jewellery.

This kind of sentimentality is a handicap. You can't assign gravitas to everything. If everything has gravitas, nothing does. I believe Einstein said something to that effect.

And this is just the walk!

When we have to say goodbye to our flat, we'll be in real trouble. We have a real emotional connection to those walls and chairs and stains. It reminds of that Jeffrey Lewis song that I'm not going to listen to, in case I start blubbing at my desk.



Time adds significance to the most banal of interactions. If you use the same Game Boy for thirteen years, it becomes a profound bond, even though it's just a machine. Time really does make fools of us all - not by proving us wrong, but by making us care about inanimate objects.

We have second thoughts about binning a colander that got us through some tough times, even though all of its holes are clogged up by other colanders.

We lovingly finger a door handle, because we've been touching it every day since Diana died.

We hesitate before cutting into a stuffed pig toy that may not have even been ours in the first place.

Sentimentality is the fetishisation of loss. There's a cheap, empty profundity to things existing and then not existing. It's a fundamental human impulse to feel emotionally close to a meaningless past. That's why Forrest Gump was so popular.

I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here. I seem to be attacking my own sentimentality for no particular reason. I like sentimentality.

Sometimes I just start writing things, and get dragged into a strange direction by my fingers.

It's probably what makes this blog such an honest and interesting work of art. You have a real insight into my thinking, because I have no control over my typing.

Any psychiatrist would have a field day, as long as they could stop themselves dozing off.

Anyway, the move promises to be a harrowing experience. There will be snow and heavy lifting. There will probably be disappointment and rats. There will be a week without internet access. But, by the end of it all, I'll be living in a place with a dishwasher.

We can all take comfort in that, even if we've dislocated both of our shoulders whilst trying to lift a bath.