I’ve spent the last few years living in North London, and I loved it to bits, but from tomorrow I shall be living in South London, with my girlfriend Tori, and I couldn’t be more excited!

OK, so the rent is going to be substantially less, and the time and cost to get to work roughly the same, and those are lovely things, but moving in with Tori is what has my heart racing. Well this is a major step for the two of us. We’ve been seeing each other now for 10 months, a time which seems to have flown by. I mean seriously, it’s not long till we have our first anniversary and I feel like no time has passed at all. I also feel like I’ve known her all my life, which I guess is why I feel so good about moving in with her. It just feels right.

For the last few weeks we’ve been picking furniture from the Ikea website, and it was all ordered yesterday morning. We’re going to have to go again in the car some time so we can pick out decorative things, but I’m really happy with what we’re chosen.

We’re going to have our own separate living room in the house, though the kitchen is shared. I’m really looking forward to having a bedroom and living room that are *ours*, decorated our way, and a place that only we use. I love the guys I live with and have lived with, but coming home and being able to plonk myself in a room that only Tori and I occupy will be absolutely lovely.

Of course I’m stressed about the moving. Tomorrow I’m focussing on moving the big things. I have a van hired, which I’m stressed about driving, I know the directions, which I’m going to print out, and I’m happily skirting around the congestion zone. I’ve got most of my junk packed up, but I’ve actually run out of boxes.  Fortunately, it’s going to be about 2 weeks before the person taking my room moves in, so I can leave a few things there and come back for them later, I just need to get shelves, computers, sofas and other massive things to the new place.

What is most important though is that we move Tori’s stuff. She needs to be out of her place tomorrow. Her parents are coming to help with their van, and I’ll have mine, so we should be able to clear her stuff out by midday. If that happens, I should have my stuff out by late afternoon. Fingers crossed.

HOLY CRAP THAT WAS THE MOST TERRIFYING 5 MINUTES OF MY LIFE.

If you are ever asked if you want sedation for endoscopy, be very aware of what you’re getting in to before you say no.

I said no. Not because I was trying to be manly or anything, just because I didn’t want to deal with not being able to look after myself for the next 24 hours. They say you’re not allowed to drive, cycle, operate a kettle or even sign any legal documents for 24 hours after sedation.

24 hours of being light headed is just not for me so I opted out, and part of me wishes I hadn’t. Considering I’d gone all morning without any food, and a few hours without water, I didn’t want to feel any more crappy. So I entered the procedure room, and I was greeted by a very nice doctor and three very nice nurses.

One of the nurses squirted a couple of squirts of local anaesthesia on the back of my throat, which tasted a lot like medicine. This was actually quite fine, and quite probably the nicest part of the whole procedure. After about 30 seconds, the nurse told me she just need to put more anaesthesia in my throat. That’s OK, I thought. She put the little spray back in my mouth and squirted again. And again. And again. I lost count of the number of squirt, and felt like I was drowning. This was scary, but not the scariest part, and at least everyone knew I was numb, and boy am I glad of that!

Next, I was asked to lay on my left hand side. A blood pressure thing was put on my right arm, and a heart rate monitor on my left index finger. A thing was placed in my mouth to keep it open during the whole thing and then the nice doctor slid the camera in.

This is the part when you want to be sedated. SWALLOW they all commanded. I did their bidding. What else could I do. I was pinned down, I had something in my mouth and I couldn’t make a single noise. I felt absolutely helpless. More helpless and more scared than I had ever felt in my life. All I could do was watch as the long, bendy camera enter my body at an alarming rate, and cough. And sweat.

As they entered my stomach, they had to puff it full of air to be able to see anything. A weird experience, it was a lot like feeling you have a massive burp brewing but there’s nothing you can do about it. Slightly uncomfortable, not painful, but still, being pinned down and feeling these things happening was not a lot of fun.

“Open,” said the doctor.

“Open,” said the nurse, confirming she’d completed the request successfully.

“Close”

“Close”

*Tug*

HUH?

That weird feeling was someone tugging at my insides to rip part of my small intestine out. A tiny bit, I admit, but it all added to the extremely terrifying experience. This happened about 5 times as they collected more and more samples from inside me.

As the doctor finally started pulling the camera out of my, I noticed along the side something very interesting. Numbers. I read 1m as it passed across my vision. Wait, what? 1m? It might not have gone that far down, but I’m pretty certain I took at least 80cm. Many gay men and American porn stars would be proud of me.

Finally it was out and I sat up. Strangely, for the next hour or so I was buzzing. I felt amazing. I can’t explain how good I felt. Tori actually asked me if I had taken any kind of drug while I was in there, and started to become worried about me. I was fine. Better than fine. Great. I feel great.

I actually feel so much better now than I have done for a very long time.

I have pictures of my insides. Once I’ve had a chance to scan them, I’ll post them on here, but they’ll be behind a cut. Don’t look if you don’t want to see.

Unfortunately I won’t find out the results of my biopsy until the 20th of April. I don’t think it’ll take long for the results to come back, but I think that the clinic are just fully booked out until then. I don’t mind waiting. I feel great now already.

My journey was actually made of a lot of stops and starts. First thing this morning I cycled down to Rolls and Rems on Seven Sisters road to pick up some tread for a sewing project. Then I cycled back up Holloway Road to the pet shop to get little Trev some food (I must remember to buy him some new perches soon). Next was a cycle up the road a bit to Sainsbury’s for milk, followed by the fabled journey up the steepest hill in the world ever.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I just put the bike into the lowest gear and took it at my own pace. Fortunately, as it’s a Saturday, I didn’t have to worry too much about buses getting stuck behind me so I just went for it.

I guess I’m proud of myself, but I don’t think I can call it a complete victory yet. I need to see how it goes when I do the full journey back from work. I wonder if I can simulate the journey by doing some kind of loop tomorrow morning. Of course, this isn’t fair because I haven’t spent an entire tiring day at work.

Wish I had recorded this success on Endomondo. Never mind, eh?

So I walked some of the way and it was a bit cheating, but guess what. Tori was on the tube, pulled in to old street station at 6.06. I believe I set off at 6.07. I actually made it to home before Tori did. Fucking win!

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/uH3OFkLYIwY

She also made me a little bag of stuff to keep in my locker at work for when I cycle in. It’s got shower gel and deodorant, which I think are most important, and some painkillers and some gel stuff to rub in to my aching muscles. So thoughtful, so lovely.

I remembered, of course, to tell Endomondo to track my journey to work, but when you forget to turn on GPS, it doesn’t do a very good job of it. According to my workout stats, it says I did 0 miles in 29 minutes at 16 seconds. So I’ve shaved maybe a few minutes off my time by doing a direct route to work, rather than round the side, not a massive change. Cycling down Holloway road wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, though there is quite a bit of pressure on the junction with Seven Sisters Road. It’s not difficult, but you are VERY aware that there is traffic moving in every direction.

Interestingly, I found myself over-taking buses instead of having them behind me, dying to get past, which means it’s a quicker way to get to work *and* it’s healthier for me. Fucking win!

Checking myself out in the mirror, I think I’ve lost inches from my spare type, but I’m still retaining my weight, so I guess I might be adding muscle, though I wouldn’t care to speculate really.

In primary school I would chew pencils, just like every child, but this is has been a life-long habit I’ve never been able to grow out of, leading to all the inevitable problems.

While those cheap, plastic roller-ball pens are nice and come in their thousands in the office environment, they have always been a source of hate in my life. Why can’t someone make them out of stronger plastic? They just can’t cope with the full force of my teeth, chewing on them, day in, day out. About once a month I have to pick tiny shards of plastic from between my teeth, and discard what was quite a full pen in the bin because the structural integrity has now gone.

Pencils are more of the same. While I do enjoy using them more than cheap pens, again I end up with bits of wood stuck in my teeth. Then I have the age old problem of keeping it sharp. I don’t have the lightest touch in the world so they blunt extremely easily, but when it comes to sharpening, I can never get it right. I never get that nice shape that you get when it comes out of the box. Instead I get that stupidly sharp point that breaks off instead of wearing down, leading to bits of pencil pinged across my desk and the need to sharpen the pencil again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Now we come to the slightly more expensive pen. You know, the clicky kind with 1000 moving parts inside them. I exaggerate, but as a geek, that’s exactly what it seems to me. They’re just too irresistible to take apart and see how they work. Then inevitable then happens. I wonder about how springy the spring is and it’s role in the pen. PING! It’s now on the other side of the room and we all know I’m not going to look for it.

Finally, the fountain pen. The SCOURGE of my school life. My teachers hated my handwriting, and I can’t blame them. It was scruffy and rushed, and more often than not it was smudged because I wouldn’t wait for the ink to dry before rubbing my hands all over the page. Then there was the fact that I waved my pens around as a child and found more ink floating around in the lid than in the pen itself. No, the fountain pen was a disaster for me.

But now I’m all grown up, I find myself holding on to this Batman fountain pen, given to me as a Christmas gift from Tori, not just for its sentimental value, but because it’s a writing implement I can finally get on with.

My handwriting improved so much since my time at school, I’m slightly less fidgety, and coupled with the fact that the fountain pen only has one part to unscrew, I don’t think I’ll ever need another pen again. In fact, I take this pen to and from work with me every day.

Now I just need to make sure I have some ink at home and at work all the time. And maybe a pocket protector.

I’m sure you’re already aware, as I’ve discussed here, that I’ve started doing some running and some cycling. Well, while I’m doing at least two runs a week, the cycling hasn’t quite taken off yet. This isn’t because I don’t want to do it, it’s just a by-product of visiting Tori very regularly, and also having to go away for work last week.

Needless to say, I will be cycling to work tomorrow, and maybe again the day after that, while I have access to my bike.

There is another slight change, which I am extremely proud to announce, I have been eating sea food. Tori, ever vigilant when it comes to trying to make me slimmer/healthier/more awesome/less annoying/less scruffy, decided that we should have salmon for dinner a couple of weekends back. Knowing that I would probably have some problem with it, I agreed on the grounds that I would be cooking the fish myself.

To my surprise, as I lifted the fillet out of the packaging and on to the already spitting frying pan, I wasn’t as freaked out about touching it as I thought I would be. I then proceeded to casually push the salmon around the pan to ensure it didn’t stick/burn/etc.

We cut it up and put it on a bed of rice and it was absolutely delicious. The taste certainly wasn’t anything I expected, so I wolfed it all down. Later in the week when I went to Birmingham for work, I decided to have a trout starter with my dinner, thinking to myself that if I kept eating fish, I couldn’t slip back in to my fish-phobic ways. Once again the food was amazing, especially sitting on risotto rice. Nom.

Fast forward now to last night and I was eating chilli squid in Wagamamas! Holy hell! I never in my life thought I would be doing that. Next stage will be going out for some sushi somewhere. Any one want to join me?