Palm tree

My palm tree. Gone. Paradise lost. Carrion carcass corpse. Vultures circle for a taste.

I can't remember how the rest of it goes, but that's an obscure quote. And how did it get into my head? Well, I've got a plan for what to do over the next week. I'm going to clean my flat. Properly, with proper cleaning materials and everything. I'm going to buy them tomorrow. Meanwhile, I picked up the Incredibles poster my brother got me for Christmas, which has been lying on the floor since it fell off the wall four months ago, and stuck it back up again. And while I was in a poster-putting-up mood, I dug out the Nessie poster I bought a few weeks ago and put that up in my bedroom, and then hauled my collection of old posters from the cupboard they've been living in ever since I moved here two years ago, and stuck them up around the place too.

It looks pretty cool. Kind of a getting-back-to-my-roots feel, seeing as these are posters I thought were cool roughly ten years ago. Teletubbies, smiley faces, Pulp, Oscar Wilde quotes and a strange computer-generated thing involving a stack of spheres. I also blu-tacked up the two six-foot cardboard palm trees I got sent by mistake when I ordered the cowboy paraphernalia for the party in Nottingham back whenever it was. I didn't ever return them, because I figured everything happens for a reason, and if the universe wants me to have two six-foot cardboard palm trees, who am I to argue? They look quite nice too.

So tomorrow, if I'm still in a cleaning mood, I'll pick up the piles of comics lying all over the floor and put them back in my wardrobe. Pick up the pile of clothes from the other part of the floor and put them in the kitchen cupboard where I theoretically keep them. Then get some heavy-duty cleaning gear and clean the kitchen surfaces, which are so filthy I'm sure I must have salmonella by now, just on the general principle of the thing. I'm also inclined to pick up the piles of books from the bedroom floor and either rearrange them in the single big pile they're supposed to be in, or acquire some wood and/or a proper bookcase and arrange them a bit more tidily.

I might also have to get a new vacuum cleaner. The one I have was bought mainly because it's the same colour as a Constructicon, it's very small and probably not cut out for the kind of use it's going to need to be put to. I've only used it three or four times in two years, poor thing.

I'm not sure if all this domesticity is a sign of growing up (in which case please feel free to shoot me) or just of boredom (which is fine). But if it wears off, I'll go to Nottingham tomorrow instead and just wander around. I need to get a copy of New Thunderbolts #9, anyway, as Forbidden Planet in Derby have sold out. They seem to be doing that a lot lately - perhaps I should have a pull list, but I travel around such a lot that it'd be a real drag having to wait until I got back to Derby to collect my week's comics.

Speaking of travelling, I'll decide tomorrow whether to go to Paris or not. It's a bit expensive, and I should really be keeping my savings in case I don't find a job. I calculate that I'll run out of non-savings money right around Christmas if I don't. My savings amount to another couple of months of high living after that, so I've got plenty of time for job-hunting. Besides, worrying about money is even more grown-up than cleaning. So I think I'm going to go anyway. It'll be fun.

Oh, talking of jobs, another thing on the to-do list for this week - sit down and write a bit of How To Be Clever, the book I've been meaning to write for years now. I'll write more about that some other time.