New flat

I’ve moved in with a girl whose legs I fancied in school. It’s a kind of deferred success.

Back then, 13 years old and sprouting limbs, I asked her out. She wouldn’t mind me saying her hair was kind of weird. It went all up and out — a hair-sprayed mushroom cloud – but she had breasts and tight blouses and spoke nine languages; wore a tightish navy skirt that framed her thighs.

That isn’t porny. I didn’t even know what a willy was for.

We were standing in the cold corridor — a brown plate-glass tunnel connecting old buildings. I fairly invited her to kiss me. She said no, but said I was sweet. I just don’t see you in that way, Matt, she said — a cliché as old as the chestnut. Then she and went off with all the popular boys; the boys who get their beards early.

As a geek, the breasts sure helped her transcend genres. I resented it quietly. I didn’t have breasts as leverage, and I played drums for the choir. In the last year of school, my face pocked with the ravages of underage smoking, I called her cocky.
She’s written all this in her diary. I must’ve been profound.

Anyway. I went to college and grew into my face. Went to university and got over myself. Stayed after university and went halfway bankrupt. My girlfriend, she went to college and uni and foreign countries. She got all long and ladylike, and pierced. We re-met on a MySpace organised school reunion. Her legs were still affecting. Apparently my jaw had come on quite well. I had a bunch of drawings on my arms. I was captivating; she was probably drunk.

So, romance isn’t dead. But moving in nearly killed it.

Packing’s bad enough, and that’s before you unpack a thing. I spent hours playing book Tetris; a few hours more deciding which old T-shirts to lob. Now, since the bulk of my belongings need plug sockets – I sold my acoustic drum kit to afford unemployment — I’m left with hundreds and hundreds of pounds of mostly redundant appliances and six bunches of holed socks.

It’s a strange thing that all boxes are designed to fit perfectly through door frames. It’s some kind of designer’s joke that knuckles aren’t included in the bargain. Designers, they like helvetica and breaking hands, and if mother didn’t want me to go, I’ve left little pieces of me all over the house.

We pick up the keys and get to it. No, not that. Moving house is not aphrodisiac — you’ve spent so long finding the place, you’d try and involve the estate agent.

It’s part of a gated development, our flat, which somehow evokes South Africa. I don’t really get on with exclusivity — even if it’s illusory, perceived, a blustery idea dreamt up in offices stacked on offices, the by-product of cocaine – and I feel especially twattish jangling key fobs about. But it’s a beautiful place, nestled at the affluent end of town for a price that doesn’t remotely match.

The rest of the time I’m wondering what to do if Manchester gets nuked. My first thought when it snowed yesterday wasn’t “snow balls!” but, “It’s started…”

Inside our flat, and things get wonky. That’s partly because it’s taken four weeks to plot where everything would go, and just four boxes of Suzanne’s shoes to smash everything. Elsewise, it’s mostly because girls think you lift boxes with the lid flaps. It’s because girls think black rubber doesn’t leave long stripes on laminate. It’s because girls think efficiency is hiding all your valuables.

Moving into a new flat is exciting, if you can see past an argument about where the forks are going.

She says I’m a draper, it transpires. Says I can’t go in a room without folding an item of clothing over a chair or a wardrobe door. I say, well, they’re dirty, these trousers. So you leave them out instead of putting them back in the cupboard, don’t you? Is this really what being adult is about?

No. She says if you walk into my flat you’ll find me at the end of a trail of dangling clothes and upended pockets; battering Metallica on Guitar Hero or eating all the peanuts.

By way of distraction, I say women don’t understand loft insulation.

At least she doesn’t write a blog about shoes or cup cakes or something.

What else? The new flat has a balcony that looks on to a segway of canal, with all of the boats and ducks and bridal paths that means. The balcony’s a metre wide and a foot deep, enough to stand and look out.

Stacked above the water, atop red brick arches, two train tracks are racked like steps. One line’s for passengers and cargo, one’s a narrower gauge, built for Metrolink trams. The architecture’s all brick and beautiful – it’s pure Manchester industry, but clean. If I write any kind of steampunk in the coming months, that’ll be why*

*I won’t — I hate that crap

My priority was a new television. On account of my car was stolen in September, I wanted something back from life, and the filthy robbing insurance company, and the impossibly useless Greater Manchester Police force, who didn’t even manage a phone call.

And here is the crux of adulthood: I’ve had my Clio reincarnated as a thirty-two inch LCD flat screen.