Descant in Flat

I've always been a very materialistic person. Earn, buy, acquire, consume, have, like a good little capitalist-consumerist should. I had all the #firstworldnecessities to go with my #firstworldproblems: tv, ps3, wii, three piece suite with matching luggage, rotting away at the end of it all nothing more than an embarrassment to... Well, stop me if you've heard this one before. Two months before the Event I spent the arse end of £2000 on a dining table.

Now don't get me wrong - spending that amount of money on any piece of furniture was a pretty gratuitous act but you have to understand that I was trying to buy my way through an irreparable crack in my relationship. Good money followed bad right up the end. And, fuck me, this thing was beautiful. It was reclaimed teak, beautifully sanded and put together, timber to timber: no join lines, no raised joints - all solid wood all the way through. It was glorious.

Now I have neither table nor £2000.

In fact, I have essentially nothing. I woke up this morning and put pretty much every worldly possession I own into a kit bat and a satchel. My Best Friend and Wife are, unfortunately, no longer able to play host to their recently single, and recently homeless, friend for a little while. The loft can no longer be his sanctuary, so I am off into the world to thumb through my little black book in search of a place to rest. This book feels dangerously like a pamphlet now that I actually need to use it. All those friends shed during the long lazy autumn of my relationship, now look like the summer wood I should have gathered and kept close. Bad Town Mouse.

And so the point is this - I no longer have a tv to watch, or a wardrobe of clothes to wear, or even a sofa on which to sleep. I have a few hastily gathered shirts and a couple of pairs of jeans. I have my kindle (oh, books, my saviour, my captain). I have my laptop for the occasional blog post when I can find the few stray remaining wireless networks that aren't password protected. And that's pretty much it. Passport, wallet, drivers licence, rail pass. I'm travelling without unnecessary burdens since the first time I had a disposal income and it feels a little bit light.