Comic Cuts - 4 August 2017

The week was dominated by my sister Julie's house move on Monday, although the aching back and arms have kept it fresh in my memory ever since. It's my job to sit in front of a computer all day, occasionally lifting a cup of coffee. Once in a while I move a box to get at something underneath it.

This is why I am overweight and the reason I go for walks... to stop myself from becoming even more overweight. I've reached a kind of balance where I put on around three pounds over winter and lose them over the summer. It's just the other four stone that I can't shift.

Mel and I were up bright and early—well, early—on Monday morning waiting for my mum and sister to arrive accompanied by my sister's two dogs. The plan was for mum to stay around ours with the dogs, as this gave them (the dogs) access to a garden, which meant they wouldn't have to spend the day shut inside. We picked up a van at 8:30 am and headed out of Colchester on our 100-mile trip up the A12 and along the M25 to Weybridge, Surrey, where my sister has been living for a few years. Like me, she moved for work and stuck around when the work dried up. Like me, she devotes herself to the things she loves, even when it doesn't pay that well. Must be something in the genes.

Delays ranging from slow moving traffic and queuing, especially around junctions, stretches with speed restrictions of 40 mph, "animals in road" and "incident", meant that we didn't arrive at the storage locker where Julie had all her belongings until 12:30pm. It took the three of us an hour and a half to empty everything out and stow it away in the van—a Luton with a tail-lift, although we didn't use the latter that much because if you're stood holding a box, you're about the right height to pass it to someone in the back of the van, or to put it on the floor of the van; it also means the person shifting boxes from the trollies to the van isn't constantly bending. We needed the tail-lift for some of the furniture, but that was about it.

At 2:00 pm we headed back towards the M25, suffered a few more delays, came off at the M11 and headed up to Sudbury where Julie has rented a small one-bedroom place. We met the landlord who is a bit "Tim nice but dim" (example: "The previous tenant has left a debt on the gas prepayment meter." "The gas is on a meter? I didn't realise!") and the house itself needs a couple of bits of fixing-up, but seemed OK. It doesn't have a garden, but it does have a small yard where the dogs will be able to run around, once Julie has fenced off a pathway for them. Securing gardens for dogs is like babyproofing your home for children, because dogs, like babies, will get into everything and find a way out of any place unless it's locked down like Colditz.

We had to hoover before moving anything in because Tim Dim had phoned around and couldn't find anyone to do it and I don't suppose it crossed his mind to do it himself. This is a man confused by curtains. There were no curtains hanging at the windows. "Where are the curtains?" he asked. We point to a bag full of curtains. "They're not the curtains I saw on Saturday," he says. Maybe the previous tenant preferred their own curtains to those horrible-looking mustard-coloured ones.

New Words: Meter. Curtains. Confused.

With the van backed up to the front door, it took about an hour and a half again to unload; after a well-deserved cup of tea we headed back to Colchester, arriving around 8:00pm. Thankfully, the dogs hadn't used the 12 hours out of Julie's sight to tear up the place. We were out of the house again fifteen minutes later, heading for the local Fish 'n' Chip shop as we all fancied something quick and easy that wouldn't require us to do any work before or after. I'd forgotten what it's like to eat with two dogs hating you for every mouthful you take.

I was in bed an hour and a half later. Optimistically, I weighed myself the following morning and hadn't lost even half a pound.

So today's random scans are in honour of my sister... and the key word here is "sister", not "Satan" or  "sinister". I just want to make that clear.