Well, I'm exhausted.

I've just spent the last couple of hours working.

Well, a bit more energetically than normally - I've been doing real physical work, as opposed to merely thinking. I've been downstairs taking up the carpet and taking up the kitchen floor.

The skip I hired is now full, and since I put so much rubbish in it on Friday during the day, my neighbours have had little room left to put their own rubbish.

However there are a couple of items I'm fairly sure I didn't put there. They include a large black bag of stuff (I didn't look inside), a TV wall fitting, part of a block of concrete, and a dark blue denim mattress that I think I would remember having owned.

I'm now sneezing because of all the dust I've loosened. I still have to arrange for a new carpet to be put down, the floor in the kitchen to be fixed (er, I think I may have said I would do this myself. Note to self - No.), and the back garden to be cleared out and some sort of lawn type thing put down. Astroturf would be my choice.

This 'work' thing - it's not really a good idea, is it?

Oh, yes ... I've added an entry to One Bite At A Time, which may possibly come to life soon as a sort of political blog.

Or not. Who knows?

You know the saying that what goes around comes around?

Well, there's a good example of this right here: I'm renting a skip. (You know, one of those metal yellow rubbish containers they leave outside your house for you to chuck stuff into, and then they collect it and take it away. I don't know what it's called in America. Maybe some of my transatlantic readers can tell me that)

Anyway, it's a skip. We're gutting our kitchen in preparation to getting a new one installed. We're also throwing away some of the rubbish I've been hoarding for years. I have two photographic enlargers in my loft. I mean one is not that weird, but two?

Neither of them works, of course. That's why they're in the loft.

Anyway, the point is I need to fill the skip as quickly as possible, because if I don't, my neighbours will do it for me. An empty skip is considered fair game in most areas, and people with stuff to dispose of have been known to go on late-night skip hunts in search of somewhere to throw it.

(They are almost immediately followed by other people on late-night skip hunts, looking for interesting stuff that people are throwing away. Inevitably, much of this salvaged stuff will be hoarded and eventually thrown away in another skip some years later)

Well, I must admit I've done a bit of late night skip hunting in my time, when I had less money, and some of my rubbish has ended up in someone else's skip. So I suppose I must endure a certain amount in return. But only once I've put in everything I can think of to get rid of.

It's a form of redistribution of wealth, really...

(update: thanks to this site, I now know that in the US a skip is a dumpster. That makes, I dunno, a certain sense I suppose.)

I love low-tech.

Of course, I love high-tech as well. But I especially love it when a clever low-tech solution is better than the expensive high-tech one.

So when I heard that the Royal Mail were offering a free scales made from card, to weigh your letters, I was skeptical and hopeful.

So, I sent away for it and, shortly afterwards, I received my free Easyweigh. It is an excellent device. It's made of cardboard, which you fold over and then you can weigh your letters to see if you've got the right postage. It uses the principle of the lever; if the letter weighs too much, the Easyweigh topples over.

Granted, it is somewhat limited in its applications. But I often find myself worrying if I have put the right postage on a letter, and unfortunately my kitchen scales is simply not accurate enough. Now I can check every letter before I send it.

I love the elegant simplicity of this. And it's free - if you live in the UK. Other countries appear also to have adopted it as well, so you just might be able to get your own Easyweigh.

Bastards.

That's all I can say. My friend Dave came over from Ireland to build a staircase in my back garden - well, it's a set of steps really, leading out from the kitchen to the garden, and I used to have a set of steps there but they eventually fell down through lack of maintenance. So he came over to build me a new set.

But on Tuesday when we had ordered the wood we had nothing much else to do so we set to demolishing the kitchen instead.

We had actually intended to demolish the kitchen, because we're getting a new one. But anyway we decided to demolish the old one. This involved unscrewing the kitchen units and taking them apart. But what to do with the old ones?

I had a bright idea. Instead of spending lots of money on a skip, we could just leave the kitchen units outside on the front steps, for the neighbours to steal.

Anywhere in London, if you leave stuff outside for collection, it's usually stolen before that happens. When I lived in Willesden Green I had a decent grey woollen coat, an ex German Army overcoat I used to wear - I could have survived on the Russian front with this one, it was very good. Anyway, when I was leaving that flat I put it in a bag and left it outside and when I came down five minutes later with the next bag, the overcoat bag was gone.

A couple of friends of mine live in New Cross and they had some old furniture to get rid of. They called the council and they were advised to put it outside for collection. No sooner had they done so, however, than the furniture disappeared and they had to call the council and tell them not to bother.

So I figured my light-fingered neighbours would relieve me of my old kitchen units overnight.

Next morning, they were still there. Admittedly they were a bit manky, but I still felt offended. To think that my furniture was of such poor quality my neighbours couldn't be arsed to steal them.

The bastards.

We've been busy doing wedding invites and stuff. And arranging for Susanne and Philipp to move over to my flat in August when we get back from honeymoon. And trying to arrange for my flat to actually be in some condition for people to live there.

We've been to IKEA, we've been to the Victoria and Albert Museum to buy some rings.

I wasn't crazy about rings myself - I've got nobbly fingers and in the past when I tried to wear a ring (youthful teenage indiscretions here, several other offences to be taken into consideration at the same time your honour: white shoes, flares, goatee beard) I found it slipped over the knuckle with difficulty and then rolls around on my skinny finger.

However, with Susanne and Philipp insisting I get a ring to wear, I agreed to go ahead and get a nice silver one to match Susanne's. We found some in the Crafts Council Shop by Catherine Hills. Hers fitted straight away, mine is going to have to be made specially.

There's still lots to be done. At least we can tick one off the list.