The illicit broadband theft continues, so I am going to show you around while the door is open.

I am amazed at the swift way that knitted cakes, dotty things, woollen joy and handmade wonderment have begun to consume my new environment. I wonder if my stuff breeds in the night to make more stuff, or whether – as I sadly suspect is the case – the ratio of shelves to Felixness will always be slim on storage and fat on Felixness, resulting in an explosive effect whenever I unpack my things anywhere. Minimalism will never click with me.

But whatever with the stuff; as it begins to accumulate on the shelves like some kind of polka-dotted, knitted, multicoloured lichen of loveliness, the place is starting to feel more like home.

And I am taking a lot of comfort from tiny details in my world at the moment. Like this useful notepad, which Ruth from the printing department gave to me after I remarked that our college IT printing system is scandalously wasteful. After every printing job, the printer spurts out a sheet with the job number and student account details on it, thus creating mountains of useless paper that nobody wants with numbers on them of no interest or value to anyone. Ruth of our printing and book binding department (an inspiring realm of sense and organisation) decided to address this waste problem by independantly turning the waste paper into useful notepads, blank on one side and beset with IT reciepts on the other. I love them as they represent calm and creative resistance in the face of ridiculous, administrative obstinency. The useful pad communicates a message that says ‘Fine. If we must have the paper printed, then let us print it. And then let us do something useful with it.’ So far I have made several shopping lists from this notepad, featuring things like stepladders and clothes-airers and toilet cleaner. Its presence in the tiny kitchen is quietly reassuring, reminding me that there are always clever ways to circumvent stupidity.

Amazing notepad.

The knitted vegetables have also swiftly assumed a prominent position in the new place and they make me smile with joy as I pass from one corner of the room to the other, nesting.

My books are also very pleasing to me, arranged loosely into categories like Disability and Pain stuff, Feminist Genius section, Felix’s sprawling ouevre of sketchpads, Critical Engagement/Art Essays, The Theory of the Everyday, Sound Art Writings and Housework Books. As pleasing as my category titles are, the imprecise enthusiasm of the system means that many books in my collection span several categories at once. I am not sure where in everything the knitting books ought to go so I have just kept them as a discreet collection over the bed. I do not know about you, but I love to read about knitting when I am in bed. And I also like reading recipe books when I am in bed. There is something so pleasing about the way that patterns and recipes are laid out, with those hypnotic lists of ingredients and notions at the start and then the rest of the words, explaining the stages by which your chosen creation will come into being; a sock, a brioche, a casserole, a scarf, a quilt.

I am also delighted to finally have a place to put my custom-made Fantastical Reality Radio Show in association with Mundane Appreciation tablecloth. It just so happens that it perfectly fits the table in the new place. True to form, it already has a teastain.

So I am getting all the Things in order; feelings are harder to organise. And the sounds of the new place are all wrong. I miss the blackbirds, the industrious whirr of the dishwasher, the careful scrunching of tyres in the street while people park in tight spaces mindfully, the mellow drone of passing aeroplanes, the sound of Mark’s voice and laughter, the little miaowing sounds of Joey, the snap of twigs in the fire. But I will get used to the new sounds, the new domestic soundscape. I will get used to it in time and soon this will begin to sound – and feel – like My Home.