Well, OK, he’s lived here over the various University holidays over the past three years, but as of this Saturday, he’s finished his degree. He’s packing up the last of his things and throwing them in the back of his still-new-to-him car and bringing them here.

Am I excited? Am I fuck. I’m bouncing.

There is, however, the small logistical matter of where the hell we’re going to put his crap. Because folks, I have a lot of crap. The office has recently been semi-emptied – that is, we’ve gone through all of the tat in there, put up some shelves, filled the shelves with tat we can’t bear to throw out, thrown out shitloads of tat and shoved the rest in the corner or into the spare room. The other day, you know, that day. The Day Mal Got Married*. Well, he was staying in the spare room given that his bride to be was staying in their place. So, I had to reorganise and it turns out it’s not quite so much of a Tardis as I’ve been treating it.

So, I have a feeling that some general reorganising is going to have to be done in the house when he comes home. But that’s just logistics.

Right now, I’m just looking forward to spending evenings snuggling on the sofa watching Gray’s Anatomy. Or Casualty. Or the Bill. Or something.

* Oh God but this deserves a post of its own, just as soon as I’ve nicked some pictures to illustrate because I, like the idiot best man I was, did not take a single picture all night. Seriously.

Life has been rather hectic recently, what with some major changes at work (I now have more control over my time and scheduling; Judy has a better idea of what it is I do daily). The car has had a new tire and a new hub bearing although the camber looks as though it’s really badly out which needs dealing with. I was raided by the police, Sean’s been down for a week, Mal broke (and mostly fixed) his car…

Yeah, so you noticed that one. Yes, I can now say that I have experienced Gwent Police’s ability to execute a search warrant. I WAS at work when they broke the door down, but Sean wasn’t poor thing. I had a few words with the officer in charge and once they realised where the cockup lay, they quietly removed themselves. I can’t say too much about it in public at the moment, as I’m going to be issuing a complaint against them and asking for them to make good the damage they did at least.

Sean spent the week down here which was wonderful – an empty house is not very nice to come back to, and it was nice to have a hug when I got home. The central heating finally gave up the ghost – looks like the timer’s gone, so it’s manual control for now until I get a replacement timer fitted. Looks simple, so I’m not expecting any hiccups other than the £50 odd it’ll cost me in materials.

The Cthulhu game in Cardiff is on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, since Simon, our GM, has gone to London for a new job. We’re having a whole day event to finish off sometime in the new year, so I’ve taken up the reins as a GM for my first campaign, and we’re goin to be running a classical game in a world I created based around Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain and the Mabinogi. Last night was the first session and so we have a Bard (Andy) and a Paladin (Mal). Aaron looks like he won’t be able to make it because of his new job, but Louisa, Mal’s missus, and Jon from work are interested, so I have a Ranger, a Rogue and a Fighter for them to decide which one they want. The group at the moment are on a moor with a heavy storm approaching (lightening causes 1d10 d8’s of damage if it’s a direct hit…owch…). The only shelter is an old tor once used as a fortress and burial chamber. What will they do?

There was a callout on the weekend, which the BBC mentioned, and Mark put up some photos on the team flickr site. I missed out on this one as I was stuck in work at the time. Poo.

Hopefully, with my life becoming a little more boring now, I’ll have more time to update, so it’ll be back to the usual random stuff.

So, on Thursday, Alex asked for a lift into Cardiff. When pressed, he admitted it was to buy heroin. Colour me unimpressed, I refused. He then asked for a lift back from Cardiff, to which I decided to agree, telling him to meet me at a pre-arranged location and a pre-arranged time. I dropped him off at the Job Center where he was going to get a crisis loan (well, as Taffytails said, I’m being a bit harsh – being out of heroin and money probably is a crisis…) and then take the train into Cardiff. After dropping him off, I headed up to the police station where I had a nice long chat with their intelligence officer who took all the details and advised me to get rid of him as soon as possible. He also gave his opinion that with 23 years of policing experience, he didn’t expect the “taxi driver” to turn up, if he existed.

So, after checking the situation with my solicitor and a friendly local authority housing officer, I changed the locks on the doors and collected his things in a bag, which I placed outside along with a letter informing him that he’d been evicted. I didn’t however give him back his drug-related “paraphernalia” (as the police apparently call it), nor did I give him the wireless card to my laptop that I found in his stuff. More astute readers will now make the connection to the alleged theft of my laptop a few weeks ago (while he was upstairs someone came in and nicked it, apparently). Of course, this throws a different light on the situation.

Friday morning I headed down the police station with two sealed bags of presents for the police, which I’d carefully collected according to my superSOCO training, and spent a few hours filling in evidence bags and giving statements. The officers in question indicated that they’d need to talk to Alex so I said I’d keep an eye out for him. I popped down to West Wales to see family…where I had a phone call from the office. Alex was sat outside. Joy.

A quick phone call to South Wales Police and they were driving up the street outside the office….and driving back down again, sans Alex.

Another phone call to South Wales Police saw them driving up the street again….and back down again, still without actually getting out to pick him up.

By the time they came around the third time, he’d legged it. A bit unimpressed with that performance, lads.

The rest of the weekend went quite well, apart from being told that my car needs £1600 worth of work to pass the MOT, so tonight I’m looking for a run-around to use for the next few months while I collect money to pay for fixing the Landy before I sell it.

Thanks to all of those who sent messasges of support, not all of which I’ve made public. Stay tuned for the saga of trying to get money out of his Dad to pay for things…

 So after taking the car over, I headed back to the office, where Alex rang to say that he’d like a lift home. So I picked him up and headed home….to find the front door wide open and a wheelie bin in the doorway. This is where Alex starts telling me what’s going on…

 Apparently the taxi driver came back to the house and took my TV, amp and speakers instead of taking Alex to the police station. At this I was not amused. Additionally, he’d left the door unlocked since he’d left the key with another taxi driver.

…

So, the police came around, unfortunately there’s some kind of armed incident in Caerphilly tonight, so after checking the place to make sure there was nobody there, they legged it back to the joy that was the armed incident (possibly involving a Tazer from an overheard conversation, though one of them indicated it was a “gun” instead).

So I’m working from home tomorrow, the house is secure (mostly) for now, I think I’ll change the cylinders in the locks tomorrow. I really don’t know what I’m going to do about my tenant. Two good things – firstly his father’s a Guarantor, so he’s an option. Secondly, this isn’t an assured tenancy agreement. I think we might come to some “gentlemanly agreement” like – get out now and I won’t hold you to the rest of the 6 months.

 I so really don’t need this right now. I need to get up to Aber this weekend to see Sean, and that’s a definate “need” now, but I don’t trust him in the house anymore. Housesitter maybe?