In what has has been another unusual week, today has been a lovely mix of getting things done, sunshine, and catching up on sleep.

As I mentioned in Change, Grief & Pride, I recently decided to start looking for a new flat to rent outside of London. Monday welcomed good news on that front, but shortly after receiving that piece of news, I started to smell something in my flat.

Earlier on that day, as I had been making my morning bowl of porridge, I’d heard what sounded like scuffling under my cooker. I pulled out the oven drawer to see if I could see anything. Nothing. But I had an awful feeling it was a rodent. After the Cat & Mouse saga the other week I was wondering if Wigs had somehow brought another mouse in which had somehow found it’s way underneath my cooker.

Once the smell of decaying rodent hit my nostril, I was fairly certain there was something dying in or near to my flat. My boyfriend promptly came round, and we searched the flat for vermin. Again, nothing. I was starting to get an awful feeling that whatever had died, had died under the floorboards in between my kitchen and living room.

The smell was so bad, I moved my work area into the bedroom, and shut the door. No amount of incense was going to get rid of that smell in a hurry.

Once my boyfriend left, I called my lettings agent, who confirmed that there was a known rat problem in the building (which would also explain the abundance of big black flies we had noticed in the stairwell during lockdown…), but he would call the ‘Pest Detective’ and ask him to come out the following day.

Bright and early Tuesday morning, the pest man turned up. As soon as he walked in the flat, he said in a cocky accent “That’s a dead rate alright”!

Yuck. Now the only problem was locating it. As suspected, the bloody thing had died under my floorboards. I asked the nice cockney man if there was anything he could do about it. Sadly pulling up floorboards isn’t normally worth the landlords time, as the area the smell is coming from doesn’t necessarily mean that that is where the dead rodent is. He did however reassure me that the smell would be gone within 7-10 days, and he said moving out was probably the best thing to do, so he was relieved when I told him I would be vacating the property in a few weeks…

We’re almost 7 days later, and after a particularly warm day, the living room still stinks nicely of decaying rat flesh…

Moving to Suburbia

As I was saying, Monday brought with it some good news on the flat front. After a solid weekend of viewings, I found a lovely little flat, just outside London, within a stones throw of the river. I’ve got a little while to wait until I get the keys, which means that I’ll be temporarily homeless, as I can now only stay in my current flat until early August because of when I handed my notice in. Fingers crossed our Government allows those who have been shielding (like my brother) to mix with others from the 1st August, otherwise, I’ll be buying a tent and pitching up on someones front lawn for 10 days!

Jokes aside, it will be great to spend some time with my family before I head to my new life in suburbia, as lockdown has kept us apart for the best part of 4 months.

It’s going to be a hectic few weeks of packing and storing my belongings in various places while I’m in between homes! In some ways it’s good that I’m going from furnished to unfurnished as it means I don’t need to move (or store) an excessive amount of furniture. It does mean however, that despite my new rent being significantly cheaper, I do need to treat myself to some new furniture when I first move in, so probably won’t see the financial benefits until after Christmas, but at least it will mean slightly less buyers guilt when I do buy stuff.

I can’t wait to explore my new neighborhood. Although it was always on my list of places to look for a flat, I don’t know the area too well, or what it has to offer (other than sitting nicely on the river!). At least it should provide me with plenty of blog and Instagram content over the next few months…

I feel as though I should say how much I’m going to miss London. I’m sure that over time I will. But right now, I can’t wait to move out of the city and into suburbia.

Selling Photo’s

Before deciding to move out of London, I’d been looking into various ways of earning an additional income. Nothing huge, just enough to put away into my ‘treats’ pot, so I could get rid of the guilt for occasionally treating myself.

During lockdown I discovered Picfair. It kept popping up on my Instragam feed as a sponsored post, so I thought I’d take a look. Picfair is basically a platform for uploading and selling your photo’s. All you have to do is upload the photo’s you want to be included in your store, add a price, and promote your site. Picfair do the rest (including adding a small fee onto each photograph, but it really is only small, and rather than this being deducted from your selling price, it gets added on at the consumers end).

I’ve always enjoyed taking photographs. I don’t have a swanky camera with endless filters though. I take all of my photos with my iphone. I’m still uploading photo’s at the moment, but if you fancy having a browse, the link to my store can be found here.

I’d love to know what you think to my store. It’s hard to know what price to offer my photos at. I’ve started off with £5 on all of my prints, but may decrease this to invite some more interest. Do you use Picfair? If so, I’d love to hear from you about how you find the site and how much success you have had with it. Drop me a message in the comments box below and let me know.

The New ‘Normal’

With restaurants and pubs starting to open back up from last weekend, I booked my boyfriend and I into our favorite restaurant last night. Blue’s Kitchen in Brixton has long been a firm favorite of ours. Eating out has always been ‘our thing’, and probably the thing we have missed most (other than family of course) during lockdown.

Heading out so soon was risky so we went carefully prepared. We decided to take our own cutlery (thanks for the suggestion Mum!), and our own drinks bottles (we normally just drink tap water when we’re out anyway). We also wore our face masks to enter and exit the restaurant, although didn’t wear them once we were seated, as they had been really careful in terms of the seating arrangements, making sure there was at least one table in between each occupied table.

It was so nice to get dressed up for the occasion. I hadn’t straightened my hair for months and I’d forgotten how nice it felt to wear a dress and to put perfume and lip gloss on!

We weren’t out for long, but the time we were out felt really good. It almost felt ‘normal’. I’m fairly certain we were the only people in the entire restaurant who had gone prepared with our own cutlery and drinks bottles, but the waiting staff didn’t bat an eye lid at this.

The food and atmosphere in Blue’s is always first class, but the food tasted even better after not having been for so long. They had jazzed up some of their recipes a bit which was a nice surprise. They do by far the best cornbread and mac n cheese in the entire city. To my surprise, when I took a bite into my cornbread, I noticed a bit of heat on my tongue. We quizzed the waiter when he came to collect our plates, and he told us it was green chili. Clearly it was either a new chef, or the same chef had been using lockdown to experiment! Either way, it was a delicious addition!

Although it felt good to be out again, we’ve decided we won’t go out again for a while. Partly because we want to make sure I stay fit and healthy for hopefully getting to see my family next month, but also because we have a number of local takeaways we need to make the most of before I move out of the city! We can’t wait to explore my new neighborhood to see what eating places they have to offer! I’m pretty sure we’ll still be heading back into Brixton to go to Blue’s now and again though!

With a busy few weeks coming up whilst I pack up my belongings and say goodbye to city life, I’m planning to put new blogging content on hold until I’m settled into my new place. I will instead be re-posting a number of blogs from earlier on in the life of The Mindful Musings of a Gingernut, as we also approach my blogs 2nd Birthday in August!

I look forward to coming back with some new content soon.

In the meantime, stay safe,

Becky – The Mindful Gingernut