BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FOUR POTATOES STILL IN THE CUPBOARD???

You can always count on me to make moving all about the food. I've been planning for weeks to run out of foodstuffs just in time to leave Cardiff. Our canister of sea salt has mere tablespoons left in it. Our soy sauce has only drops left. Today was the day to make a mad dash to clear out the oatmeal, dried currants and apples, the bulgur wheat, the lentils, the brown rice and whatever bits and bobs of vegetables and tomato sauces are still around. Porridge with fruit for breakfast, lentil stew(with carrots, onions and potatoes) and brown rice for early dinner, and pizza with a bit of onion, pepper and zucchini for late dinner. Oh, and tabouli for tomorrow's packing sustenance. That's alot of home cooking for a day when I should be packing, but I like to think I'm doing my part. And besides, I have a cold/flu something and so am not good for much else anyway. For some reason, when I'm sick, with flu or even with migraine, cooking makes me feel temporarily better. I credit it with the energy burst that got me through sorting the random rubbish on my desk. Tomorrow I'll be using up the butternut squash, the walnuts, the onions and the honey.

Phil, Jason's partner in crime for the past year, came over from Bristol to visit tonight, so the two of them burned the furniture in a garbage can in the back garden. Well, okay, not most of the furniture, but all the ones Jason made from pallets last autumn--the ironing board that was attached to the kitchen wall, the printer and TV stands, the goofy little gadget that was supposed to let me hang journal articles from it so I could look and type at the same time. A couple of days ago we ninja-smoove took the windows we stole from rubbish tips last year back to illegally leave them in some other rubbish tip a year and some months later. The rubbish tip (basically a dumpster that a truck picks up and carries away when you're done with your demolition project) was in exacly the same spot, so maybe it belongs to the same guy. At any rate, the windows don't take up much space, so it shouldn't mess with their fees or their ability to fit in all the perfectly good stuff they're throwing away there.

Last night the excellent Uli came to adopt our worms and their grimy wet bin. He's enthusiastic and will be an amazing worm-carer, I'm sure of it. He was even kind enough to e-mail me the update about their new bedding this morning. To set my mind at ease, I imagine. Jason and I get rather attached and concerned about our worms. He says they work hard for us and it makes him want to protect them. I legitimately find them kind of miraculous and even cute.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to pass off my plants to my friend Chloe, and hopefully an assortment of kitchenware to Yoko, my research colleague, who's just moving to Cardiff this month. I'm hoping to convince Uli to take my garden tools, one of which is a really cool ancient forged digging fork Jason got for me at a junk shop. Uli says he and Francesca are getting an allotment soon, so I'm sure these tools will be used if he takes them.

We originally had planned to just sell things (books, kitchen ware, gardening tools, lamps and things) when we left, but there's not so much of a used market for things here, so you can sell appliances and tools to the Cash Generator (yep, it's really called that) and we'll do that since we got most there anyway. But pots and pans and books and clothes are generally just given to charity shops. There's one bookstore that buys used books, but they nearly always have a sign that they're not buying at the moment. So I'd rather give things to people who will use them. It's slower, but things are going to good homes daily.

The countdown is on. Two more days to pack, one to clean, and then we're out of here on Friday.