The New Flat is Coming!

Ahh, and you Brits out there are going to hate this, summer has arrived at last.  Bringing with it the heat.  Yesterday was in the high 30's - positively sweltering - causing me to jump up to wash in cold water every half an hour!  Indeed, the summer's heat is here late this year, yet it is also different in another way, bringing a closeness and a little hint of extra humidity that makes it even harder to take.  Not that I can really complain about the weather now, I mean, not really the done thing, is it...yet working here in this closed space, with the heat from the laptop, can really make you appreciate Britain's cooler climes.  Not the rain, though.

Yet while this weather continues, our new home continues to change as the new wires go into the walls and the new plaster is added to fill in those gaps.  Yes, the first room of the flat - the bedroom - is nearly ready to paint, while the kitchen will be following close behind.  We're still searching for those final ideas, and while some are outrageous for people of our means right now, some are really very close to becoming a reality.  One of these cheap and fantastic looking ideas for the kitchen is the use of old bricks.  We only have a few kitchen cabinets to work with and these are tired looking.  So, instead of buying new ones, we've been looking at ways to build out of old rubbish.

Brick Kitchen Cabinets

Buying old bricks is incredibly cheap over here and you can let your own imagination run wild when it comes to the design.  Use them to build cabinets or how about as the splash back wall behind the cooker?  You can lacquer the bricks to give them a great finish, making them a perfect accompaniment to a natural looking kitchen.

With the money we save on the kitchen cabinets, we can buy some awesome tiles to go with it - we're really looking forward to how it's going to turn out.

And how are we funding it all?  Well, keep your eyes peeled, as www.stomsolutions.com is close to going live!  Watch out for the great new blog, fantastic service and special offers, all coming along very soon.

Let me know what you think, and if anyone has any suggestions for future blogs, drop a comment, and I'll see what I can do :)

To write or not to write

Ahh, writing.  The thing I have done and enjoyed for years.  Never would I have thought that I would be putting it off...  Writing professionally is something that can change that.

Yes, I know that I've not been writing five minutes, but I can still express how it feels when inundated with work that just needs to be completed, while you sit there staring at the screen, waiting for that magic title to pop into your head.  While this waiting may be hard to take, when you finally find that hidden creativity that results in the title your client is after, the surge of energy is almost orgasmic.  From a hunched wreck longing for another coffee you are transformed into a veritable writing machine, your fingers caressing the keys as your imagination creates an article fit for a king.

And then you finish.  You look through and add in the missing links and remove those inevitable erroneous commas, and then you relax.  The article is complete.  You save your work again and open a new document...and the whole merry-go-round of despair and elation begins again.

Perhaps more than any other profession, writing offers a full range of emotions to torture and exalt the soul.  And when writing for a living, going through this process ten times in a day...need I say more?  Perhaps it is personality building or perhaps I am starting to know why my journalist friends are going gray.  But, truly, I wouldn't have it any other way.  While I may currently be stuck in a literal hole, my metaphorical one is left long behind.  Writing for a living, and not just that, working for myself, has set me free personally.  It may be early days and once those late payments start adding up and those tax bills start piling up I may change my mind, but for now contentment is close at hand - though I cannot wait for our new flat to be finished and our move to be complete: while my cave may have given me a great idea it is not the most comfortable place to work in the world.

But to reality.  Soon I will let the world know about how a flat changes throughout its renovation (as well as how I still cannot help those erroneous apostrophes that keep attempting to creep into my work) and how it takes shape in the next month.  Here's to hoping it's finished by July!

Time is of the essence

It's funny that, after waiting and waiting for something, too many things always happen at once.  It doesn't matter if you're waiting for that bus or if you're waiting for the new phase in your life, it always comes the time when three things happen at once!

Now, it's still no excuse for a lack of posts, but the world does not stop turning.  So, I'm waiting upon my company details to be finalised, and with it the website will go live.  Everything is signed and ready to go, and now it's in the hand of the tax authority.  On top of that, the flat is now ours, and has been stripped out and ready for renovation.  There is a builder, and we will have everything done soon, we hope :)

I will talk soon about the vagaries of setting up business here in Hungary, and of the process of making a house ready for living, but for now you can just indulge me for a bit.

Writing.  It comes and it goes, but the one constant is that when you can engage a topic, you can write well and write long upon it.  And this topic does not need to be one close to your heart.  While I may instantly be able to start typing away and produce a decent piece on rugby, the same is not true of healthy snack foods, for example.  Yet, if you can find an angle from which to approach it, the words will just flow out from your fingertips.

Soon there will be a sister blog to this one, so keep your eyes peeled for announcements, but it will be of a very different feel.  While this could herald me spending less and less time on here, instead this will continue to adapt in a different way.  The change of colour scheme and layout will help to keep the place fresh, and in the future, you can be sure to find different examples of my ramblings.

So, read on, and keep those eyes peeled.