Settling in

We've been in the new flat for almost a month. It's finally starting to feel like home; hopefully the nightmare bit is over. Did I tell you that our estate agent deliberately misled us, and had a damp survey altered to hide the fact that the kitchen has a lot of damp? Yes, well, he did. Luckily, R caught him, and they're now paying for it, but they're not paying for all the upheaval and misery it caused us. And, he didn't even get fired, despite the manager's insistence that they are an honest company who care about their image.

Despite all that, we are starting to settle in. The garden is no longer just a square of mud. Last week, Rog started to shape it:



And this week, we put in a path (see the compost bin in the back, there?). Next week, we should get some flowers.



We ordered some little fruit trees to put in that big patch at the front (closest to the camera). It's all very exciting!

I haven't been knitting. I've barely even looked at Ravelry. I know. It's weird. One of the jobs I have, where I work freelance, is undergoing huge changes, which aren't really affecting me, but I am watching some of the other freelancers who are being affected overreact, and it's stressing me out. Of course, the majority are silent, and it's the vocal few. People seem to feel that because it's an arts organisation, it shouldn't treat them or this particular programme as a business. But it is a business. It does have to make sure that it is being run efficiently. If not, the money will run out, and there will be no programme, and then everyone's out of a job.

I guess I look at this from an art history background, where this whole notion of the artist not being a business person is fairly recent - 150 years or so? And a very Western idea as well. So here is this arts organisation asking artists to act like business people, and they can't because of firmly entrenched ideas of what an artist is. Well, that's my hypothesis.

Hopefully I'll be back soon with some knitting pictures!