h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not only have I been awake far too long, getting woken up at 8am by the Dustmen outside crushing cars, well that's what it sounded like, I was very suprised not to find small cubes of metal parked in the road.

It's now 3am and I've just had the worse taxi ride home ever, fingers crossed I won't ever have to do that again. He had no sense of direction, had the sunroof open so it was freezing, played his music far too loud and then asked me how to get back to London, I said I didn't know as I was in no mood for being nice as I wanted to scream. But anyway home now and that makes me happy.

Paid my deposit so the the flat is now ours for a year, handing over all those crisp twenty pound notes was hard though. Moving in a week, time to start packing. Sleep would be a good idea first though.

I hope he at least gave you a little discount on your fare then.

Doesn't cost me anything, the Beeb pays for it.

Then I hope he gave them a discount cause it would really stink if the cab industry has staged a coup and is sending out inept drivers to take you all out of the way and then charge the BBC for all the extraness of it all until it goes completely bankrupt from the blow. That would be tragic, wouldn't it? You should alert whoever's in charge of these things.

Jeez! You mean to say that my licence fee goes on (or used to go on) your taxis, beer and ice cream? It's an outrage!

No, I work for the World Service, which is paid for by the foreign office, so your taxes used to pay for that

That's IT! I'm going to demand a refund.

It's all for a good cause you know

Start packing. Now. Not that on your moving day it will feel like it did you the slightest bit of good to pack anything in advance, but take my word for it. And good luck!

Well... oh okay then, thanks

Nah, don't listen to her. Simply get up really early on Sunday morning and then wake up everyone else in the house by rushing around madly trying to find everything that you want to take.

And be sure to take a lot of stuff that doesn't belong to you. On the one hand, that may give your family more chances to visit you than you'd planned on, but on the other hand, you get to use their stuff.

Yes, I think getting to use the stuff is more important.

Er, Ant, better start packing.

And boxes. I can not overstress the importance of boxes when moving. Well, i can, but i am not going to. So instead, i will tell you all the wonderful things to do in Greenland in the winter...

Jonny, there is no one else in the house at the moment.
KM, they'll visit anyway even if I don't take their stuff.
Greg, their stuff isn't that useful anyway.
Beetle, but where do you get all these boxes, that's what I've been wondering?

It is best to get boxes from liquer stores (i used to manag one, and we gave them away all the time, i still have some that have lasted 4 moves) and book stores. They both carry strong bokes and usually have a surplus.

You can also buy those plastic stacking boxes from hardware stores for about five quid a go, they're pretty good as they don't look too bad if you never actually find the time to unpack. Well, they probably do but I just have low aesthetic standards.

Five quid for a box!!! Hmmm...

Yeah, but they're good, strong, sturdy boxes that'll serve you for your whole lifetime's moving requirements.

But the ones from bookstores are free.