Current mood:	too excited to sleep
Current music:	David Lowe - BBC News 24 Countdown 2006

Too excited to sleep, so have an early-morning update
Restless in the extreme, with a heady brew of overexcitement and anxiety, mostly the former. Have decided that with this much restless energy an all-nighter is worth pulling; various arrangements of Lowe's BBC (News/News 24/World) music currently looping on my headphones, the hypnotic 120bpm rhythms and variations-on-a-theme somehow fitting.

Play got performed last night. Really went quite well; some of the audience got sucked in more than others, creating a wonderfully uneasy atmosphere. Bigger crowd likely for the Saturday run, that should be great. One of my dreams has come true, and as Schwartz wrote, that's what happiness is.

Already got an idea for next time: an extended monologue from a fan of a small British football team, criticising the commercialisation of the sport. The working title: '1992 And All That'.

Flat-hunting update:

THURSDAY 0930, Burgess-road. One-bed flat, £420 per month, part-furnished. Excellent location, eight minutes' walk from the university, passing not one but two Co-operative shops on the way. The flat's above a shop selling wheelchairs, walking sticks and other products for those with physical disability; it was notoriously known as 'Aids for the Disabled', for that was shown in large text on a wall above a window, but that's now gone) and is relatively comfortable. Windows face onto Burgess-road, which is the A35 and relatively busy, though foot traffic is probably of greater noise concern at certain times. I asked the agent about utility bills; she reported paying £60 per month for her gas and electricity on her own in a three-bedroom house, and reckoned that I wouldn't be paying that much. With water bills apparently unlikely to greatly exceed £10 per month, and Virgin's 20MB broadband at £31/month in conjunction with a phone line and free weekend calls to landlines, utility bills all told seem unlikely to reach £100 per month. That makes this one-bed flat comparable in price to the place I'm in now, which is tiny in comparison. While I have yet to hear from the uni, it doesn't look likely to matter at this point.

THURSDAY 1115, Willis-road. Studio flat, £425 per month, furnished. Dismissed straight away, the kitchen is not comfortable for me at all, the unusable cooker (the numbers on the dials are missing!) is whatever the opposite of a selling point is. Room itself isn't bad, but no computer desk and the furniture itself is fixed. There might be room to place one, but that's an irrelevance. This isn't even a contender.

FRIDAY 0930, Dornan-house. One-bed flat, £430 per month, unfurnished. Lawks, this is an ugly building, a four-storey light-brown brick construction from the 1950s that is humbled by the elegant townhouses just along the road. A main road in and out of Southampton, the A33. (Probably the main road in and out of Southampton; it is, after all, the one that links to the M3.) I had been warned, several times, it was very basic. The agent clearly, clearly did not want me to be let down. You could see why; the place is nothing more than a shell. The toilet is broken, the floors are wooden and essentially floorboards, the kitchen is tiny and the sink dirty... and yet, and yet, and yet, I am horridly tempted.

You see, as the agent put it, the landlord 'appears to have not changed the room since the 1960s, so hasn't changed the rent since the 1960s'. £430 is a very low monthly rent for a very central one-bed flat - it's 25 minutes to the university on foot, but an easy bus ride, and the main shopping district is just seven minutes' walk away, with a Co-operative halfway there. Southampton Central railway station is a ten-minute walk, making this a very viable option if commuting to London has to happen. (The report on the Circle Line Challenge comes tomorrow, while I think of it...) Renovation is quite possible; I later found a recently renovated flat in the same block, with no other advantages besides off-road parking, is on the market for (wait for it) £525 per month.

And upon hearing renovation was possible, I had a vision almost like a prophecy (you know where this is going now)... it sounds truly crazy, and true, the vision's hazy, but I swear someday there'll be a shiny little city pad that's occupied by me. That 'someday' may seriously not be far away.

Yes, I'd have to pay a rather significant amount in renovating the place. I have an amount in savings that has been left alone for some time, and I couldn't quote the exact sum even if I wanted to, but I believe it to be well into four figures. And my utility function is based on comfort, and expenditure here would provide potential for greater levels of comfort than anywhere else.

And there's something more. For me, given my condition and background, home is easily the most important thing in the world. It's something some might say glibly, including a Swedish furniture giant. But I've had a history of being more than a little constrained, and even the fairly horrible noisy space in halls in late 2006 represented liberation in my mind, even if it was merely leaving the frying-pan to enter the fire.

Comfort and security - having a safe space to not only call my own but to feel comfortable within - is of immense importance to me. Effectively what I am seeking is a place to rent for the long term, that I can consider truly mine. This is about as close as I'll get; it's spacious, it's an ideal location for the 23-year-old graduate I will be next summer (and still a good place for the 22-year-old student I will be before then), and above all it's a blank canvas to paint (literally and metaphorically) into something I'll find special.

And let's think of all the other major expenditures that seem to be commonly made (and about the only things that cause people to resist the psychological pressure of Noel's Gambling Party)... wedding? Not a cat in hell's chance. New car? Well, ditto. Foreign holidays? I'd rather explore this country properly.

And then let's think of all the other expenditures over time that drag finances down. Alcohol? Nope, and my alternative when out is cost-free tap water. Eating out? I desperately try to avoid it. Tobacco and illegal drugs? You must be joking. My main discretionary expenditure is on musical tuition and ethical food. Both could quite possibly be up for negotiation, the former's shifted enough.

My heart is set on this place, even if my head says no.

FRIDAY 1130: Adelaide-road. Studio flat, £380 per month, unfurnished. Thought I'd missed the agent, but amongst a sea of calls... there was none from her, but one from Sarah-Jane apologising for being away unexpectedly and being unable to contact me to say as much when I had my lesson scheduled. Wasn't a wasted journey, I walked back a slightly long way via Pentire-avenue, where I have a viewing on Monday. The place in question is £375 per month including all bills, but tiny; I barely need a viewing after looking inside, but will take the chance nonetheless. Anyway, this one. Waiting for a viewing after me were three Eastern European immigrants. Surely they weren't going to share the studio between the lot of them?

5 x 3m, roughly speaking, for the living space including kitchen - the bathroom is separate. That makes it slightly larger than here, for rather less money if the utility bill estimates from everyone other than the reader of this blog are correct. Furthermore, the cooker and shower are both notably more ergonomic (in my view) than those here. The importance of that is bigger than most would realise.

This place certainly rules out any chance of staying in halls next year; it is a slightly larger, significantly more comfortable place, in at worst a slightly inferior location, for significantly less (albeit with furniture costs to throw into the mix as a one-off, but that in turn greatly increases utility by giving me control).

There's a complex three-way decision now between Dornan-house, Burgess-road and Adelaide-road, listed deliberately in that order due to price and size. Burgess-road may win out through location and simply being a compromise... but there will me second viewings of all three unless one of Monday's two viewings (the aforementioned Pentire-avenue, and Hulse-road) is also very good.