I’ve not been posting much over the past couple of weeks. I could say that my trip to Amsterdam required a considerable period of time to recover from. But the truth is that I’ve been doing a few things that I wasn’t interested in writing about. Some of them personal (too personal for you lot to read about), others of them so dull that I suspect my mailing list would be empty faster than I can say “watching paint dry”. But – as the title suggests – this is the dawn of a new era.

I am of course talking about my younger brother moving into my house. For those of you who haven’t read it already, he’s a couple of years younger than me and I managed to persuade him to come and live in Yorkshire and find a job down here. He wasn’t too happy in his job in Scotland and since our mother died he’s had a lot less reasons to stay up there. Anyway, he’s down here now and reality has set in.

I spent the weekend in Scotland helping to clear out my parent’s house of junk and making sure my brother remembered to bring his toothbrush and the other essentials. The two of us even went out for a meal with my father followed by a trip to the cinema (saw The Bourne Identity, which was pretty good as far as action-packed movies go) and didn’t have a single argument. I guess we’re making progress after all these years – we tended to bicker quite a lot in the past and it’s great that we can finally get along like normal human beings.

So back to the main point. My brother and I drove down on Sunday night (well, I was a few hours ahead of him) to begin our new life. His aim is to get a job and then a place of his own. My aim is for him to get a job and then a place of his own. But seriously, it’ll be fun – like two grizzlies being forced to live in the same cage. Fortunately we do actually get on pretty well and – aside from the fact that he once punched one of my teeth out (he always denies that and he might even be right) – we always have.

Anyway, I’m moving some of my stuff to my long-suffering girlfriend’s house and borrowing a chest of drawers to give my bro a bit more space for his clobber so that he can feel a bit more at home. He’s very keen to get a job (he’s not much of a fan of lying around a house all day) so I’ll not need to nag him to “get his lazy arse out of bed” – he’s not that kinda guy.

But already (after a single day) I can see that I’m prone to “He’s-Just-Like-His-Father Syndrome”, which is the state you enter when you make the same complaints that your father used to make to you. Living on my own means I can run a tight ship. Or I can be a messy git. Or I can do either on a whim and not bother at all. But with having a tennant my idiosyncrasies come to the fore. I’m saying things like “put the paper in the basket” or “don’t leave the bin lid up, it’ll stink the place out” and the all-time classic “don’t leave your shoes there – I’ll fall over them!”. It’s terrible, so I’m going to have to learn to be even more mellow and less annoying (it’s going to be hard work).

The saga begins. L8R.