Adieu, Emperor's Gate, adieu...

It's been a really long day after a really long night. After several trips on to Raymond's flat on Thursday, trying to transfer another load of the useless junk we've collected (and this was after we had siphoned away the REALLY useless junk like Bob, our dead Xmas pine tree and Amar's bathrobe), Lionel and I rolled up our sleeves and practically polished the entire house. And I mean it.
All evening, right up till 11pm, we were on our hands and knees, scrubbing the lime scales off the shower floor, wiping away the many finger prints on the walls (and yes, Lu, I actually managed to disguise the mark left by the chin-up bar! We will NOT be using it next year unless there's wooden panelling!), scouring every corner of the kitchen, painstakingly trying to remove every little spot of grease around the stove and its surrounding cupboards.
By the time we dropped into our beds, exhaustion hit us like a runaway train (oh that was such a bad simile), and I had awful dreams all night. Like the kind of dreams you get before exams where you don't have enough time to finish studying, except this time I probably didn't have enough time to clean the whole flat twice.
Lionel had to get up bright and early this morning to go to Charing Cross, and I thought I'd slowly move more stuff over and clean up a few more things before the Antonios come round to check the place in the evening, but NO! Luigi (no relation to Super Mario), turns up at the door and says we have to move out by 4.30pm latest! Time check - it's already 12.30pm!
The race against time to move and pack and clean is really much worse than trying to answer enough digital electronics questions in two hours. I have no other method of gauging time. I'm pathetic! Anyway, I made two trips to Raymond's place on my own with my 60litre backpack, but decided against a third trip on my own after one of the mechanics along the way called out to me and asked me if I would like to meet his friend. Dodgy! Back home, I was calling Lionel at hourly intervals and asking him why he wasn't coming home yet, while trying to do more cleaning and moving everything out of the rooms and the kitchen.
Finally at 4.15, Lionel came home and we moved most of the stuff to Raymond's place by cab, hoping Luigi would be late. And of course Luigi was late! We should have known Luigi is never reliable, and not only was he late! I had to call his mother to ask why no one had shown up yet to check us out of the flat!
So after Lionel made a quick trip to Raymond's place with our last few things, Luigi appeared at 5.40 and proceeded to inspect all the rooms by turning all the mattresses upside down (did he think we peed on them?), and flicking all the cupboard doors open. To my joy he proclaimed our flat the cleanest he'd ever seen, which he said was very rare and that we'd done a really good job. Unfortunately we still got 150 pounds deducted for the burn mark on the kitchen top. But Mrs Antonio is still raving about how unusual it is for a tenant to leave a house so clean! They made my day! God, help me! I'm such an obsessive compulsive!
Well, here we are now, in Thomas and Yanda's room. A quarter of the room is piled like a junk heap with all our pots and pans and kitchen stuff and books. We are keeping the bulk of our household items. A little unfair, but what must be done must be done. We also did the bulk of the cleaning without Yi Shan. You owe us, big time!!!
I need sleep, but I'm missing Emperor's gate and my big big room already. It really was such a lovely flat (when it was clean...), my haven of rest after tiring M-Nite days, my dream kitchen with all the space and cupboards in the world!, my lovely room with the sofa where we watched many Amazing Races under fleece blankets, the cool summer days where the temperature drops once you walk down the stairs to our basement flat, the many Bobs that have passed through its door...
You will always be remembered. In the many quips we will make, and the stories we will tell...