'Twas the move before Xmas

THE WRONG WAY TO MOVE

No, this isn't about my attempts to dance at a Xmas night out.

It's been several weeks since I last posted anything here and that has almost entirely been down to one thing - we've been moving home.  Again.  It's said to be an experience almost on a par with bereavement for stress levels. That always sound a bit OTT to me, but it certainly isn't one of the more relaxing ways to pass the time.

But we thought we had a way to make life easier for ourselves, take some of the pain out of the process, give ourselves a bit of time.  For reasons I won't go into here we were in the unusual situation of being able to stay in our old flat for a while after we had been given the keys to the new one.  So, we thought, let's do a staged move, and not actually settle into our new home until it's been made habitable.  They're little more than a mile apart, so shuffling back and forward won't even take much time. Will it?

And now, one month on, I can give you a solid recommendation should you ever find yourself in a similar position:

DON'T

DO

IT

Just don't. Go on the traditional path of enduring one day of extreme harassment followed by days and days of living amongst the boxes.  In the end it will be quicker and less effort, and you won't look like total plonkers to the rest of the word.  Trust me.

We'd bought the flat fully furnished (that too is another story....) and spent the first three days rearranging the items we were keeping and moving most of the others down to the garage. Day four and our old stuff arrived from storage where it had dwelt these past four months. An episode straight from a seventies sitcom (with me as Terry Scott) as we tried to remembered why we'd wanted to keep all these....things. Endless things of limited use was how it appeared. More things to stick into that garage.

So we now had an overstuffed flat that looked more warehouse than penthouse. Ah, but we had that 'luxury' of not having to move in and live amongst the cardboard, did we not?  And therein lies the problem.  Because instead of working every available hour to make the place habitable we'd wake up somewhere that already was, and return there in the evening.  And there would still be food shopping to do, meals to make, a social life to lead (why not?).

So the days passed in this fashion. Empty a few boxes, fill up the wardrobes, move furniture around, return home ('home'?) weary and ready to eat, watch TV and have a good sleep. And maybe a lie in, since it was tempting to do so. Progress was slow.  But then the moment arrived when the decision had to be made about actually 'moving in'.  Prompted by that most essential element of modern life - when the broadband account switched properties.  Suddenly it doesn't feel like home any more without a fast internet connection....

Which means moving all those bits and pieces that made one home feel like home into the other home to make that feel like home, so that the first home wouldn't be home any more, which it wasn't without that broadband connection, even if I (there were a few days when I was left to my own devices) was still sleeping in the home that wasn't any more.  I think.

No vans this time, no strapping young men to shift the heavy stuff, just a hatchback and us. And a new block of flats that has a lot of doors and distance to cross.  There's nothing like a suitcase/box obstacle course to improve the temper.  That operation began about, oh, six months ago maybe.  Or is it really just six days?  A short drive across, yes, but why has it come to feel like a commute?

But we are in, and have slept here. Several times.  There is still more 'stuff' to come, but if we live without it for long enough maybe it will fade away from memory.  There is, just like in a normal move, one room decorated with wall to wall cardboard boxes, so there was no advantage there either  In fact the only positive I can come up with isn't for us, but for any neighbours who might have chanced to watch.  (Not that I've seen any net curtains twitching, it's not that sort of neighbourhood.)  They may have enjoyed a few comedy moments from two not-so-young people trying to move cases and boxes and oddly shaped items through rain and wind - carrying back the empty boxes for another load is a particularly good way of turning into a Marcel Marceau impression of a rudderless Cutty Sark.

And that's how not to do it.

But at least I can start blogging again.