Moving Day - prologue

I wrote this prior to moving but for some reason Blogspot wouldn't upload it, but now we have broadband... The sky's the limit.


For the last two weeks I have been careering around the countryside working, driving too far and too fast, eating too many garage sandwiches. Today I am moving home. I have got up early and am currently sitting amongst the detrius of my life. The room I'm in looks like an extremely high tide has risen and fallen in the room leaving random items strewn across the floor. I'm knackered already and its not yet 8 o clock in the morning. Of course the rest of the family, wife and two teenage boys are still in bed in denial of the work that looms ahead.

Last night I played my last game of squash with the Hatherleigh Squash Club (sob). This club consists of four of us who play squash every Friday night and then limp off to the pub to discuss how well we have done and other world shattering bits of men's gossip over a Guinness or three. Now of course the membership is reduced and I will sorely miss the comradeship will try to get back, as every other week I have my daughter Matilda for the weekend as she lives locally. I am planning to come up on Friday evening, play squash and pick her up Saturday morning. This seems like a good idea but her mum, in an attempt to put a spanner in the works - she is quite an expert at this, is insisting that I pick Matilda up on the Friday. I am resisting but I think my resolve is fast dissolving, just like the anti acid treatment of the same name. (Breaking News as of this weekend, I have been told since I wrote this that my beloved daughter Matilda will be moving with her mum and brother to Sussex! I am naturally devastated. It is over 6 hours away by car, I'll hardly see my beautiful daughter)

I can't believe that I have so much stuff!

Now first off one can't have too many books! I have loads. I have culled them and sold three boxes to a guy in the village who is opening a coffee shop come book and bric a brac shop. But I still have boxes and boxes. Books I have read three or four times - old friends so I can't get rifd of them. Books I have read once, but are now waiting for that long bout of flu that I am due so I can be snuggled up in bed reading ( How I dream of having some none specific, non life threatening illness that would put me in hospital for about 6 weeks. Lying in bed reading with food being bought to me by sympathetic nurses, a bottle of lucazade and a bag of grapes by the bed - bliss. If not that perhaps a short prison sentence - O the amount of reading one could get done!) And books I haven't even read yet but am planning to in a couple of years or so. So books don't count when moving.

There's stuff I can't remember even buying or acquiring. Perhaps someone just dumped it here when I wasn't looking. Of course my Ukrainian wife is very supportive and has set about throwing away as much of my stuff as she can get away with.

Apparently when we move into the new house she wants a 'fitment' in the lounge. Has it come to this I ask my self? Whereas I was once windswept and interesting (but in a different way to Billy Connelly who seems to have become a rabid, homophobic rightwinger) and slightly dangerous (self assessment) I am now in danger of owning a 'fitment'. She says we must have a place to store our glasses and best china for when we have guests (what's wrong with the kitchen cupboards I ask myself? - silently). I think Ukrainians and Russians in general are very big on 'fitments' all the people I have visited in Ukraine have them. Maybe after the current revolution, after Ikea and Tesco's have taken over the country they might change their minds. I am hopeful. I am sure that the current slogans we see bandied about in Liberation Square in Kiev every night are 'we want freedom, democracy and fitments'. But then I don't speak Ukrainian.

Another bad thing about moving home is the lose of the telephone line and thus the internet connection. BT offered a 30 day wait before they could connect the line at the new address. Telewest offered a week to connect and include broadband. The teenage boys have already got cold turkey and can be seen shivering with twitchy fingers at the thought of not being connected for the next seven days. Why does it take so long? They say an engineer must check the line. Surely in this day and age the line either works or it doesn't, so flick a switch and if it doesn't work I'll call you on my mobile to report it. Or what about a pulse of electricity down the line, wouldn't that work? Why does it take a week to switch a line on when it was only switched off as the old occupier moved out a few hours before? How can I maintain my eBay empire without access?

Yes moving day. At least we have the goodbye party to look forward to tonight. Our friends will be coming around to stand in our empty rooms looking at the empty walls and pointing out the dust and the spiders webs we have missed. But I will reward them with bottles of Stella (two boxes for 20 quid at Tesco's - bargain) and pizzas. I will miss them.

Ah moving day. Can I go back to bed with a book please miss?