The Move - A Retrospective

 Well, it was bloomin' hard work, I can tell you that. 

Moving out day was awful; not because I was sentimental about leaving though. The removal people weren't very good; they were young lads who had no respect for other people's property, I had to keep away from them a lot of the time because I winced every time they tried to get  a piece of furniture  out of a door. I don't know how long they had been with the firm but I hope not long, because otherwise they were obviously unable to learn from experience. It took ages for them to get everything out and then we had to clean. After about two hours of the cleaning I had gone from 'gosh I'm breathing heavily, I know I'm unfit but really this is ridiculous' to ' this is much harder than I expected and I feel a bit sick and light headed' to ' I can't breathe properly and that's quite frightening'. I'd been spending a lot of time on my hands and knees washing skirting boards, and whether it was dust, or carpet mites or cleaning fluid, I was definitely not in a good place. So then I had to sit by an open window and take deep breaths and after about half an hour I felt better. 

Then we locked up and took ourselves off to the ferry as we were doing a bed and breakfast on it and I took a last photo of the house. 

And when we got to the boat I took a last picture of Stromness too, because I knew I wasn't going to be up and about when we set sail the next morning to take it them. 

The following week is  a bit of a blur as we officially spent it in Glasgow but there were so many mornings when we had to be at the new house at the crack of dawn that twice we stayed in a Premier Inn near Stirling just so we didn't have to get up really early and drive from Glasgow to Alloa for 8 o' clock. We did, while in Glasgow, go to M and S and get the OH several new pairs of trousers, since the ones he had had all suffered from ingrained coal dust from the solid fuel stove and now, thanks to the marvel that is central heating, that will no longer be the case. We had various travails with BT, which have already been briefly alluded to and I have no intention of re-visiting that particular annoyance, but we've spent far too much time explaining and re-explaining various tings to BT in an effort to stop them trying to hit us for a cancellation charge we don't owe them. Sky were great though; the woman turned up on time, discussed whereto put the dish, installed it and buried all the cables neatly, and all in the blink of an eye. Well -ish. 

The worst bit was fielding a phone call from the manager of the Orkney branch of the removal firm who was ringing with the news that my beautiful ceramic figure, despite dire warnings from us about how fragile she was, and instructions from him to his workforce to triple blanket wrap her and take extra care, was in fact now in several pieces. He did says his wife was 'quite crafty and had offered to have a go at mending it if I would like'. I would not like. 

Photo of said ceramic for those who might not have ben around when I bought it 

I know not everyone thinks she's beautiful, but I loved her and she meant a lot to me in several different ways and I just cried. I'm still crying inside about it because she was part of a limited edition and there is no way I can replace her, a fact which the insurance company for the removal men seemed quite unwilling or unable to take on board. I am going to be recompensed but there was a bit of an elongated exchange of e-mails. We were also claiming for some damaged bookcases because when the van was unloaded at this end they discovered that something in the the stuff at the front of the van, which belonged to someone else they were delivering to later that day had leaked a thin odourless but very black liquid which was now covering the bottom few inches of some of our bookcases. I was not amused. (possibly printer ink. we still don't know).

I think that's all the worst of it,. I don't regret the move, but I wish the logistics had been calmer and more smooth and that we hadn't  got exhausted from the early starts and the 3/4 days when we seemed to do nothing but unpack boxes and I definitely wish I hadn't developed shingles. I did at one point think that if I had to do ti again I would sell everything at the leaving end and start anew at the destination, but I'm not intending to move again in the foreseeable future. 

Upcoming over the next few days; some of the exciting things we've been doing since we got here - because yes,  we did get past spending all day every day unpacking eventually, although this doesn't mean that we don't still have a few boxes waiting to be dealt with.