Countdown

0
I was at the house at 7.40 this morning to carry on cleaning while B finished his packing and car loading. Because our buyers are friends and neighbours, we said they could start bringing in their furniture and boxes at the same time as B was taking his out. 

So I didn't get the photos I was planning of an empty house and it occurred to me that it has never been empty since it was built over 100 years ago. The builder's family lived in it for eighty years and left lots behind to daunt us in 1992 when we moved in.

Our neighbours' movers were the same people who moved me out ten months ago so it was all very convivial as we gave way to each other on the stairs. They told me they would never forget my move. All those bricks...

B couldn't fit all his stuff into the car he'd hired so I took a bike-trailer load of miscellanea to mine.

Even though we hadn't completed and the house wasn't yet legally theirs, I left our neighbours to it because a friend of a friend had very kindly agreed to teach me apple grafting this afternoon. It was a very good way of looking forwards when I might have wallowed in the past. I now have ten rootstocks with grafts of the utterly delicious apple tree I have left behind. 

The house became theirs just before 3pm. It was very odd ringing on the doorbell shortly afterwards to ask for access to the garage for my penultimate trailer load. The dislocation was lightened by their exuberant eldest telling me what a brilliant house it is and offering me a Celebration. I'll miss the house and feel wistful about all the memories but I am very glad that it will be a family home again.


(Regular followers may have realised that B and I have gone our separate ways. We have done it as amicably as is possible. I'm quite proud of us.)