Emptied Out

Moving Day. A blur of boxes and furniture being carried out and up the stairs by my three excellent removal chaps, much banter, much cleaning of bathroom and kitchen, polishing of window sills, and far too much vacuuming. I’m surprised my Henry hoover didn’t explode. I know I nearly did, what with the effort and the continuing humid weather. I left the flat spotlessly clean and smelling lovely, though with many pock marks in the carpets where my furniture had once been. The ghostly traces of a life lived within these walls.

Then the reading of meters, the dropping off of the keys at the estate agents, the sandwich lunch bolted down at speed in the car, the final trip to the tip. And of course my arch nemesis, the M25/A12 route, couldn’t resist unleashing its very worst on this of all days. A bottleneck before the 19-mile roadworks was compounded by a car crash up ahead. I sat sweltering in a traffic jam, not moving an inch while the vehicle(s) got towed away. Instead of an hour and thirty minutes, my journey home took three hours and my removal team sat outside for ages in the lorry waiting for me to arrive. 90 minutes later, the bungalow and garage were stacked high with what seem like hundreds of boxes. It’s going to take a very long time indeed to unpack them all, but hopefully not the rest of my life - I’ve got other plans for that.

But for now I’m all emptied out and the tank’s running low. Time to rest up for a bit.