Boxes

Place: the hall. Time: 10am. The removals company are on their way to get the 18 boxes to take to the winter rental. It's slightly alarming, to discover that The Bare Minimum we promised ourselves consists of 18 boxes. When it comes to it, there are books and dvds and cds and clothes and photographs and boots and coats that can't be left behind. What you choose to go into those 18 boxes must be the stuff that matters most. There were some surprising discoveries. I didn't know that 14 cookbooks were essential to my life. Nor that the carved wooden owl bought at a junk shop would have to go with us, but it did. Apparently.

The van is coming up the drive. The blanket is the last thing in, the checked blanket we call Elmer. It seems significant, suddenly, that the blanket I wear daily for typing in my cold study is going into a box.

I bet the winter rental doesn't have any cupboards.