Moving On; The Reality of Downsizing

Eddie’s Removal Truck outside on Feb 23rd.

It’s funny, the places that writing will take you.  Having never given it much of a thought in the past half a century, the nursery rhyme ‘I wish I lived in a caravan’ spooled through my head on repeat for the whole of last week and much of the week before that.  So last night I googled it and found it was actually regarded as a poem and was written by someone called W. B Rands.  I remember the illustration vividly and my ‘Hilda Boswell Treasury of Nursery Rhymes’, dog-eared and somewhat worse for wear, is one book that has survived many culls and charity book sale appeals but is right now inaccessible to me. It is packed away in one of the approximately 100 boxes that have gone into storage so I’m unable to reproduce the picture here.  But it’s not the picture that kept running through my head, it’s the sentiment: “I wish I lived in a caravan With a horse to drive, like the pedlar-man! Where he comes from nobody knows Or where he goes to, but on he goes.” That was the first verse.  On Google I discovered several more verses and found the last one oddly relevant to me: “With the pedlar-man I’d like to roam, And write a book when I come home, All the people would read my book, Just like the Travels of Captain Hook.” By the end of last week I felt I could just about write a book, or at the very least, an article, about what to expect when you pack up a fairly big house after 20+ years of living in it.

Moving Out.

As it was.

As it became… Special packaging was constructed around the piano to move and store it.

The Doll’s House, still incomplete, also required special packaging and was the source of intense interest.

It was very hard work.  It wasn’t particularly emotional or sad – in the end there really wasn’t much time left over for sentiment – it was simply exhausting and all-consuming.  On just one day last week my Fitbit informed me that I had done over 13000 steps – 3000 more than my daily goal – and I had not even left the house.  The packing just seemed to go on and on despite the loads that left with Joseph, with  Caroline – 2 full trucks – with Hospice and with another wonderful charity called Cordis Brothers and the deliveries we made to Meals on Wheels and an Aids Orphanage.

Caroline on her way to retirement. With two grandsons and a friend.

And  I know that when the time eventually comes to unpack in the new house, there will still be more to give away.

Too much stuff. But the little chair, made for an ancestor in Oxford 150 years ago, has to come along.

I never want to own so much stuff again. For now, the furniture destined for the new house is in storage with the removal company as are rather a lot of boxes.  And still more boxes – because we were not ready in time – are stored in the homes of several long-suffering friends.  The three unsuspecting cats are all boarding in a cattery and this has left me more aggrieved than any other aspect of the building delays. Finally, last Saturday, a day later than planned, we were ready to hand over the house keys and – with  Daisy squashed into a corner of the back seat – we set off on the long journey to Cape Town.  Ironically, it was the thought of the open road that kept me going over the last few days of packing.  I found myself longing for the wide open spaces of the Free State and the Karoo and although it has been inconvenient not being able to move from one house directly into another, in the end I think this hiatus period will be a good thing.

Karoo Skies

My love of long road trips and of driving often draws sceptical looks but recently I discovered in the writing of Antony Osler, an echo of myself: “I love the empty road.  My eyes attend to everything but don’t get caught anywhere.  They see without trying.  I welcome whatever comes into my field of vision, I let it all pass behind me without regret.”………………..”Just driving. Just driving and seeing.  Just driving and seeing and thinking.  Letting the landscape flower through me as I flow through it.” (Zen Dust, Antony Osler, Jacana Media, 2012). So it’s not only me!  I feel vindicated.

Storm over the Free State.