Relocation Expenses

When I moved last, in 1992, I specifically recall moaning that for a few weeks, every time I went out of the house it cost £30. Chatting to friend Andy about five years on he reckoned it had gone up to £50.

Yesterday tipped the £170 mark in light shades, bathroom accessories, light bulbs and ironing board covers. Ruth (many thanks) came round to help put up curtains and when I saw my ironing board I realised how much you miss, ironing in only the light of a DVD.

I think Brown's hardware store will be a place I spend a lot of time in the near future. Wonderful shop with endless side rooms containing goodies. Managed to buy one jubilee clip for 60p. It is the sort of shop where it is easier to ask then search. I asked for some golf-ball size, 40w, large bayo light bulbs and a quick dive under the counter produced the exact thing for £1.10 each.

Oh yes and I bought a new stereo with a digital radio. Life shouldn't be all bad and one of the major differences between 1992 and 2006 is that Liz has a career, a salary and we have no especially dependent children.

Message to Mike (anonymous occasional commentator and on the list of people who helped decorate the house before we came) - bring more beer than music.

There was a lovely food pack waiting for us on arrival which contained many fine things but especially a lot of tea bags, toilet rolls and pasta. Add that to the bottles of Bath Ale and who could ask for more. Right. Back to visually merchandising my book shelves.

Getting There

Well a few themes have developed. Getting lost would be a strong one. Got lost driving into Bristol last night. Got lost on foot trying to walk into Nailsea town centre today. Friend Richard had to phone from 300 metres away because he was on the wrong estate.

But the getting lost prize goes to Ali of the Lloyds TSB call centre. I had already called Lloyds TSB cardholder services to notify them of my change of address. I asked if they could communicate with all my other Lloyds accounts but they couldn't and had to pass me over. I failed the second set of security questions because I couldn't recall my memorable number. I have so many different memorable numbers I can never remember whose is whose.

Having told me I was unable to do any business today over the phone he then asked if I realised Lloyds TSB could save me money on my home insurance.

'At which adddress?' I asked, before hanging up. Ali. Get lost.

By the way we have been here 48 hours and have yet to encounter a non-white face.

-2

No time for a long post. There are things I ought to be discovering about North Somerset. But Telewest have been, seen and installed hundreds of TV channels I don't ever want to watch and two telephone lines one of which works. And Broadband. Without wrecking the godstuff email account.

Help provided by Richard (pcdoctor@pcpeaceofmind.co.uk) - the sort of friend you need at times like these.

Massive respect to Dave and the guys from Pickfords who provided awesome customer service with humour and punctuality.

I've just noticed that moving house hasn't cured my habit of pressing the insert key in error when typing delete.

Taking the Archdeacon of Bath out for a birthday meal in Bristol tonight. It was he who got me here.

Until tomorrow then.

1

After a brief, marriage-straining discussion caused by a difference of opinion over the numbers we have allocated to the bedrooms in the new house - I argue that my 1,2,3,4,5 anti-clockwise system is easier to follow than Liz's 1,5,3,4,2 - we are up and labelling.

Freezer defrosted. VCR doing its final job on this morning's Championship highlights, washing machine on its final spin, dishwasher saying go ahead punk, make my day, unplug me and the floor gets it with old water. All beds bar one dismantled.

Computer is next so goodbye until, ooh Wednesday I reckon unless, no she wouldn't let me.

Bob's song about the landlords of local hostelries being distraught seems vaguely prophetic now as Paul at the Somerville provided free chocolate cake for our final, very happy evening there. Wrote a letter to the Good Pub Guide nominating him as unspoiled pub of the year. We'll see.

Oh yes, and we sold the house yesterday. Good timing or what?

2

Is it attached? Disconnect it. Is it dusty? Clean it. Is it full of water? Empty it. Is it dirty? Clean it. Is it flat-pack? Take it apart. Leaving your home in at least a reasonable state for the nextcomers is not something most poeple do. We're trying to.

Obviously taking things off the wall leaves holes and marks but there is no reason to leave the carpets unhoovered or the cooker disgusting.

Today is about separating those things we will need for the next couple of days from those which can be packed. And about tonight in the Somerville Arms with our friends.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Leamington. It's a Sunday. We don't intend to go to church.

4

It's 3 really but this is about yesterday.

I ordered a big fridge freezer. One of the more expensive ways I have used to block a doorway but there you go. Let the visitor understand. Managed to survive the online experience of getting it delivered to an address other than the one currently on my credit card and not before next Tuesday.

I sorted out my mortgage. The current deal was coming to an end and I needed to find a carbon-based, intelligent, humanoid lifeform at the Woolwich to advise me what offer to take up that wouldn't cost me the earth if I cancelled it almost immediately. A Lifetime Tracker appears to be the answer and the definition of lifetime may well be a fortnight.

Took all the pictures off the wall. Doing this early is certainly a psychological trick to make your last few days in your old house feel horrid and to look forward to the new. I recommend it. Leave the hooks or screws in the wall so incomers can make the rooms look nice by putting pictures in the same place if they haven't got time to decorate everywhere, or the luxury of a group of volunteers to decorate their new house for them before they arrive.

Also emptied the ironing basket (by ironing it) whilst watching The Inside Man, a film I watched only a month ago but forgot I did yet still enjoyed a second time even though it has more plot holes than an allotment with a mole problem.

Took my keyboard down to church ready for Cafe Create tonight. Spent a few hours online in the virtual cafe planning meeting trying to think of a clever question to ask the audience and an easy way to get brick dust out of a CD mixer. Life.

5

Took two 1930s armchairs, one flattened flat-pack wardrobe, one flattened flat-pack bookcase and a deceased fridge to the tip. Very liberating.

A late arrival at the house-selling ball drove down from London to view the chaos which is my ready-to-move possesions container and told me not to accept any offer until I had heard from him. I won't argue with him since he was at least 20 stone and six two.

Had a letter delighting in the fact that I had allowed my emotions to come to the fore over the last few days. Why is it that people assume that the only emotion we have is sadness?

Ove the last four years I have had glee, joy, mischief and fun to the fore. I am allowing sadness to come to the fore now because I am sad. I don't cry when I'm not sad. Next Monday night I won't be sad anymore.

Strewth.

6

If you've been faithfully reading me, turning up looking for insight or respite, terribly sorry. I missed '7' but it was a hard day yesterday. After a day's leaving services and shared meals at church I had the funeral to take of someone I'd got to know well and liked. In the one hour before the funeral our staff meeting spent its time sharing memories of me which was terribly moving and a bit like stretching exercises before sport. This was emotional stretching before a funeral. Didn't quite work that way though. I think I ruptured a heart-string.

Went to bed at 9.30 p.m. and slept from 10-6 without moving. Heart-strings on the mend.

Have also been a little distracted by taking all the things I own and putting them in boxes or the tip. I just finished dismantling a flat pack wardrobe which has been erected since 1980 minimum because I remember ending up in it on the bedroom floor in Oversley Road. The house was filled with helpless laughter, the source of which Liz couldn't locate so thought we had a ghost. So long ago in fact that I couldn't recall how to spell Oversley. We need more helpless laughter. Now.

Current house sale proceeds slowly and we have crept to within 2k of our bottom line. There are two people still in the hat so it looks like we will sell in the next day or so.

Having a night off to watch Leamington FC tonight, possibly for the last time for a while.

8

Yesterday we moved the loft contents downstairs. Now we have a lot of the boxes which electrical items we no longer own came in. We took down an MFI bookcase before it collapsed. We took several items to the tip and to charity shops.

Boxes have started appearing round the house labelled with things such as, 'books - bedroom 3,' 'computer games - study' and 'husband - re-cycle.'

I also deconstructed my spice rack. No tasty meals for eight days.

In the evening we went out for a drink before dinner and couldn't bear the thought of coming back to our partially deconstructed life so we stayed out for dinner too. Magic.

9

So are you the owner of your current property?

Yes, with a mortgage.

And will you be the owner of the property you are moving to?

No.

You're moving to rented?

No.

I don't understand.

I will be living in a five-bedroomed, detached house, rent free.

There's no box for that, I'll put 'rented'.

I have had this conversation a lot over the last couple of days.

10

Friends I have entered my phone number using the keypad in order to help NTL manage the information that I no longer require their services.

I have given my address in the wrong order - 'post-code first please sir' in order to help Zurich insure my goods in transit and change my cover to the new house. 'You have five bedrooms so you'll be wanting to increase the sum insured?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Just because I have more bedroms it doesn't mean I will own any more things. I'm taking all my things with me and they will still be worth the same amount when they arrive as they were worth when they left. Knowing professional removers, possibly less'

'I'll only put it up to £30,000 then.'

I am typing this whilst in limbo between Severn Trent's automatic switchboard and a real human whilst listening to Fly Like an Eagle by the Steve Miller band - sod it - no I'm not. I skipped to their web-site and did it online.

Now holding for a BT operative whose website has no 'Cancel your services without transferring' option.

Gave up.

Worthwhile motto. No matter how long you have been listening to hold music you can always expedite the call answerers by taking a bite of the biscuit you have been looking longingly at for the first few minutes of holding.

Iammoving.com looked really promising (you register your details and the changes get passed on to all utilities you specify) but failed at hurdle 1 by constantly telling me I hadn't entered my address properly without telling me what was wrong with it.

Farewell Tour

I'm almost thinking of having T-shirts made, as at everything I go to at the moment someone seems to mention that it is for the last time. Still, here's the itinerary:

Sunday 17th September
Preaching at both main services at St Paul's with a bring and share lunch after the morning service.

Friday 22nd September
Cafe Create.

Saturday 23rd September
Will be in the Somerville Arms all evening from about 8pm for anyone who wants to join us for a drink and console Paul at the minor reduction in his future takings and the absence of anyone to write his Good Pub Guide commendation in future years.

Monday 25th September
Actually leaving town.

Have sympathy for Liz who keeps her job and merely moves house 100 miles, giving up two weeks holiday to do it.

To commandeer and adapt the four possible reasons for attending a funeral, there are four possible reasons for attending a farewell do:

• As an expression of grief and mourning (unlikely)
• As a mark of thanks (very unlikely)
• Out of a sense of duty (possibly)
• To make sure the bastard's actually going (form a queue)

There is no need to tell me which one you are choosing.

82, Leicester Street 5

I suppose I should be pleased that in five days I have shown five sets of people round and all but one have expressed interest. I guess though that the novelty of living and working in a Show Home (for that is how it feels) will soon wear off and I will long for the days I could put a glass or cup down and leave it until later.

Course, that said, keeping a house immaculate is much easier than making it immaculate and I need to remember this next time I feel all reluctant about putting dead bottles straight in the recycling box, wiping the sink down after every little bit of washing up and putting reading material back on a shelf, bookmarked. Excessive? You betcha. We need to shift this thing.

Turning the front room from a double guest bedroom into a reception room was OK but Liz found it strange when she was quizzed about it:

Liz: We have used this room as a study, a playroom and a bedroom; it's very versatile.
Visitor: What do you use it for now?

This question flies in the face of the Estate Agent's advice that we dress the room as a reception. It now has two armchairs, music stuff and bookshelves. It clearly looks like a room to sit and relax in. But we have never used the room thus as there are two other rooms perfectly acceptable for such behaviour. So, since we dressed it we haven't used it.

Liz: Oh just chillin' (Liar, liar pants on fire).

Then when I faced the same question, having told Liz off for lying:

St: We don't; the estate agents asked us to dress the room as a reception room and now we don't use it.

Visitor: What's a reception room?

This one may run and run.

82, Leicester Street 3

It's 22 years since we had to sell a house. Things have moved on since we last did it. I blame Ann Maurice the House Doctor on Channel Five for the insistence that nobody will buy your house unless each room is dressed as it might be used and painted neutrally. Which is why Liz and I are both absolutely shattered after spending all our free time for a fortnight doctoring our house. It looks so nice now I want to carry on living in it, not sell it.

When we purchased this house the front room contained a chest freezer with a canoe on it. That's all. It didn't put us off. Amazingly we recognised that we would be purchasing neither of these items and had the foresight to see that the shell of the room was both big enough to contain them and also quite attractive. Apparently people have less vision than this these days and need to be told that the front reception room is better utilised as a sitting room than for arctic kayak practice.

We turned it into a double guest bedroom. So now we have taken the double bed out of the room (the canoe and freezer did depart with the previous owners) and put armchairs in. I still want to say - 'This is a great room; more than cat-swinging, you could turn a canoe in here.'

The Estate Agents gave us great advice as to where to hide a double bed so we are now sleeping on two mattrasses with a double bed frame hidden under a newly fitted vallance.

There is less responsibilty on you to show people round than there used to be. The Agents want to do accompanied viewing so that they can get better feedback. No-one insults houses to the owners' faces (can't have met Bob Clucas?) apparently, so if we are not there they are more likely to find out what the viewers think.

This means that when the doorbell rings for a viewing all occupants of the house have to go and sit in the garden like naughty children, a situation we found ourselves in yesterday lunchtime and in which we discovered it is almost impossible to read.

After a few minutes a small child's head appeared round the kitchen door. I said 'Hello' and sent the head screaming back inside to Mummy complaining that, 'There's someone in the garden.'

When all three of the visitors came into the garden my natural reaction, to stand up, offer a handshake and smile had to be restrained. We just grinned ridiculously, as if cowering in the garden was a perfectly normal reaction for English hosts.

When the house is on Loveitts web-site I'll link for you so those who have become distant blog-mates can see. Should be in the next couple of days.

82, Leicester Street 2

'The devil's in the detail.' I think this expression may have originated in legalese and small-print checking. I don't know. I don't do detail very well.

'Retail is detail', says Liz's company, aware that most shops in most places most of the time will do most things right. So if you have a wonky door, a cold trading area or a rude assistant that detail will stand out - it will give you a disadvantage. She is busy remerchandising our house for sale at the moment (a board has now gone up outside) so I am trying to notice details.

But I don't. I have never enjoyed the detail of, for instance, finances which for me aren't black and white but more a sort of off-maroon shade. I am trying really hard to tidy up as I go along so the house can look ready for visitors at 20 minutes notice. Then what? Smell of fresh ground coffee and the bread-maker on perhaps? A little light cafe jazz of St Germain or Zero 7 playing in the background? A visitors book open at a page that says 'Thanks for a lovely night see you soon - luv David, Victoria, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz?' Something visually amusing in the room with the slightly peeling paint?

But it must be working. I am spotting things. Walking home from the church today I became transfixed by a blue (and therefore cheese and onion) Walker's crisp packet moving at the bidding of the breeze through Kennedy Square. It described graceful arcs like the dot bouncing along the bottom-of-screen lyrics in an old musical. Reminded me of the out of place 'They say there's a tree in the forest,' song in the middle of the film 'The Great Race' which uses that technique. (Not seen it? Do so. Now. Has the world's greatest ever custard pie fight in it too.)

See what happened. The detail took me captive and whisked me off. How can I keep my study tidy when things contain so many alluring side-roads up which to nose. Everything I tidy turns to something else before I've got it there.

Help.

Another Odd Injury and Relocation Gazette

Regular readers of this blog will know I don't do normal injuries. You may recall my cuts received by the Coventry Diocesan Youth Office Safe Practice Manual. You can perhaps stretch your mind back to the burn on my left forearm caused by failing to believe that the iron was hot enough to burn my right forearm.

Well today I have a badly bruised knuckle on my left hand. This was caused by hitting it at least twenty times with a rubber mallet yesterday. And for those who can do DIY please note that holding a masonry chisel and using it to clean old mortar off old bricks is a skill that takes practice and that practice involves pain.

The house looks so nice now I am ashamed it took the lure of selling it to persuade us to do it up. Liz tidied the study yesterday and it looks lovely. I could almost work in it. I found the computer this morning in the third draw of the filing cabinet under I for IT. The printer now has framed photos of the boys on it. I have a rug, to hide the worn carpet, and there are two plants in here. They'll never get out alive.

It's Sunday. I am a clergyman. End of.