I woke up this morning to the crunchy, scratchy, velcro sound of tape being stretched around a cardboard box. Walking downstairs I heard the chatter of strange men and felt the atmosphere of chaos surround and engulf me. The reality - that "The Packers" had taken over my house and were swiftly squirrelling away all my family's belongings - hit a few seconds later. I wandered into the kitchen in the hope of some breakfast and a cuppa, only to find yet another strange man packing away the contents of the kitchen cupboards, I was suddenly confronted with the excruciatingly awkward situation of making some kind of attempt at breakfast whilst tiptoeing around the man stuffing my favourite mug into yet another big brown box, why did I feel like I should apologise to him? It's my house after all, well, not for long.
Maybe I should explain - tomorrow we are moving house. So, for the past week I have been gradually and systematically filling boxes with books, clothes, pictures and general rubbish that I can't yet bring myself to throw away (3 years worth of Vogue and Elle Magazines) and that I'll probably end up throwing away in ten years. Today we thought the packers would come and to pack up "the breakables" that we are clearly incapable of packing ourselves? Imagine our surprise when it became painfully obvious that they were here to pack, well, everything. Whilst it was certainly a bonus not to have to do this ourselves, an atmosphere of stress descended on my mother and myself (control freaks that we are) as we found it impossible to keep up with the speedy packing up of everything from kitchen utensils to lampshades. We shared looks of concern and despair as we imagined the interesting weekend of unpacking which lies ahead. Interesting does not begin to cover it!
Despite my initial shock at the speed at which our cherished belongings could be bundled away, not to mention the sharp pangs of that rug-being-whipped-out-from-under-my-feet-feeling, I eventually surrendered to the whole fiasco. In my experience when a situation runs away from you, the only option is to surrender, just let it all happen. I found as soon as I achieved this, and once I'd eventually had some breakfast (having run away to hide upstairs earlier in the morning) I became incredibly excited about the move.
I'll admit I didn't totally surrender, I was absolutely determined to pack all of my boxes myself whilst the packers sorted the rest. Why, I'd already gathered and packaged most of my things and so I stubbornly decided to finish what I started - as ever. I was not prepared for the afore mentioned strange men to be emptying my underwear draw, no.
"The Packers" did work very hard and kept the moaning to a moderate level - "its a big house for a big family so man up and stop wingeing about how much stuff we have!" - is what I felt like saying, instead I hid away in my room until all but the pictures and a few choice objects (handbag, ballet bag, hairbrush, italy guide book) were jammed into big brown boxes. My next defensive move in the battle of the boxes was to go out for a couple of hours doing any and every errand I could think of to pass the awkward time.
So here I sit, on my bed, in the middle of my now very empty room; I say empty - all my belongings are still here, just rearranged and I am now surrounded on all sides by piles of boxes, in fact my room is completely full. I'm exhausted from the mental effort of the day and also somewhat disorientated by the great peaks of boxes stacked to the ceiling in various parts of the house. I had also planned to include some pictures of the ridiculous stacks and pillars of boxes which surround me, until I realised, oh irony, my camera cable is buried in one of these boxes and there's no way of telling which one. Pictures to follow...
I think its best to leave you with just three of the (multiple and very mixed) feelings I'm experiencing right now during the last night on the corner where I've lived for 95% of my life; nostalgic, exhausted but nonetheless very excited :)
