February 23, 2012 - Ruminations on Moving Day

My dears, so much has happened this past week.

The piano and BBQ both arrived Thursday. YAY!! Unfortunately, not being the winter BBQers here that we are in Canada, propane is hard to come by right now, but my sweetie is determined and I'm rather certain he will prevail.

The piano is a tad bigger than it looked in the store, but has a lovely tone. It's a Rud-Ibach-Sohn, that we believe is from the 1930s. We're going to search the serial number to find out ... when we find the serial number, that is. My sweetie took a photo of me playing it with his iPhone, but for some reason, my computer won't recognize it as a photo so I can't share it.

And then, on Friday, our belongings arrived!!!! Not only that, they were over an hour early. Anyone ever heard of that happening before? Not us, that's for sure. The container (a 40' container, since we were told it was dicey as to whether our belongings would fit in a 20') was taken off the ship and put on the back of a truck. The truck took up most of our laneway, but luckily, the neighbours were very patient. I was terrified to think we were going to try to shove 40' worth of stuff into our little house, so you can imagine my relief at realizing that the truck was less than half empty. I was glad to have it confirmed by independent experts (the movers) that we weren't being played when the shipping company told us we'd have to have a 40' (and much more expensive) container. So, Keith and the boys started unloading. And unloading. And unloading. And I watched our little house become distressingly, increasingly, fuller.

Then disaster number 1. My sweetie's desk wouldn't go up the stairs to the office. It's very narrow, but the owners put a drop ceiling in part way up the stairs to make room for the boiler. The desk wouldn't go past that point - and these guys are experts at moving things into these small English houses, so we had to respect that. Putting the office in the conservatory isn't feasible, as it's not temperature-proofed and very cold in winter. However, the desk fit perfectly on one of the living room walls, so my sweetie's office is now in the living room. Not happy about that, but at least the wood is a pretty colour and goes with the brick around the fire place.

So, we moved on from that disaster to be met with another. Our bookshelves won't go up the stairs either. And since they aren't Ikea, they don't come apart. So, another quick rethink saw us putting two of the pine ones by the front door, the two red wood ones in the conservatory, and the other two in the garage. The bed made it up the stairs, as, thankfully, the movers in Toronto took it completely apart (Ikea rocks).

And the boxes and boxes and more boxes kept coming in. Fragile big boxes to the conservatory, picture boxes to the conservatory, everything else to the garage. Three hours later, everything was in, and the motorcycle still fit in the garage! Throughout, Rowan and Finlay (ages 3 and 5, live next door) were fascinated. Finlay, in particular, was hard-pressed to hop down from the fence and go in for his tea! At one point, they were in the backyard with their mother (Claire), my sweetie and Aleksandra, while I stayed out front directing. Aleksandra was bowling down Rowan, who just kept standing back up, putting out his arms and shrieking, "Again Alekthandra!!"

Keith very kindly said the lads would put the bed together for us, and then helped me remove the wrapping paper from the furniture so they could take it away.

By Friday evening, I'd found pretty much all the kitchen things and we had a fully functioning kitchen. Sadly, the only thing that broke in the move was a bar glass that I've managed to keep for 30 years, until I was unwrapping it and it fell to the floor. Argh. Still, that's not bad.

My brain awoke at 3:45 the next morning. I tried to go back to sleep, but at 4:20 I gave in and went downstairs to unpack some more. Five hours later, I'd emptied another 12 boxes and found many of my treasures. My sweetie prevailed upon me to stop and eat something, and given how wretched I felt, I've taken it more slowly these last few days. We went to Ikea and bought a couple of wardrobes, so what was going to be the office is now our dressing room. There should be room for the secretary up there, so I'm going to make it my winter office and work in the conservatory in warmer weather. Actually, although neither of us is happy having a desk in the living room, this works out very well as we'd have had nowhere to hang our clothes otherwise!

On a slightly different note, I drove into Leicester this week!!! It's very confusing, so I was thankful for my sweetie navigating me through the roundabouts and ring roads, but I even did the speed limit ... for the most part. I continue to take many photos, and thankfully, I was able to save the tree in the field across the road that figures so prominently in many of them. The farmers have been setting off 'bangers' to scare off the pigeons, as I mentioned in an earlier message. Well, we got home the other day and there was a great deal of smoke coming from the base of the tree. We watched it for a bit and then called 999, as we saw frank flame coming from behind the tree. The firemen arrived, trudged across the field, and found that one of the bangers had fallen over and set fire to the base of the tree. A couple of hours later, everything was safe again. There were no bangers the next day. They started again yesterday.

There is so much more to tell you, but I'll save that for another time.