On the Move

It’s so cheesy, but for the last week I’ve been humming “The Final Countdown”. I’ve never even seen a Rocky film, but a quick Google tells me the song is, appropriately, by Europe. The lyrics begin:

We’re leaving together

But still it’s farewell

And maybe we’ll come back,

To earth, who can tell?

It’s been a week of farewells. Our social life has never been so good. We’ve been out every night, or entertaining friends in the nearly empty house with meals served on the last dregs of crockery to be packed, an eclectic mix of mismatched, chipped plates.

We are both so tired now that we are in danger of sleeping through the first week of our trip, when we get there that is. Still, as the title says, we are on the move. One heavily packed van and one car have reached Stansted. No, we’re not flying out, we have family there.

The van is stuffed full until we can unload boxes of treasured possessions and emergency suitcases – wedding, funeral, job interview clothes – at various family members who have kindly offered some space.

The last moments in Leicester were pretty hectic, but they only followed on from final days there which whizzed past in a blur. We thought five weeks would be enough. We thought we’d have plenty of time. Rob had planned a couple of days cycling – they didn’t happen.

Advice to anyone planning a long trip abroad – start early – time flies.

  

The house has never looked so good. Well done Rob!

My last actions on leaving the house? I grabbed the pepper mill, some pegs from the line and a large bag of dirty washing to take to Mum’s (I didn’t even do that when I was at university!).

It was a race against time to get everything done and in the end we lost. We seem to have left loads to be done and we could have given ourselves another week, but we decided that it was better to get some of our stuff on the move. However, Rob has to go back up to the house tomorrow to pick up the car which never sold and now has to be stored, and to do a final, rather larger than we would have wished, tidy and lock up.

I’m now in the Kleenex zone. Goodbyes to friends, goodbyes to sisters, goodbyes to parents – it’s just not worth putting on mascara these days.

We think we’re organised though. We can get to our money. We’ve set up the new laptop we were forced to buy at the last minute when our not so old one upped and died like Mr Bojangle’s dog. My clothes all fitted in the van in the end – employing the “squash ‘em in” technique helped.

It really is the final countdown!