The New House - at last!

Phew. That was a fraught few days. Nay, weeks. Well, thinking about it, most of the last year. And it's a process that really started three years ago. Whatever, yesterday we moved house.

When we finally sold Mum & Dad's house at the end of 2019, which took the best part of a year in itself, Hev and I became able to move into a bigger place. We'd made a couple of stabs at moving over the years, but for various reasons, ranging from the lack of funds to, many years ago, negative equity, we'd never managed to do it. Partly this was because we loved the place we were living.

But after 32 years living in a flat, we're now the proud owners of a house. As a few of our friends are thinking of downsizing (a good mate even spoke recently of moving into a bungalow because they know it won't be long before they can't do stairs) we've upsized. And take on a fixer-upper. As we keep reminding each other, it's madness!

So, here we are, in a three storey house, built in 1770, with water coming in through the roof. At present it has no central heating, and we still even have to get gas reconnected and broadband fitted before we even start on the complicated stuff. Oh, and we have a garden. It's even got two stone sheds and a greenhouse!

There'll be a bit of work to do before anyone's invited to a housewarming, but I'm sure that'll happen sometime. First we have to get a lot of stuff out of boxes. And I mean a lot!

The removal men, from Hobdens in Clevedon, were understandably taken aback when they saw the scale of the task, packing up everything in our flat on Wednesday. They didn't manage to do it all on the day. As befits a place that has at least half a dozen Tardisses in it, our old flat was bigger on the inside than it looked. I don't think they'd ever seen so many books.

When they got to the new place even they were impressed with the size. They were less impressed when they were told that everything from my studio, and lots of those very heavy books, had to go to the top floor.

Their greatest feat of removal work - and this deserves a round of applause - was getting our bed into the bedroom. There was no way the divan was going to go up our narrow staircase (did we mention this place is 250 years old? And not one of those Georgian mansions, it's kind of a very tall cottage, if that helps you picture the narrow staircases with a bend in). So we'd resigned ourselves to buying a new bed, and sleeping tonight on the sofa bed in the downstairs lounge (did I mention we have two lounges?), when suddenly they announced they'd got the bed in - through the window!

I'm looking at that window now, as I sit in the bed in question. There is no way the latter is small enough to go through the former! Maybe something in all those Tardisses they packed rubbed off.

We've had to sacrifice living by the seaside, so we no longer have Clevedon's Isambard Kingdom Brunel pier at the foot of our road. But, looking out the new window, I can see 12th century Chepstow Castle. That'll do.

Kev F

4/3/2022