Welcome to the Real World!

I've heard more than once that it's the most stressful time of your life.  While I can think of other times that would compete, and against which the outcome would be close, it was something that I've always fought strongly against.  In case you hadn't guessed, I'm talking about moving home.  When the subject has come in recent years, I've looked around my cosy flat, recalled similar occasions in the past when circumstances had forced a move upon me and said a firm 'NO!'

But this firm resolve dissolved on the morning of Easter Monday, when a force outside of me - I believe it was God, but I realise that some readers may attribute to it some other explanation - told me that, with so many facets of my life in the First Garden City coming to an end in the last year or so, it was time to move on.  Almost immediately, I began to pack, and started scouring the internet property sites for the 'right' place into which to move.

I wrote here the other week about instances when I've found it necessary to 'squirrel down' into a strange place, to make myself comfortable in a small area and gradually advance the 'frontier'.  Now the reverse became the order of the day.  In a short space of time, packing boxes - both filled and waiting to be assembled and filled - invaded what had been a pleasant and tranquil space.  Overnight, it seemed, my whole life had to be lived in approximately half the space I'd been used to, and many aspects of what had been normality were curtailed or distorted by the amount of 'stuff' that was now inaccessible, behind a barrier of cardboard and parcel tape.

Surrounded by the ghostly appearance of empty bookshelves, I found in some of these temporary resting places for just a few folders labelled 'shredding', 'filing', 'change of address reminders' and so on, along with other things in daily use whose usual homes have been stripped.  The clock that was suspended by my desk is now propped insecurely on one of these shelves and has managed to topple from thence a couple of times, mercifully without upset.

Finally, through a series of external forces, I have found a suitable new home to rent (by 'new home', of course, I don't mean newly-built but new to me ... it's getting on for a hundred years old!).  The blossom trees, open car park and grass that surround me at present will shortly be replaced by terraced houses, and streets of the same filled with unfamiliar faces.  New contacts will have to be made, and a new accent will have to be coped with.  People will be asked to repeat themselves so that I can understand them.  It will all seem very foreign to this erstwhile country boy who has become very 'home counties orientated' in the last quarter-century.

Writing this just ten days before moving, I have to say that the processes of transferring myself from one address to another - processes that, I realise, are as yet only about half-completed, if that - have been far from easy.  So much is done on line these days, which often makes it simpler, but explaining what you want done doesn't always fit precisely into those 'FAQ' lists or, for that matter, into conversation with a robot in an on-line chat facility.  To my surprise, the other day, one of these actually understood 'Can I speak to a person?' and responded, 'Please wait while I transfer you to an agent'.

It will all get worse before it gets better, I'm sure, and I may be so exhausted that there is no blog next weekend.  (Please don't be so unkind as to cheer all at once!)  But the warmest of farewells at work today have assured me that there will be 'sunlit uplands' once I've overcome the strangeness of a new location and settled in.

The present discomforts - both physical and mental -  and the prospect of more to come remind me of the plight of those refugees I wrote about last week, and the fact that many of them don't have sunlit uplands to look forward to.