On The Move

The first time I remember moving house, I was about 6 or 7 years old, and the whole process appeared to be magic. I guess that my parents didn’t feel like they needed my help, since from my point of view, I simply left our house in Orchard Drive to go to school and then in the evening went home to Attlee Square instead.

Later, as my mother moved from one end of the country to the other and back, I learnt that moving house meant two or three days of furious packing, culminating in just sticking all the piles of paper in big plastic sacks in order to get everything more or less done before the movers came (although when we moved back up north from London, the movers ended up having to help us pack). My mother has never been well organized.

Years of boarding school made me feel like a pro at packing up all my stuff, and by the time I went away to university, I was totally unfazed by moving in and out of halls – after all, all my belongings fitted in the boot of my mother’s car – no sweat! Moving around between the various places JTA and I lived in our first few years of student life seemed to mostly consist of sitcom-style hijinx, like the time we moved down to the seafront with the aid of a TV trolley and a string of fairy lights, or the move from PJM to Hafan via shopping trolley which would have been impossible without Paul’s help.

Then came the end of my second year, when I moved away from Aberystwyth for the first time in nearly two years. Turns out that *not* moving as much had allowed JTA and I to accumulate a hell of a lot of crap in our cozy little caravan, and even with two long-suffering parents’ cars to pack it into, we still ended up jettisoning quite a lot of stuff.

But that was as nothing compared to moving from Aberystwyth to Oxford for the last time, a mammoth undertaking which involved multiple trips back and forth along the A44 (at a round-trip time of about 9 hours each), plus loading and unloading our little van, sleeping in shifts while we travelled, all over the course of one exhausting weekend. It was weirdly fun, though.

Which brings me to today. We’re moving again! We’re sufficiently close to buying our new house that one way or another we’re leaving Isis House, and we’ll be transferring all our crap from one side of Oxford to the other in just over a week’s time, over the weekend of the 27th of July. Unfortunately, owing to having a Tiny in my insides, I’m not allowed to do any heavy lifting, so we’re soliciting extra pairs of hands to come and help us move. Enjoy beer, pizza, good times and lugging heavy boxes up and down stairs! Take all the mystery booze you can carry!

Oh yeah, the mystery booze. Anyone who came to our Summer Party last year may remember the large collection of weird and wonderful spirits from around the world which somehow became my property last year. Well, no-one’s been drinking them, and I’ve decided I don’t want to give them house space, so they’re all for the drain unless anyone wants them. I’m not posting them (they weigh a tonne), but if you’re likely to be down this way (or we’ll be around your way) anytime soon I’m willing to hold onto them for a bit. Let me know if you’re interested. I don’t promise that any of them are safe to drink.