After months and months of bureaucracy, delays, idiocy and general faffing, we have exchanged contracts and will be moving house next Monday. Eek!
I am relieved, and daunted, and excited (and daunted again) all at once. What if we hate living in the middle of nowhere? What if I can't think of anything to do with all that land? What if the neighbours don't like us? (At least we'll be a bit further away from them I suppose). What if the car breaks down and I can't get to work, or it snows, or the well overflows or the electricity goes off? What if...?
We're not in the habit of moving house very often (between us we have been in this house for forty years), so the slight trepidation we have about this particular house is hard to distinguish from general wibbling about moving house at all. Still, we're legally obliged to go now so we'd best just pack up and get on with it.
Much of our stuff has been packed for months - the cellar has been full to bursting since before we put our own house on the market last July. We've now got a week to get everything out of the cellar, and the rest of our things packed. The removals firm dropped off another forty boxes today and I think we'll use them all.
We aren't minimalists.
It felt strangely emotional packing up the garden. At this time of year it's mostly sticks, but there are a few shoots coming through and it feels odd to know I won't be seeing the chive flowers again, or the gooseberries.
I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of times when I'll be looking back with fondness at the thought of having a tiny city garden that I could weed and prune and tidy and be finished in time for lunch...