Friday 30 April 2010

Moving day

Today as well as moving day is offically my day of retirement from being Vicar of St John's. And the sun shone!

Clare slept over at the new house last night to await the BT Openreach engineer's visit to equip us with a live phone line. Having retired late after shredding, I awoke to the sound of the removal men knocking the door, and hour earlier than they'd told me. It was a bit of a shock and I blundered around in a dressing gown for half an hour, trying to get breakfast and issue instructions to them. Still, I recovered, and set to dismantling the bed, having been thrown into confusion by the early disappearance of the tool kit. As it happened, when I stopped panicking the necessary allen key was close to hand, and all I had to do was remember how I had put the bed together in the first place.

Apart from that, the clearing of the house in two van loads was done by lunchtime, and the piano was moved separately early afternoon. I was able to fetch the car and transport all our clothes (no wardrobe containers had been supplied) in two trips. By three it was all over, and our new Meadow Street abode was full of furniture with fifty odd boxes and crates to unpack. The phone worked, though when broadband arrives is something we'll need to enquire about.

In a quiet moment at the Vicarage, when all the floors were empty of furniture, I took out the farewell greetings cards presented to me at the end of term service, and took photographs of them, as their size and number made it impossible to hang on to in the wake of the great clear out now in progress. I found then very touching, as I'm sure you will - you can view them here.

Everything else about the day is a blur of activity amid mountains of containers. But, we ate a cooked meal at our own kitchen table and slept in our reconstructed bed under own own duvet, both aching and exhausted, but so happy to be home, in our own home and not a tied cottage for the first time in forty four years of marriage. Laus Deo!

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