the NEO life

I’ve been sit­ting here for about twelve min­utes sim­ply star­ing at my screen, try­ing to decide where even to BEGIN in describ­ing what’s been hap­pen­ing in my life lately.

My blog has always been my best ally in the effort to frame what hap­pens as the days go by, each one impor­tant and pre­cious in its own way.  Annoy­ances can be made fun­ny, pat­terns emerge in my friend­ships and alliances, com­fort comes from cre­at­ing a nar­ra­tive — a way of weav­ing togeth­er events that on the sur­face look uncon­nect­ed, random.

But events over the last two weeks stretch even my capac­i­ty for storytelling.

Two weeks ago we were firm­ly ensconced in our four-sto­ry Edwar­dian semi-detached house in leafy, idyl­lic Barnes Vil­lage.  The riv­er flowed by effort­less­ly.  All was well.

It was time to say good­bye to every­thing in the care­ful­ly con­struct­ed life I had grown for myself over the five years I had spent in Barnes.  The last Home-Start play­group came and went, with fer­vent hugs and good­byes from the 20 or so tod­dler twins I had met as new­borns, two years ago.  Good­bye to the space that had been the scene of so much play, learn­ing and love, giv­en and received.

I gave a last din­ner par­ty for my beloved bell­ringers.  Trisha and I spent a hap­py after­noon togeth­er, gos­sip­ing and cook­ing: salmon, chick­en, choco­late mousse. The ringers came and ate.

It was a won­der­ful evening of food and laugh­ter, speech­es and a few tears.

And then it came: the last ser­vice ring­ing on a beau­ti­ful Sun­day morn­ing.  I will nev­er for­get the joys St Mary’s gave me: the friend­ships, the chal­lenges, the beloved tra­di­tion of get­ting to the church each Sun­day to “sum­mon the faith­ful to worship.”

It’s so hard to believe I won’t be there, next week­end, to ring for Remem­brance Sun­day, around this beau­ti­ful memorial.

I hung my rope for the last time, on the spider.

Of course, I can come back any time I like.  But the week­ly rit­u­al was fin­ished.  We crossed the riv­er to beau­ti­ful Chiswick.  How I have loved becom­ing a bet­ter ringer there, accom­plished enough that I could begin to ring and look around me at the same time, at the ancient inscriptions.

The church­yard was an autum­nal spectacle.

On Sun­day evening, the real­i­ty of the big change com­ing could no longer be ignored.  The movers had deliv­ered a giant pile of emp­ty box­es (recy­cled from a straw­ber­ry jam com­pa­ny’s lat­est move, with a few sticky patch­es), and the great book­shelf dis­man­tle began.

The books came off the shelves in John’s care­ful­ly organ­ised sys­tem of num­bered box­es, keep­ing the alpha­bet rel­a­tive­ly intact.

Just an hour lat­er, it was done.

Sam came, that evening, to col­lect the leather sofa and arm­chairs which found such a good home in his flat in Bath.

In the morn­ing, Vit­soe came yet one more time to take away the shelves.  “Hel­lo again!  Gosh, what is this, the fifth time I’ve come to you?” the head shelf guy laughed, not real­is­ing how tan­ta­mount to trau­ma­tis­ing that was for me.  Not funny!

The rest of that hideous day is a blur of mis­ery.  The removals men — men with whom we would lat­er come to feel we had shared some­thing like an epic, bloody bat­tle — appeared to do their evil best.

In des­per­a­tion I rang up a pal and arranged a bizarre but life-sus­tain­ing busi­ness arrange­ment.  “If I bring you two cook­books, could I get some Xanax off you?”  Des­per­ate times.

“Run and see your twins,” John advised, “You’ll feel so much bet­ter.”  So I rang up Claire, and sure enough, she was hap­py to share them for an hour or so.  It was impos­si­ble to feel quite so des­per­ate in the com­pa­ny of such bun­dles of sheer joy.

Then my friend Eliz­a­beth, her dog Louis, and I went on one last walk down the Barnes tow­path, scene of so many, many walks in Wellies, bike rides to Ham­mer­smith, to the Food Bank, to see my friend Suzanne.  The com­bi­na­tion of the time­less riv­er scene and Eliz­a­beth’s wis­dom were consoling.

“Don’t be too quick to fill up your new life with replace­ments for your old life, like bell­ring­ing and Home-Start.  Leave some space there, to see what gets plant­ed by your new life.”  Such good advice.

At that moment, all I want­ed was to keep the old life, where I had been so happy.

But change waits for no woman, so off the lor­ry went with all our belong­ings in it and we spent one last, rather mis­er­able night at “home.”  And up in the morn­ing to begin our new lives, in SE1.

Now, you’ve all fol­lowed me through many house moves in these vir­tu­al pages.  I’ve always told the sto­ry sequen­tial­ly, in a sort of “this hap­pened and then this hap­pened” man­ner. I’m going to break from that tra­di­tion in order to pro­vide a more time-lapse indi­ca­tion of just what hyper-fast, insane­ly pro­duc­tive mis­ery we have lived through in the last fran­tic week.  Room by room.

First, dear read­ers, here is our new home.  Toto, we aren’t in Barnes anymore.

Our new land­lords had left us a dar­ling lit­tle gift of hon­ey pro­duced right here at Neo, as our new build­ing is known.  Some­how I can­not imag­ine a place in this urban won­der­land that con­tains bees, but I imag­ine some­day I will see it.

As always, the move-in process involves an aston­ish­ing­ly exhaust­ing, chaot­ic, messy tran­si­tion from emp­ty and imper­son­al to packed-to-the-gills-with-our-stuff and very per­son­al indeed.  With an awful, long, long moment of sheer hor­ror in between.

I’m get­ting ahead of myself.  Before the chaos start­ed, John stood eager­ly at the win­dows, tak­ing pic­tures of the view.

What a view it is.  Toto, seriously!

This is the view from our bedroom.

Some­day this will be a beau­ti­ful­ly land­scaped gar­den, sit­ting at the foot of the elab­o­rate Tate Mod­ern exten­sion.  Luck­i­ly, for all I loved the tran­quil­li­ty of Barnes, I am an urban girl at heart and this sort of view glad­dens me.

“I just don’t see how they’re going to do this in one busi­ness day,” I mused for the hun­dredth time.

“I agree with you, and I warned their boss­es, but they claim it should be OK.”

“But it’s already four o’clock…”

And of course we, who between us have about ten peo­ple’s life­time expe­ri­ence of mov­ing house, were per­fect­ly cor­rect.  The after­noon became evening, evening became night.  Load after load of hideous card­board box­es came up in the glass ele­va­tors, were rolled into the flat on trol­leys, were unloaded onto the floor for us to unpack, increas­ing­ly unhappily.

“I feel like I did in labor,” I said, “feel­ing like it real­ly can’t go on any longer, but know­ing that some­how it will, until my spir­it is com­plete­ly broken.”

The movers final­ly left at mid­night, and we sat down in exhaust­ed silence to our tra­di­tion­al din­ner, “Mov­ing-In Day Chick­en.”  Din­ner saved our lives.

The next three days were a com­plete­ly mad expe­ri­ence.  Just look at the kitchen, before:

And after.

The study before:

And after:

Avery’s room before:

And after:

Our room before:

And fin­ished.

But by far the most sat­is­fy­ing, to me, is the sit­ting room.  Because it holds all my books, and there­fore is real­ly the heart of the house, it’s always the most excit­ing room to see trans­formed.  Here it is com­plete­ly emp­ty, a week ago:

The book­shelf guys came ami­ably again, this time ready to re-install in the intense­ly pro­fes­sion­al way they do.  (And they were darn cute, too, which helps.)

“I went home after we took down your shelves, and googled you.  Your Kick­starter cam­paign for your cook­book was real­ly cool,”  the charm­ing Aus­tralian kid said.  The fact that I am eas­i­ly old enough to be their moth­ers was a vague­ly unpleas­ant but increas­ing­ly admit­ted fact.  They took pity on my total lack of tech­no­log­i­cal skill and re-installed the tel­ly and all the cables.

I gave them copies of the cook­book (“This is my sec­ond signed cook­book.  The first one was when we put in shelves for Gor­don Ramsay.”).

Their depar­ture over­lapped with the kit­ties’ arrival!

Tacy imme­di­ate­ly went to sleep in the sun.

Hermione was equal­ly chilled.

John was in Paris for the day, so I squared my shoul­ders, ate a lit­tle plas­tic box full of water­mel­on, took a deep breath, and attacked the stacks of box­es full of books.  Six­ty-four of them to be exact.  And six hours lat­er, it was finished.

Now you’ll notice that there are gap­ing holes.  These rep­re­sent the breaks between cat­e­gories — fic­tion, his­to­ry, mem­oir and biog­ra­phy, chil­dren’s, cook­books, John’s archi­tec­ture books, Avery’s pol­i­tics (that did­n’t fit in her own bookshelves).

Just as I was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pat­ting myself on the back for a job well done, swal­low­ing a cou­ple of aspirins for my back and pour­ing myself a stiff drink, the door­bell rang and it was Eliz­a­beth!  Bear­ing flow­ers and advice for ways to fill the emp­ty spots in the shelves.  Between her sug­ges­tions and John’s clev­er­ness ear­ly the next morn­ing, every­thing was gor­geous and the room quite per­fect by lunchtime on Sat­ur­day.  Just look!

It is so heav­en­ly in there now.

Here is the view from the kitchen table to the front hall.  Now, keep in mind that no art has been hung yet.

Per­haps you can see how the room — the space, real­ly — works togeth­er.  Unless you’re in a bed­room or a bath­room, you are in the one big space — kitchen, study, liv­ing room/library.  It’s a good thing John and I real­ly love each oth­er’s com­pa­ny, because baby, there is NO PLACE TO HIDE in this flat.  You see every­thing from everywhere.

And peo­ple see us!  The adja­cent build­ing is a giant behe­moth, filled top to bot­tom with hard-work­ing peo­ple who get to their offices long before I raise my bed­room blinds, so I can’t wan­der around in my skivvies.  Actu­al­ly, though, I prob­a­bly can, because no one over there seems to pay any atten­tion to us at all.

Sat­ur­day!  This meant that food shop­ping sim­ply had to be done at my new local source for ingre­di­ents, Bor­ough Mar­ket.  That’s right, that’s my local mar­ket now.  With South­wark Cathe­dral loom­ing impres­sive­ly behind.

It was Hal­loween.  Can you tell?

We carved our pump­kins — one of them a gift from my friend Sue, who came the day after we moved in! — at din­ner time, while pork bel­ly and beet­roots roast­ed, pota­toes dauphi­noise bub­bled away.

Then on John’s inspi­ra­tion, we car­ried our jack o’lanterns to the Thames to pho­to­graph them with St Paul’s Cathe­dral in the back­ground.  We’re seri­ous­ly not in Barnes anymore.

The tourists along the way clear­ly thought we had lost our minds.  Amer­i­cans, they are so sil­ly about Halloween.

So we have set­tled.  We are grad­u­al­ly hang­ing paint­ings and draw­ings, buy­ing things like teaket­tles, toast­ers and shoe racks.

Last night, on an awe­some­ly and rather his­tor­i­cal­ly fog­gy night, like Lon­don Fogs gone by, we took a roman­tic walk across the Mil­len­ni­um Bridge to St Paul’s, and back again, to see the Tate Mod­ern loom­ing up mys­te­ri­ous­ly out of the fog.  This new life, exhaust­ing as it was to achieve, is begin­ning to look rather promising.