and final­ly… peace

Reward.  At last.

All the hard work we three have put into the last two months – the dread­ed and exhaust­ing six weeks of 27 exams in 11 sub­jects, the much-dread­ed house move – has paid off.

We are at Red Gate Farm for the summer!

The move is like a bad, bad dream some­where in the dis­tant past, although it was only a week ago that we spent our first night in the new house.  Which means that in the past week we have slept in three dif­fer­ent homes.  This is, I real­ize, very much a First World Prob­lem: too many homes.  Even an end­less array of mad­den­ing exams is a First World Prob­lem: the lux­u­ry of a fab­u­lous education.

What we have learned, how­ev­er, through this process, is that it’s all right to acknowl­edge that Prob­lems Are Prob­lems, and the ones we have are the ones we have to shoulder.

As planned ahead of time, the moment Avery took up the pen­cil for her last exam last Mon­day, all hell broke loose at home.  Most of all for the poor kitties.

I awoke on mov­ing day very ear­ly (for me) and before I could start stress­ing about it, sim­ply grabbed up a cat and thrust it into a kit­ty prison and shut the door.  Grabbed anoth­er one, same pro­ce­dure.  Two more and the job was done.  Hallelujah!

The kit­ty hotel taxi arrived and a very nice man loaded them in and drove away.

And then the movers arrived.  With the calm air of peo­ple for whom the whole project is just a day’s work – as opposed to the total destruc­tion of one’s home – they whizzed through the house like dervish­es, tak­ing apart our life with very lit­tle effort, it seemed.

Avery texted to say that her last exam was OVER!  I cycled to the vil­lage to buy a cel­e­bra­to­ry book­shop gift cer­tifi­cate, stop­ping by the church to say good­bye to the vic­ar, who was qui­et­ly pleased for Avery’s accom­plish­ment, gen­tly sat­is­fied with my descrip­tion of our sum­mer plans.  I will miss him, and St Mary’s.

John stopped the movers just before they took away our sofa!

“We are going to need to watch some tel­ly tonight!” he said firm­ly.  They left the bed too, and that was about all.

The next day, bright and ear­ly, saw us at the new house.  A beau­ti­ful bright-red door wel­comed us.

 Avery spent the two most frac­tious nights of the move at her friend Maggie’s house, whilst Maggie’s moth­er, my beloved friend Elspeth, gave me tea and sym­pa­thy dur­ing var­i­ous fran­tic breaks from the hor­ri­ble­ness.  But most­ly I set­tled in.

First up was the kitchen, obvi­ous­ly.  Good bones.

John and I unpacked with gus­to (that decep­tive burst of ener­gy at the begin­ning of an awful project).  The Pol­ish movers tried out their Eng­lish on us.  “I learned it all from Pep­pa Pig on the tel­ly!” one announced proud­ly.  By the end of that first day, the kitchen was lovely.

We cooked a sim­ple sup­per of roast­ed salmon, most­ly to get to know the new stove, and to try to remem­ber where we had put everything.

After din­ner, I set­tled the bed­room with as much seren­i­ty as I could man­age, know­ing that we need­ed a peace­ful place to spent the first night, to be ready for the chaos of the next day.

The next day brought Avery, full of relief at the exams being over, and the next day, the books.  Horrors!

 The next day brought the book­shelf installers, one of whom remem­bered installing them in our very first Lon­don house, four hous­es and near­ly eight years ago, now.

 John went off for a much-need­ed break to meet up with archi­tects and plan our NEXT home (yegads, what a night­mar­ish idea THAT is!  Mov­ing AGAIN!), so I put “The 4:50 From Padding­ton” audio­book on and set­tled in to unpack the books.  Two hours and a ter­ri­ble back­ache lat­er, the job was done.  Once more, laden, alpha­bet­ized shelves.

Up to do the same in the bed­room!  Avery helped.

 And the guest room.  You’ll have plen­ty to read when you come to stay.

 The kit­ties arrived!  And set­tled right in, albeit puz­zled by all the chaos.

Tacy found sun­shine straightaway.

Keechie coped with the whole sit­u­a­tion by sim­ply dis­ap­pear­ing.  I have no idea where she went.

The next day in our Marathon Liv­ing Hell brought two more main­stays of my mov­ing-house rou­tine: Mark the bril­liant art installer, and Dorie, the mag­i­cal clean­ing lady.  At the end of that VERY long day, every­thing was fin­ished.  The emp­ty sit­ting which had been so hollow…

was now a cosy, wel­com­ing, sun­ny room, piled high with pho­to albums and ready for a party.

We toured the gar­den with Elspeth who got itchy fin­gers at all the plants she could iden­ti­fy, and all the weeds chok­ing them.  Per­haps when we get back in the autumn we’ll hire a gar­den­er for a day to clean it all out, as left to me, I’d kill all the wrong things.

Final­ly, after a com­fort­ing roast chick­en din­ner, our love­ly hous­esit­ter Eliza arrived and we showed her every­thing she need­ed to know.  She bond­ed with the kit­ties straight­away and I went to bed reassured.

First thing the next day, we were off.  And twelve hours lat­er, we were home.

 I would like to say, three days lat­er, that I’ve recov­ered, but I real­ly haven’t.  I feel tired all the time!  It will take all the restora­tive pow­ers of Red Gate Farm to com­fort us from our ordeals, soothe our lac­er­at­ed spir­its, help us to take deep breaths of fra­grant air – scent­ed with the mint gar­den – and begin our summer.