Of carpets, chameleons and classic cars

Well, it’s actually happening. We’re really leaving the house we’ve lived in for 30 years.  So far it’s all felt a bit unreal, but now that we’re talking about moving dates, the reality has sunk in: we don’t know where we’re going. There’s not much on the market at the moment and we haven’t found anywhere suitable, so we’ll be renting something, somewhere.  Depending on the sort of person you are, you could view it as frightening or liberating. Or both. Perhaps we could have a gap year and travel the world? I’m not sure whether Jasper the cat would approve – I can tell that he lacks the necessary spirit of adventure.

What do you do when you realise that your move is imminent? If you’re the practical sort, you start scrolling on Rightmove for rental properties and phoning removal companies asking for quotes. If you’re usually practical, but have suddenly found the need to distance yourself from the present, ie me, you start looking for flights to Canada and spend hours on the Via Rail site, seeing whether any of the trains you want to take hook up within hours or even days of each other.

The Canadian train system is a far cry from the European one – in Canada freight is king and passengers are the lowly kitchen maids. In the UK we grumble if our train is delayed 5 minutes, in Canada you can only dream of such an amazing service. The freight trains can be 2½ miles long and are a truly impressive sight, but not if you’re the humble passenger shunted to one side (almost literally) and delayed for hours as a result. The delays can be spectacular and I still have painful memories of seemingly endless waits in dreary train stations, but I’m trying to suppress them in the spirit of upcoming adventure.

I’m relying on that spirit of adventure to get me through the next few weeks. It is said that moving house is one of the most stressful of life events and the sheer feat of organisation needed to move yourself and your belongings (as well as the cat) out of your house while someone is simultaneously trying to move themselves and their belongings into that same house is challenging enough without dwelling on the emotional side of things. So I’m looking around and telling myself that it’s just a house; it’s things like the slowly unravelling Moroccan carpet that we paid far too much for, the lurid tin chameleon from Key West and the papier mâché model of a1950s car bought in Havana that make it our home and they’ll all be going with us. And our friends will just be a little further away. Am I convinced? Mostly.