My iPhone goes off this morning at what feels like 2 a.m. but is really 9 in the morning. My mouth is swollen and coated with what feels like cold peanut butter but is really stress pounded to a paste with sleeplessness.
The movers arrive in their clanking Darth Vader van. Huge redfaced Jim from Essex and his fine-boned Algerian sidekick would make a great music hall duo in another life — one blustering meatily, the other with his polo shirt tucked into a trim waistband, darting around boxes like a silverfish.
We have a problem. The police, on our application, cordoned off our section of pavement and declared it auto-free so the moving van could pull up under the windows of our two-story apartment. But a neighbour went on holiday the day before the parking ban, and his car is parked smack in the middle of the moving zone.
There is a knock on our door. Our first visitor — our neighbour Marie, who comes in with half a roast chicken and a wonderful salad in a Tupperware bowl. The Engineer, Stella and I fall to it like ghouls.
A tow truck arrives and moves the hapless car while the movers drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.
Movers are special people, I have decided. We have a monster sofa 240 centimetres long which they have to jiggle, cajole and finally shove to get in through our second-storey window. Then comes the iron filing cabinet with approximately the same weight as Pluto. And finally an endless parade of boxes containing our 2,000 books. All that schlepping would have made me a tad … irritable. Raised eyebrows, exaggerated sighs, tongue clicks, you know what I mean. But these men are stoic — they wear fixed masks for the entire 10 hours of heaving and wheezing.
Why, oh why, are we not one of those enlightened life laundry families with minimal possessions and organised paperwork files?
I had forgotten how raw one feels when moving house. At variance with one another are all of the following states; it is not an exhaustive list:
- Shame. Oh my God, have I really left them to pack bags of quinoa which passed their sell-by date in 2007?
- Remorse. I should have sorted bank statements instead of stuffing them in bin bags for the last 10 years
- Outrage. Those are my granny knickers!
- Anxiety. Have I hidden all my personal stuff in the suitcases accompanying me?
- Compassion. These men are going to have heart attacks. I’ll put the kettle on.
- Voices. They know we’re gay. Do they know we’re gay? I don’t think they know we’re gay. I don’t care what they think. I am a child of the universe. Do they know we’re gay?
- Ineffective parenting. Wow, Stella look at all these boxes! Why don’t you pretend they are a magic land and you can find a secret path around them into your room and fall asleep for a hundred years until the enchanted dewdrops fall on your head? No, you cannot watch TV. Because I don’t know where it is. Get out of this room NOW.
At 8 p.m. we sit surrounded by 250 boxes. There is another knock on the door. Our second visitor: Marie from next door has come back for her dishes. The Engineer is in a panic. “Did you wash them?” she stage whispers to me. Marie is gracious. “Oh don’t worry, I’ll wash them at home.”
We hand back a saucepan caked with congealing chicken bits, some well-masticated. This is my second under-par experience with poultry in 24 hours.
Scarlett-like, I promise myself that tomorrow is another day: I will unpack all our boxes, hang pictures, bake thank-you brownies and get Stella to practise her phonics skills.
Excellent blog! Most excellent. Eager for more …