Nearly ten years ago Steve and I moved our family to a cottage in the country. It was the move from hell and we nearly bankrupt ourselves by bridging for a year. We didn’t mean to, but the people who wanted to buy our house decided that they didnt want it the minute the bridging was secured. It took a year to find a new buyer.
We’ve moved again.
Most people put their houses on the market in the spring in the hope of securing a sale by summer. They can then move at a time when it wont matter if all the doors are wide open to the elements, theres a chance that children wont miss any school, and they will be able to start new schools at the beginnning of the academic year.
We didn’t do that. We never do.
We have just moved across three counties to live on the border of Wales. We intended to move before Christmas… as did the rest of the people in our chain, but one thing after another went wrong and the whole deal nearly collapsed twice. The solicitors and surveyors then had Christmas off, and I honestly think the move was held together by estate agents who would be snapped up if they ever wanted a career change into therapy, and my husband. I remember a conversation with the estate agent here on the border (whom I still haven’t met).
‘There are a few problems this end and ****** is getting a bit fed up. She told me shes thinking of pulling out,’ he said. (The wife of the couple.)
‘What?! You can’t mean that!’ (House of my dreams, there isn’t another one like it… etc.etc.)
‘They’re doing their best but problems keep arising.’
‘I’ve had my house packed up for a month, we’re sitting here surrounded by boxes, we cant do Christmas, and my son is supposed to be at school! Maybe I’ll pull out!’
‘Calm down, they won’t pull out. Go and have a cup of coffee, and when you move here we’ll have a cup of coffee together. Everyones just a bit panicky.’
‘Make mine a gin.’
Clearly it all came together in the end, but that was in no small part due to Steve racing around the south of England getting people to sign things and then delivering them to the correct places, because everyone else was celebrating Christmas. To add to the confusion, and because we were supposed to move earlier, no one had phone lines, internet or post. The post had been redirected, and because some of us are up hills a few people didnt have mobile connections. A few people still haven’t.
It was chaos, even the solicitors said it was one of the most difficult moves they’d dealt with.
Three weeks ago the lorries were finally packed with all our worldly goods at 6am so that we could beat the motorway rush hour, the removal people had our approval that they had emptied the property, and a little convoy of four lorries (we carry a load of rubbish around) and three cars headed off from the cottage onto the M4, in the dark, with blizzards approaching from the west. The lorries had plans of their own which majorly involved breakfast, so Steve, me and the boys (and the dog), wandered west at our own pace.
We travelled for an hour and then stopped at a service station for breakfast. It was empty, and it felt as though we were out of school without permission (well, the boys were!) We giggled over plates loaded with sausages, bacon, hash browns, eggs, beans, orange juice and buckets of coffee. During one giggle I sat bolt upright.
‘Whats the matter?’ asked Steve.
‘Did you tell the men to load the freezer in the garage? (Shifting blame madly because I’d agreed the property was empty from the front seat of the car.)
‘No. Did you?’ (Shifting blame back.)
‘Oh my goodness! We’ve left the freezer!’
This freezer was bought in a sale. Its six feet long, and the men had said they’d load it last so that it stayed plugged in for longer. We’d left it…. but that was just the beginning.
Ben left his mobile phone at the service station as we rushed out, and when we got to the new house we couldn’t get in. As is quite usual, we sat outside waiting for completion and wondering what to do about the bloody freezer. Eventually completion occured, the boys, the dog, me and loads of removal men went in, and Steve went back up the M4 to collect a freezer and a mobile phone.
We moved in.
A few days later Steve and I were having lunch in a local pub when he got a call from our estate agents. The people moving in to our beloved cottage had left it empty for a few days for building work to be carried out. They thought there was nothing to steal. Someone went round in the middle of the night and took the Yorkstone patio. About £4000 worth.
The next day, (another lunch, another pub) Steve picked up an email that said the lady who left our new house had fallen down the stairs in her new home and broken her ankle.
Another email said ‘Do you know that you have also left a drawer of knives and kitchen equipment at the cottage?’
So we’re moving into our new home on the Welsh border. Slowly. Over a glass of wine one evening in our sparkling (literally…loads of quartz) kitchen, Steve and I were sympathising with all the bad luck of the people in the chain, and wondering if forgetting a freezer would count for ours? He reckoned we had got off lightly in this difficult move compared to the others.
The cold wine hit a nerve at the back of my mouth.
Yesterday, after a weekend of agony, I had emergency surgery for an infected wisdom tooth, and held up twenty patients at the cottage hospital.
Steve and I arent going to move again.