Live 24-Seven - Betty Twyford Betty’smoving story It is with a sigh of relief that Betty is settling into her new home…
I am a lucky lady! I have moved home and I actually love where I have moved to. I love it because it does not need massive renovation, or even a new kitchen. I have reached the stage in my life when the thing that matters more than anything is to live in the moment. I do not care if the curtains don’t match, the kitchen cabinets need painting or if our furniture looks too big and too much, I am just happy to be in a house that I appreciate for its sense of security and escape and peace and quiet.
Moving day was not a day I would like to repeat. Moving is like expecting the birth of a baby. All of a sudden, it happens, after months of planning and wishing and wondering. Finally, it comes together, and you have to get out of your old house. We decided to pack ourselves, which meant that I did the packing, along with some family help and of course it went on and on and on. When you decide to do your own packing, you also feel the need to look at things that have not been looked at since the last time you moved – old correspondence, photographs, paintings and books. It is all ‘stuff’ but somehow impossible to throw away. And so it gets re-boxed and loaded onto the van and deposited in another location to be stored until, finally, someone else comes along to sort it all out. There are boxes and boxes of a previous life known to no-one but me. I suppose its ultimate destination will be a charity shop or a car boot sale and some of it may even find its way to an antique fair. It is a provoking and unsettling thought.
Our moving day was like one of those nightmares where you are running away but your legs feel like lead. No matter how much ‘stuff’ was cleared from a room, there was yet more ‘stuff’’ to be transported. Our buyers arrived with their possessions in huge articulated lorries and we were very far from being ready to hand over. They moved in one door and we moved out of another!
I decided to leave George to cope with the moving out bit, while I went off to cope with the moving in bit. Moving house from one too large for us to one smaller can create its own set of problems, as I found to my cost. I arrived exhausted and confused to an onslaught of questions as where to put various items of very big furniture for which there was quite obviously no room. In the end I just pointed – anywhere. I just wanted to be left alone with my chaos and to make a cup of tea and to sit in a daze (yes, it is very much like giving birth to a baby!)
I wonder how many people are experiencing the same thing. My advice is, it does get better. We have now put paintings on the walls (it looks a bit like an art gallery); my Aga has been installed (but not without the installer drilling through the main electric cable coming into the house – his drill was insulated, thank you God…) We have sold the baby grand piano, the billiard table, three of the nine sofas (two are still in storage) and we have put temporary doors onto the garage. (The swallows were nesting in there, so we did leave a gap for them, resulting in huge piles of bird droppings all over the rugs, sofas, furniture and boxes of ‘stuff’…) But at the end of the day, I am so glad we have done it. Our garden can be maintained by us, cleaning the windows will not result in hospitalisation and I know that I will have the fun of doing car boot after car boot for many months to come. And I have started to cook again! The chip shop down the road has done quite well out of us, but now it is time to start to eat healthily again.
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