Monday 11 May 2009

The Big Day

Well - today is the big day!

The removalists arrived this morning* to pack all of our possessions into a truck and take them to France. We trust that everything will be packed by lunchtime, and then they are off to Portsmouth to catch the overnight ferry to le Havre, before arriving in Preuilly tomorrow lunchtime. In addition to all our house contents, we are taking a large part of our garden.

What our garden in London looked like when we moved in
As soon as the house is empty Susan and I will be doing a final clean, packing the car with the items we are taking ourselves, and driving to Folkestone to put the car on the 21.50 Eurotunnel shuttle to Calais, where we stay the night before trying to beat the removalists to our new home. It will be strange leaving London and I do it with mixed feelings; this is the longest (10½ years) that I have ever lived in one house, but strangely it has never really felt like home to me.

What our garden looked like in its prime
Over the next couple of days we will post some photos of the move that aren't (with any luck) too dull. They will probably not be photos of the roads we travel, because as you may have noticed in a previous post, the Autoroutes can be very ordinaire. This all depends on me getting a computer back on line after having taken it back to London to put a new hard drive in it.

The Garden last week - trimmed and ready to pack
Talking of computers, while I had all our computers in one place I decided to fettle them. They all ( 3 machines) got new hard drives and fresh install of windows (except the Mac, which is as solid as a rock, even 8 years later), new keyboards and mouses (mice?) and various little bits and pieces, all of which entailed ordering stuff online. Buying online is great, if you can stand the stress of having stuff home delivered. The Post Office have been brilliant - they always find our house. Parcel Force can be so-so, DHL have a propensity for getting lost lost, and there are companies I refuse to use because their delivery agents couldn't find us after three goes ("address does not exist", for crying out loud).

So here we go: On your marks...

Simon

*I am writing this before, as this computer is now in a box. I will not tempt fate by using the word "hopefully".

4 comments:

Carolyn said...

We hope everything goes smoothly with the move and that the plants settle in happily. Since they are in pots, you'll have an instant garden when you arrive. I look forward to lots of photos of your Preuilly garden.

wcs said...

Fettle?

Looking forward to seeing you on this side.

Simon said...

Walt:

Fet"tle\, v. t. [OE. & Prov. E., to fettle (in sense 1), fettle, n., order, repair, preparation, dress; prob. akin to E. fit. See Fit, a.]

1. To repair; to prepare; to put in order. [Prov. Eng.] --Carlyle.

I knows lots of words, me. I'se edificated.

Carolyn. Not as impresive as it should be!

Anonymous said...

oh man, this is exciting. i'm starting to read here.

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