I know it has been a long time, hasn’t it. I do have a very good excuse. We moved house this week. We did so in a completely unconventional way. If you have been reading my previous blogs, or even if you have not, to quote the enjoyable series Harry’s Law, with Kathy Bates, this is what happened in the weeks previously:
The Captain and I returned to the UK from Los Angeles at the beginning of May. I stayed chez the parents in West Sussex, while the Captain kipped at the German Prince’s in Fulham, to try and find a flat for us to rent. During this time we managed to get our extended visas for the USA, with the plan that the Captain returns in November, and we both return in January for the pilot season. We had moved out of our enormous house in Harringay, during which time, the Captain oversaw a subsidence rebuild, and the entire move to a storage company in West Sussex, while I underwent a major, terrifying operation due to persistent illness throughout the last two years. Up to speed, I think?
So the recent weeks, have been made up of a few meetings with good friends, though I feel painfully aware that I have not had a chance to meet up with my very close old mates. The move involved investigating all that was in storage, which, given that I was on the operating table when it was done, was fairly daunting. I was unaware of which stuff was where, and felt very tempted to suggest to the Captain that it would be much easier if we just chucked the lot. He felt the same, since we both enjoyed the sensation of being fun-loving and fancy-free, baggage-free to be precise.
Possessions may be some people’s cup of tea, but not mine. I find them burdening. I prefer to receive gifts that involve use, such as perfumes, rather than yet another thing that has to be found a place or position. It feels ageing to own all these things, while both the Captain and I have no children to hand these things to at the end. There, I have said it. At the end. Possessions have an unerring quality of making me feel morbid. I almost understand why a person should become a tramp, voluntarily, due to the liberation of just owning a bag, hat and a pair of waterproof shoes. I digress.
We had two men and a van eventually help us after the interminable jubilee celebrations which I resented selfishly due to the fact that they delayed our move, since everything was shut. The miracle was that everything that we had planned made it into the apartment, except for a massive George Smith sofa , alongside our dining table, chairs and artisan hat-stand, all of which my marvellous brother has kindly agreed to house in his new country home. Otherwise we would have been stumped.
If you had been walking through a cemetery in Fulham, you would have seen two figures making five journeys through it, with sacks of paper and cardboard boxes. The sack the Captain held above his head for convenience looked like it could easily contain a body. So when various children with their nice mothers spotted us on each trip and asked us what was in the package above my husband’s head, it was tempting to make wild eye movements, and beg them not to call the police. We didn’t though. A little decorum is demanded in Fulham, so we explained we were off to the recycling boxes just outside the cemetery.
So we have all the necessaries unpacked and even Sky Television turned up yesterday, although I would not describe the fellow who fitted it as a man who loved his job. The landline for the telephone has yet to begin, as well as the internet, hence my writing this blog on a saved file, which will be popped onto the blog on one of my many trips to good ol’ Starbucks, which takes about ten minutes to walk through the wind and rain. Sadly I have left my two pairs of winter water-proof footwear at my parents alongside my glorious transparent plastic umbrella, since I was moronic enough to believe that June was summertime. Ho hum.
I begin my other job in the city tomorrow and I look forward to the splash of it all. I have known members of the team including the owner for fifteen years, and there is much comfort to be had from that. I am currently writing at my early twentieth century dressing table, so the negative bit that I wrote earlier about possessions has a few exceptions. On my fortieth birthday, my brother gave me about £400 to buy myself something I wanted, and I obtained this at auction from Criterion Antiques in Islington. It represents me, my best and worst. Elegant, even pretty at certain angles, but a bit broken here and there, although very well mended. Worn, in certain parts, but the beholder, I hope, does not tire of it. I might even add sexy, but that would be conceited, so I will end there, before I make a fool of myself.
Kate Terence's Letters from London 