What Took You So Long?
Yesterday evening, a fun Zoom with Tom, who was on the line to his car insurers to add us as additional drivers: our car now on semi-permanent loan to our friends Tom and Chitra. After his first attempt fell at the fence of not knowing any personal information about us (and why should he?), and since we can’t be in a room together, Zoom felt like an ideal solution. It was quite delightfully domestic, with me cooking a dal in between shouting dates of birth, mother’s names, number of cats owned etc. Also a glimpse of Chitra as she came through from her yoga practice on her way to the kitchen. Zoom has provided this window into people’s lives, as well as a continuity with work, yoga, Greek classes. What would the past year have been like without it? How was it for the old and/or technophobic? Or people without the resources to get the technology, or even the room to house it?
I digress. The outcome of the kitchen / insurance Zoom was an outstanding success. AL and I are both able to legally drive the Citroen. On the LEFT. On the LEFT. On the LEFT. I didn’t even have to produce my Greek driving licence. (Actually looks pretty much like the old UK one – pretty pink with a European flag in one corner, only inside the circle of yellow stars it says GR, not GB.)
In the course of our chat, Tom asked what was taking so long with our packing. We’ve been back 10 days and not a single box packed. Well, if you put it like that…. What have we been doing?
Al has finished his tracks for Universal – Life in the Sun. (Watch this space – I will link to them when they are officially released. ). I have dealt with various bits of paperwork, explored what’s in the loft, prepared around 20 meals, written 10 blogs, done one Greek lesson and tried to sustain my yoga practice. Also been through all books (except the boxes in the loft), and I am more than half way through sorting our clothes.
I have been trying to think about previous house moves. They have all been so different. London to Bristol was a DIY move using a transit van with a tail lift. I drove the van, Al drove our car to Bristol. Then he hurt his back and we had to hire a man without a van to help unload! We left shelves and a bed back in London, and we were living in a 1- bed flat, so not much to that one.
Moving out of my amazing place in Shepherd’s Bush in 1987 – also DIY with possessions dispersed to my parents and friends as I prepared to go out to Kiwi Star in Yugoslavia (the island of Krk, now in Croatia).
This time it’s complex. We are not simply moving down the road into another house. And we are moving Al’s studio gear and a lot of musical instruments. Immediately the bulk of what we have will go into storage in Peterborough; we will take what we need for a temporary studio, yoga props etc. to Hereford, where we will stay in my cousin’s house for a couple of months. (She died in April, leaving me as co-executor, so some work to do there).
If we were just moving down the road, I guess we would just get the whole lot into boxes and ask Pickfords to cart it away to its new home. Isn’t that what people do? But this move is a whole big change, coloured by the experience of living for more than a year with out any of this stuff. So part of me just wants to walk out of the door and leave it all behind.
Add to this the general feeling of uncertainty which the pandemic has brought. Also the feeling that the world has been pushed over a threshold of overdue change, not knowing yet what those changes will be.
One of my wise yoga teachers is teaching on the theme of Grief this week. (It’s not all about strength and flexibility. Or maybe it is.) She talks about suffering loss, as we all have, putting us in a time when we can neither go back, nor forward into the future. We are suffering a mild version of grief mixed with anticipation.
Covid-19: Day 10
No test results, even for Day 2. Checking #eurofins we discover that we are not the only ones. So we are now supposed to extend quarantine to 14 days.