Moving in

A friend of mine gave me some widows ‘do’s and don’t’s’ not long after Tony died, one of which was not to move house in the first year. Well, it’s now a year and a bit and I’m finally moving. Yes, after four months and despite the flooring delay, I am moving all the cutlery, crockery and cooking stuff from the spare bedroom upstairs into the new extension’s completely designed by me kitchen. I can choose where the teaspoons go, how many dishes should be on each shelf and what order the glasses go in. From the colour of the units to the curtains versus blinds on the huge patio doors (curtains won), everything has been chosen by me. And I finally have a hanging chair looking out over the garden so I can sit and write my Pulitzer.

Those who know me well will tell you that when I decide something needs doing, I do it. Since today is Sunday and the one day in the week I try to spend at home, I decided that each trip upstairs should result in a handful of kitchen utensils being grabbed on the way back down. However, the amount of useless, broken and duplicate items that Tony and I amassed over the years found in the dark recesses of a bottom drawer or two makes the process much slower than I had envisioned. I challenge anyone to who has been married for more than a decade to say that they don’t have at least one plastic whatsit buried under several mismatched napkin rings of which you have no memory of ever buying. And yet there those precious bits of memories that you just can’t throw out. Wedding presents you never used or never got the full set. Our dinner service that was never completed and I think only four plates survived but Tony loved the colour so it stayed. What is it about Ikea wine glasses though? Tony would say we always bought glasses in bulk because I have a habit of breaking them but did we need so many?

Not only have I released the forks from their dusty chamber, for the first time in four months the dogs were allowed to run up the back garden once again. If anyone has ever watched those weepy social media videos where the animal is released into the wild after years in captivity, this would have been an equally emotional experience. The look of wonder as the huge patio doors drew back to reveal the vast plot, the tentative steps onto the new lawn, noses taking in the smell of fresh grass and the excited yaps of the terriers as they watched Arry tear up the pathway and the newly laid green stuff…….

“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag” (W.H. Auden)