Lofty ambitions

Okay, brace yourselves. Deep breath…IgotanofferonthehouseandIacceptedit. Yay! Whoop! Finally! Oh dear Lord, the great move might actually be happening now. To be honest, I spent the first day post phone call feeling stunned and discombobulated (always wanted to use that word). All my musings about how I wish for my new life in France to start were just that, musings. Yet, in a few months time, the woofers and I may well be several hundred miles away from the home I’ve known for 24 years. Quite a lot to take in.

As anyone knows who has lived in a home for more than a year or two, lofts are put up high for a reason. It’s called the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle. You can keep putting stuff in this magical place in the sky and it never seems to fill up. And you don’t have to remember what you put up there because it’s out of sight, out of mind. Unfortunately, when you agree to sell your house, the new owners would like the loft experience for themselves so you have to bring it all back down the ladder again. Two decades of miscellaneous memories and antique electronics now fill the spare bedrooms, over flowing boxes of faded Christmas decorations and photographs of long gone dogs piled up in the corners. And I have to sort through the whole lot. With a lot of help from Callum and none from the dogs. Thankfully, their only issue is that lack of space to lounge.

In between the six or so duvets that had been hoarded up there (do duvets reproduce in lofts?), I found a box on which Tony had written ‘Sophi’s Scrap Box’. I suppose my O’ level results could constitute as scrap but the letters, postcards and photos from our early years together could never be. The first picture ever taken of us together, the letters he wrote from New Zealand when I was pregnant and the menu from the honeymoon hotel in Mauritius. And the Walkman that Tony gave me for our first Christmas together. Amazingly Callum managed to get it to work! That will help with the decision over whether to keep the two hundred or so cassette tapes taking up surface space.

And so, the next phase of the journey begins. Thankfully, apart from filling out endless forms, the solicitors and agent take care of the legal bits now so I have plenty of time to ruthlessly divide and conquer the loft innards. It’s time to box up the past and gear up for the future, how much can you fit in a removal van?

“Handle every stressful situation like a dog, If you can’t eat it or play with it, just pee on it and walk away” (Anon)