Moving house

No, not us - although moving house does seem to be in the air at the moment.  My friend Chris and Mrs Chris have recently moved after trying for at least two years to sell their house so they could downsize and, perhaps just as importantly, lose the expense of upkeep of the swimming pool.  My brother has also been trying to sell for at least as long, so far unsuccessfully.  Other friends were persuaded to move from Brighton to Wimbledon so as to be nearer their family.  As they are both in their 80s, they no longer need a large, four-bedroomed house with a big garden (which they struggle to control) so they put the house on the market and accepted an offer the same day.  They will be moving next week to a two-bed flat.  Having lived in the same house for 30+ years, they have accumulated much that will have to go.  I called round last week and found cardboard boxes stacked in the hall, each labelled, "charity shop", "Lions books" etc.

I dread the thought that we might ever move.  We have (I think I mentioned the other day) lived in this house for something like 44 years and while neither the Old Bat nor I could really be called hoarders, we would probably need a removal lorry and at least two skips.  I have been in the habit of keeping the packaging from things like computers and printers, just in case they need to be returned.  Needless to say, they never do so all those cardboard boxes are stored in the loft as I always forget to throw them out.

Also stored in the loft are various cases and bags, each because it might be needed one day.  There is, for example, a hard-shell suitcase for air travel - but it is too small to use when we go to France and need to take bedding and towels, so there is another very large case for that.  Then there is a stack of the children's board games which might be useful when the grandchildren are a little older.  Quite why we have kept the slide projector, the projector and stand and screen is beyond me, but we have.  We also have an old electric train layout from when the boys were into that sort of thing.  We used N gauge rather than OO and tried to build a scene with fields, hedges, trees, hills and rivers.  And that's just one side of the loft.  I shudder to think what might be in the other!

We shall just have to stay put until we are carried out in our boxes.  Then the kids can have the joy of going through everything saying to each other, "Do you remember . . ."

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One of the cryptic crossword clues this week reminded me of Skip:

American shoots African lion (11 letters)

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"Do you remember . . ."  Time does play tricks on us - or I find so.  It seems much more than two years ago that we were in that mystical part of France known as the Auvergne.  As usual, we had rented a cottage and this was the garden.