I’ve now been moved in for two and a half weeks but six days of that was spent visiting family. Office and books sorted – tick. Kitchen cupboards sorted – tick. Sideboard purchased – tick. The grand box unpacking total stands at 159. The low hanging fruit has definitely been picked in this regard and I am left with a couple of boxes of total randomness and the garage. Let’s just draw a veil over the garage. There is also quite a bit of ‘stuff’ that is still off site. It has also been ****ing down with rain every day I’ve been here, so not conducive to trying to sort out the garage, which will probably need a total excavation in order to work out what’s what. I still don’t know what my home looks like in the dry.

I have investigated the welcome box left my the estate agents. It contained an eclectic assortment including, his and hers deodorant, a face mask, a tin of cider, a washing pod, a tumble drier sheet (I don’t have a tumble drier), Margerita soda, some in wash scent booster and alcohol free beer. I guess it was whatever they could get free samples of.

It seems that moving house comes with unforeseen hazards. You’ve missed the bit where I was sporting two black eyes, thanks to being head butted by my assistant when loading boxes of geraniums into the summer house. This added to the falling valance pole related injury and the head meets TV ariel encounter in the loft. Then there is the flat pack furniture. If I was married this would be grounds for divorce and I have had to promise never to order flatpack furniture again, not, based on recent experience, that that would be likely. Construction of said flatpack furniture has not been aided by the fact that one of my holiday gifts from my family was Covid. I guess I’ve been lucky to escape it for four years but now I ache everywhere it is possible to ache and then some but I digress. I left behind built-in bedroom furniture so my clothes are currently in bags and boxes and I had ordered replacements. The bedside tables arrived before we went away. They did have the advantage of being small but the ‘ten minutes to assemble’ bore no relation to the actual time taken. The assumption is that no one assembling flatpack furniture can read, so there are no written instructions, just rather vague illustrations and pieces that are supposed to be numbered but in some cases aren’t so you have to guess which piece 14 actually is.

After the efforts with the bedside tables I was having serious qualms about the wardrobe, not least because the rooms are quite small and I wasn’t sure where there was space for it to be built. We began, not without a certain, understandable, amount of grumbling, to assemble it on the bed. This was not without incident as we tried to work out which way was up. By this time, I was regretting my decision to go for flatpack almost as much as my companion, who, I must record, has been an absolute hero. Then came the point where we had to transfer construction to the floor, with the wardrobe lying face down, filling every available bit of floor space. The completed wardrobe weighs over 80kg. Even without its top, doors and back that is still a considerable weight for my valiant assistant of a certain age and a plague ridden me to raise from lying on the floor to upright. If you’ve ever seen World’s Strongest Man and Fingal’s Fingers (if not Google it) that was pretty much how it went. I do now have an upright wardrobe awaiting top, back and doors. I am just wondering when would be a good time to mention the errr flatpack chest of drawers and two bathroom cupboards that are due to arrive today.