Imogen Clarke: Not What I Had in Mind

Six weeks of holiday. Six weeks of Christmas and family and complete and utter nothingness. At least, this is what I envisioned. Now I’m back in the beautiful bubble and this vision was nothing more than a pipe dream. Why? Because someone somewhere decided it was a cracking idea to move house almost straight after Christmas.

As soon as I got home the madness began. There was no time for lie-ins, no time for leisurely breakfasts and mornings on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle. Typically, my total Christmas shopping purchases at this point came in at a big fat zero (less than a week before Christmas), so I had to squeeze that in at some point too. My room was dissected. Every scrap of paper and novelty key ring I’d hoarded away from various travels was ruthlessly culled. My clothes were ransacked – some thrown away against my will. I still remain heartbroken over my fantastically soft, fluffy jumper that had kept me alive through cold St Andrews nights. I hope the rubbish tip rat that has no doubt claimed it for a nest is as appreciative of it as I ever was.

Thankfully I escaped to my dad’s on Boxing Day (oh the beauty of divorce) and then a friend’s for several days over New Years (because I’d had that one planned for ages) – optimum times. Those were the days when the two disaster zones of house were tackled: the loft and the garage. Fifteen years of crap. That’s the only way to describe them. All those afternoons my stepdad told us he was ‘sorting out the garage’ were really afternoons spent restacking the place so it was less likely to come fatally collapsing down around you. We had two lawnmowers despite not having had a lawn for nearly 10 years…there are just no words.

So this is where a problem arose. In our new house we have no garage and no easily accessible loft. After whittling it down (sort of) we decided it would all fit in one of the rather large new spare bedrooms. We were wrong. It took both rather large spare bedrooms. Now we have no spare bedrooms. Thankfully my mum is at least considering a car boot sale, or a skip if things get really drastic.

After sidestepping boxes in both the old and new house for nearly 3 weeks it was decided that ‘we can’t live like this anymore’. Cue several days of walking up and down stairs with box after box after box. The boxes the removal men should have put upstairs were downstairs and vice versa. I feel like I have arms to rival Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels, right now.

But we’re all moved in, all settled down right? Wrong. This house is only a rental – the real house supposedly comes in six months, just as I’m coming home from St Andrews once again. Wish me luck. At the very thought I’m off to find a bottle of wine.