Issue No. 593
Culture
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4 - 10 July 2002 Issue No. 593 Culture |
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Moving on
Not too long ago magazines appeared to be full of articles that would mention, almost casually, almost in passing, that the three most stressful events in the average person's life are divorce, the death of a spouse and moving house. Being the victim of a murder attempt, someone once mentioned to me, is also traumatic, though this tends to be outside the average person's experience.
Divorce and the death of a spouse are equally beyond my ken, which leaves moving house as the only one of the trauma triumvirate that I have experienced. And even on the modest scale that I move house, that I moved house, only a couple of weeks ago, I am willing to concede something in the cliché. Yes, it is fairly unsettling, though if that is the most traumatic experience I am likely to encounter, then roll on the rest of life.
Perhaps I had set about the process in the wrong way, had got off on the wrong foot, and was never really going to find my stride. Rather like starting a hurdle race with a dangling shoe lace, options are limited, and winning is not one of them. I could stop and tie my lace, or else eventually stumble into one of the obstacles. Either way, it was a non-starter.
The first inclination that maybe the lace was loose happened with the hiring of the truck, for before that things had moved smoothly enough. Crates had been acquired, and strong metal trunks. Objects were packed methodically. Things fragile were treated with kid-gloves. They were cushioned with bubble wrap, stuffed with balls of newspaper, wrapped in linen. Pottery was sandwiched between soft woolen blankets. Glassware was packed in wicker boxes -- not too rigid but resistant enough. It was packed loosely, but not too loosely, the gaps between filled with polystyrene balls. And for once, perhaps the only time, I felt proud of my packing. Nothing rushed, nothing hasty. Everything was labelled so that, on arrival, it might be placed in the room for which it was destined.
Drawers were emptied, and in a frenzy of belated spring- cleaning their contents were rationalised, divided into necessary, potentially necessary and binnable piles. Two years of accumulated papers were cleared. Pictures were taken off walls and wrapped in protective covers. Shelves were similarly cleared. Books were sorted into a pile to be transported and a pile to be distributed -- the only possible alternative to the accumulation of paperbacks that you will never re-read.
Electrical equipment was treated with the necessary care. Wherever possible furniture was broken down into its most convenient, most easily stacked components. (After almost a decade I was surprised that my desk, which I had sanded and stained and varnished lovingly after spying it at the back of a junk shop, could come so easily apart.) And then I set out to find my truck, and driver, and people to do the real work of loading and unloading.
It is difficult to trust one's instinct, difficult to know when that first little alarm bell really started to ring, though in retrospect I seem to remember thinking that the truck was a trifle small. But no, said the driver, these things are standard, a truck is a truck and if necessary several journeys could be made. On inspecting the items to be transported, it was confirmed that three journeys would be necessary. And so it was for three trips we contracted. We agreed on a figure and then I doubled it should everything arrive intact. A performance incentive, in management speak. I felt pretty pleased with myself.
They came, they saw, they began to carry down. A day bed that had happily arrived through the door of my apartment proved less obliging when it was time to leave: eventually it was decided to lower the object over the balcony via a complicated combination of ropes and knots. A couple of hours later I emerged on the ground floor to inspect the first batch. The day bed had acquired a complicated pattern of striations scratched across the wood. The truck was piled high, and precariously so. If it resembled anything it resembled the leaning tower of Pisa, though even with so many of my most prized possessions brazenly displayed for the public gaze it was unlikely, even I could see, to become a major tourist attraction.
I had ignored the quantities of broken glass in the foyer of the apartment building, a result of a wicker box with carefully tied lid being carried upside down and in such a manner as to make it extremely unlikely that the carefully tied lid would remain carefully tied. It did not, and the contents came tumbling out. But the leaning tower in front of me was too much to ignore. It had to be reassembled, and in a more coherent way.
Crash went a bubble-wrapped painting. Crunch went the frame. Crash a glass-fronted box. I salvaged the handle of an admittedly delicate jade green porcelain teapot as a memento of something of which I was once fond. And we reassembled the whole pile, lessened its height, strapped everything snugly down, and off we went, only to return to repeat the process. The greatest attrition occurred during the final journey. Attention strayed, nerves were on edge and I was trying to work out how I could have become so absurdly attached to quite so many inanimate objects. And they were only things, going from one space to another, things that were far from essential to my continued existence. Then crash. Another picture, and then a box which weeks later remains unopened.
I refused to pay the bonus I had myself suggested as an incentive to careful moving and the surprise with which my refusal was greeted verged on the genuine. The teapot handle now lives in a drawer, temporarily at least. Eventually it will be thrown out. Life will be simpler, will be better with fewer things. It is a necessary lesson, and one that is continuously relearned.
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