Moving House

Moving house is said to be the third most stressful thing after death and divorce. This fact is widely known, although not everyone is aware of what comprises the other top 10.

• Fourth is the season one climax of Homeland
• Fifth is seeing if Watford, in the face of defensive ineptitude and all-enveloping panic, can hold out for a 1-0 win.
• Sixth is wondering if those coins will fall on Tipping Point.
• Seventh is hosting anything.
• Eighth is discussing politics with anyone that does not share your exact ideology.
• Ninth is playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded chamber.
• Tenth is when your biscuit reaches breaking point and throws itself to the waters, like Virginia Woolf.  (Just as a note: there was a picture of Virginia Woolf in my classroom and last week a student started laughing. I said, “Why are you laughing?” They said, ‘Vagina Woolf. There’s a writer called Vagina Woolf.” I said, “I think she would find it difficult to get published with a name like that; unless she was writing in the style of E.L. James, in which case the pen-name may be something of a boon.)

 

Would a feminist called 'Vagina' be a laughing stock or an even more empowering figure?

So on Monday we moved- and fortunately it wasn’t too stressful.

We were up with the larks bright and early to go and fetch the van. I was only interested in driving the van because I liked the idea of being a brown white van man. A lot of talk has been made of the glass ceiling for women in politics and business. In my opinion not enough has been said about brown men working in skilled labour and removals. I know my time as a white van man would be temporary, but I hoped for other Black and Minority Ethnics that they would see me driving down the carriageway and think, “I could be a White Van Man too.” A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first turn of the ignition; I hope by being that man, other BAME men – and women – will make that short drive to freedom.

White Van Man was actually a sitcom starring Will Mellor. Did you watch it?

So we got back to the flat and so began our wrestling match with a settee. The Girl is a big Friends fan, so last Christmas I bought her a mug that had a picture of a couch underlined with the word ‘PIVOT!” Any Friends fans will know that this references the episode where the friends try unsuccessfully to get a settee up the stairs. Our experience was akin to this, only more desperate. For nearly an hour we attempted and re-attempted to manoeurve a big thing out of a little thing. All of the sea captains in the world wouldn’t have been enough to plot a safe enough course for that settee; it was going to the rocks if we liked it or not. In time we were forced to adopt a different approach: brute strength and a tilt-a-whirl slam; and with that the sofa was finally free.

From there the exit operation was as textbook as you’re going to get. Everyone knew their role: The Girl stayed in the van; the mums did the light lifting; the dads did the heavy lifting; and I went to do the heavy lifting but was soon demoted to light lifting. (Again, I defy racial expectations with my van driving, and I defy gender expectations with my lifting. I won’t be put in a box. I actually won’t on account of claustrophobia and inflexibility).

Then came through news from the Estate Agents that the previous owners had left the building, and the keys were waiting. The scenes of jubilation lasted for all of five seconds, before I retired to a corner, hyperventilating over the financial responsibility I had taken on. Fortunately, my mum is a nurse, a trained medical professional, and she was there to tell me to ‘keep breathing.’ I took her advice on the grounds that experiencing the first and third stressful moments in life simultaneously would be too much to bear.

After making my way out the abyss, I climbed aboard the van – destination: homesville. I tried to take my mind off mortgage repayments by imagining that my mum, dad and me had made off with all the loot, like in the final scene of The Italian Job. This visualisation technique soon failed when I realised I was next to my dad, a Sri Lankan pensioner, an accent that's far removed from a young Michael Caine. Despite my best attempts at bad driving, I didn’t blow the bloody doors off and we arrived safely with our swag still in tow. In your face Michael Caine!

My brother sometimes says my references are too niche to appeal to a wide audience. I'll put a picture here to illustrate my point, so as to appeal to a mixed ability group. 

Taking The Girl’s hand we walked to the Estate Agents, solvent-free for one last time. On entering, the poor man was quite overwhelmed by The Girl’s euphoria. If you could have bottled up her positive energy that day, then … well it would be worthless. Because as lovely as it was to see, there is no market for positive energy. I was watching a Jon Richardson programme the other week about fears. One fear, particularly in the city, is over clean air. So what a company in the countryside has done is they’ve gone up to the hills, bottles in hand, and caught it to sell online. If you ask me, if you’ve got money to buy £50 bottles of clean air, you’ve got enough money to buy a dehumidifier- probably enough money to put a dehumidifier over the city. Getting back to the house we took a picture in front of the ‘Sold’ sign, trying our best to avoid being defriended for looking too smug.

The Tory Government will probably put the contract on air out to tender soon.

Then came the unpacking. Well, not for me. Luckily, the van we hired wasn’t big enough for one trip so my family was tasked with going back to the flat and reloading the van. Whilst we were back at the flat, sharing drinks in the sun – my mum bought me a cream soda- The Girl’s family were at home, slavishly making beds and assembling furniture. The fools! After we finished our dinner in the pub, we loaded the desk lamp and made our way back.

After failing to assemble a coffee table, I was put on light duties and ordered to take the van back to the depot. On returning Dominos Pizza was awaiting for me. A Mighty Meteor to boot. Never has alliteration tasted so good. What’s that green grapes you want a piece of the alliterative pie? Well, sorry green grapes there’s new boy in town, and he’s a lot unhealthier than you, thus miles more delicious.

With dinner defeated I fell into bed with the woman I loved, and looking at her thought, ’She's worth 30 years of financial servitude.’ The end.