Apologies for the long delay in writing but it has all been rather busy and as the amount of material has piled up for me to recount, the momentum to sit and start typing has diminished proportionally.
Miraculously, though, I am here at last, bruised and battered but alive and, crucially, relocated. No longer a 30-year-old parent-dweller, I have successfully moved into my own flat and am pleased to report that it is even more satisfying and fun than I had hoped.
Here’s how it happened:
On Friday, Mr L’Atelier was so wonderful that disguising his identity no longer seems right or necessary. He is Paul. And he is amazing. Although we did start the day with my first strop in his presence when he missed the train he was meant to catch and, having waited on my own for half an hour at Clapham Junction, I joined him on a later service with a face like a smacked arse. Fortunately, he managed to distract me with a holiday brochure and we were soon back to our sickeningly giggly selves, eating our bacon rolls with merriment.
After an hour, we arrived in Wokingham, collected a gargantuan white van and drove to Oxfordshire for one of the most surreal incidents in my life. For reasons that it would not be interesting to divulge, the sofa that I owned when I lived with my ex, Henry, in 2001, was now in storage in Oxfordshire. It was my belief that we would meet the sofa guardian, drive to the storage facility, extract the sofa and be on our way. Instead, we ended up unpacking most of a sizeable metal container which was crying out to be the setting for a murder scene in a tacky drama series. Having moved about forty of someone else’s boxes, we eventually located the sofa frame and cushions – but not the covers. Our helper kindly offered to lend me ‘a couple of throws’ for the next few weeks while the sofa’s actual furnishings were identified but, appealing though this offer was, I had a minor sense of humour failure and continued to scour the container for the elusive fabric. Luckily I discovered the covers bunched up in a plastic bag before a real tantrum kicked in and we restacked the container and enjoyed an unexpected lunch of our host’s homemade baps filled with trout fillet and mayonnaise, made on the seat of his minibus and eaten while surveying the countryside in front of us. It was all rather unlikely.
Even though Friday had been earmarked as the primary ‘moving day’, we didn’t get back to London until after 4pm and then didn’t fill the van for another hour or so. Poor Paul continued his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants induction into my life by negotiating with my dad on the best way to stack my boxes in the back of the van, and was photographed for the family album as we struggled to carry a chair down the stairs. His unwavering chirpiness was incredible. We finally set off for the new flat at around dinner time, miraculously had the whole load upstairs by 9pm and were eating in a renowned local curry house by 9.45pm. Nothing had ever been so smooth – and no move has ever been more harmonious. Paul and I had continued to be unbearably happy even as we sweated our way up the stairs with all my millions of possessions – and he staggered me by claiming to find me attractive even when my skin was blotchy, my hair was stuck to my forehead, my eyeliner had slipped down to my cheeks and my T-shirt was soaked through. It must be love.
After our dinner out, a still-jetlagged Paul reclined gracefully on my bed while I had my inaugural bath in my bath in my flat. I lovingly cleaned it with Cif, lovingly showered it down with my amazing new shower, lovingly filled it with my lovely water, clambered in, reclined and relaxed. For about a minute. Suddenly there was a pounding and a yelping at the door. I was naked. Paul was half asleep but eventually made it to the letterbox where we were informed in no uncertain terms that there was a leak into the flat below. I leapt out of the bath, wrapped my brand new John Lewis ‘Hotel’ towel around my person, noticing that it smelt unexpectedly of menthol, and we hastily unscrewed the front panel of my stupid bath to look at my stupid draining system where, sure enough, my stupid overflow pipe was cracked. Not the best introduction to new neighbours. I wrote them a grovelling apology note and delivered it in my pyjamas.
Saturday was more house-moving fun but this time with the added excitement of an argument with the moronic staff in Comet. We’d reserved a fridge online to collect that afternoon – but of course, when we arrived, they didn’t have it in stock. Not only did they not have it in stock, they didn’t have a single white under-counter fridge in the entire ‘Superstore’. I was not impressed and lightly reprimanded the assistant who had taken nearly 30 minutes to tell us that he couldn’t be of any assistance to us or, I’d wager, any other human being were he given the next millennium to try. We left feeling mildly grumpy but pleased that we hadn't given such a useless establishment any of my hard-borrowed cash, and returned to the flat. After unloading the remainder of my stuff, we hotfooted it back to Wokingham to return the van before the 6pm deadline, had a Kronenburg on the train back to London and, while Paul picked up the Thai takeaway, I cobbled together a romantic candlelit set-up in my sitting room without any candles or cutlery.
Sunday morning I awoke and realised that the Sky man would have difficulty affixing the Sky dish to my flat given that merely walking down the short hallway required agility akin to that found in an Olympic gymnast. Jumping among the gaps between the piles of boxes like a frisky mountain goat, I eventually cleared a path through the debris – which was lucky because the Sky man had the fitness levels of an atrophied corpse and arrived panting like a Labrador in a furnace: stepping over a shoebox would have given him a heart attack so leaping between piles of middle class possessions would probably not have been high on his agenda. I had to open the window for him because his weirdly short arms were inadequate, and within twenty seconds, he’d decided he couldn’t do the job and was out of there. The afternoon was all about my choir rehearsal and the evening’s concert, which went unusually well and was followed by a pub gathering where Paul continued to surprise by mingling merrily with my extended family and choir friends and I was giggly and giddy and proud and generally over-excited.
Monday I was hungover and fractionally embarrassed having declared undying things to Paul over a midnight feast at Balans in Soho after the pub the night before – I beat a retreat to the flat and painted the bathroom ceiling to compensate. The evening was quiet and lovely as we enjoyed some microwaved soup with cutlery Paul had brought from his flat, accompanied by a crusty loaf and a bottle of Sauvignon blanc. Yesterday was frantic at work but the momentous occurrence was that, for better or worse, my builder has gone, job done. Now all I have to do is paint a hundred miles of skirting board and then I can get on with unpacking. I returned home a little tipsy after book club and spent about ten minutes standing agog in my bathroom, in love with the delicious wall colour and my new light fitting. Then I gambolled into the kitchen and giggled in delight as my dishwasher actually opens and shuts and I have a freezer and an oven hood with a light on it. It’s all too exciting.
I have always laughed in wonder at those people who leave the plastic covers on their sofas – but I have plastic sheets down on my carpet and a thin plastic film is covering the laminate cupboard doors in my kitchen and I am not in any hurry to take it off. The thought of my kitchen getting scratched or my carpet getting stained fills me with an emetic horror and I've realised that there is a very real temptation to leave the dust sheets down indefinitely. Obviously my desire to peel the film off my kitchen will win out eventually but there's no doubt that, as far as the creamy carpet goes, shoes will have to be left at the door like at an Indian temple. Red wine drinkers will be provided with a child's safety cup from which to sup. And fans of easily splattered foodstuffs in the bolognaise or salsa genre may as well forget their invitation to the housewarming immediately cos it ain’t going to happen. From now on, I’m going to have to exist on a diet of white wine, clear spirits and hooverable food such as biscuits and crisps. Who’d have thought that a new carpet could be such fun?
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