Leaving urban life

FIFTH BLOG 15.11.13

2018 EDIT - this was a much more 'fun' blog to the previous one which frankly, dear reader, bored the pants off me. I do feel for today's teenagers doing their exams and having such huge emphasis put on 'parts of speech' as we were always taught it. I can identify verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions, but ask me about gerunds and my eyes will go into 'thousand yard stare' mode. Anyway onwards to blog five from mid-November 2013, our last week or so in Sheffield before moving back to Devon.

******

No lessons. No grammar. Just wine. (And a few pubs.)

There’s no preachy lessons about ‘that there’ grammar that I pretend to know about in this week’s blog. Just fun and laughter, quite a lot of panicking, and maybe a little wine. This week we have mostly been saying goodbye to old and new friends. The reason being by the end of next week we will effectively be homeless; having sold the house, we’ve put our possessions into storage and are moving back into my familial home, and back into the bedroom that I last permanently occupied in my early twenties.

It’ll be weird. Not having our kettle, our fridge, our bathroom, our space. We’ll have to ‘import’, maybe even sneak, a few of our possessions into my Mum’s cupboards - a favourite mug here, a towel there. It’s not a permanent arrangement, but it is hopefully only a transient one - for how long, we’re not sure, but certainly until we’ve organised somewhere more fixed.

We’re leaving behind wonderful restaurants, a brilliant hairdresser, some beautiful walks, our spacious house, and many much loved people.

The friends we are saying goodbye to include an old friend from work who came all the way back to Sheffield from her current home in Shanghai, China just to see us off. (Not really; she’d been planning to come back for a month anyway, her timing just worked out well for us all - but it sounded impressive momentarily, didn’t it, that someone would fly 5,664 miles in order to say ‘cheerio’.) We took a lovely misty walk around a favourite reservoir of ours, and then a leisurely pub lunch (you might begin to notice a theme shortly).

Then there was a raucous night in the pub (see?), with some newer friends, two of whom we’ve only got to know well in the past year or so, all thanks to a Basset hound called Harry, and who we’ll probably know for a considerably much longer time now as they’re firmly in our lives. Of the other two friends that night, one was responsible for introducing me to the first two (thank you, Vic) and the other only befriended me via Facebook due to liking the cut of my jib on the other three’s wall posts (take a bow, Nigel). Thanks to Harry’s folks having a glass of wine too many, Charity was happy to benefit from the doggy bag of a scrummy meat parcel that was left behind.

A lot of time has been spent, during the daytime hours, freaking out ... a LOT. After suffering with work-related stress last year, I recognised the warning signs and I obviously fully appreciate why moving house ranks in some lists as one of the top ten most stressful things to do in life (but not in the original Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory). There have been plenty of looks to each other, the question asked ‘Are you all right?’ and the answer given in a mock- (but sometimes very real) panicked ‘NO!!!’ and then some dry heaving with fake retching sounds. Well, we have to do something to relieve the tension. I’ve tried consuming vast amounts of wine ... which led to me not being able to sleep, going downstairs for a hot milky drink and writing half of this, and bed eventually at 4am. As a last resort, I have taken a sleeping pill, which has provided a night of blissful unconsciousness for at least 9 hours, but I’d prefer not to go down this path too often if I can help it.

The week has continued, with a late afternoon spent with another ex-work colleague, in a similar state of panic to me, (you’ve guessed it, not in a pub but in a bar this time) as she’s sold her house but can’t find one suitable to buy, so she too is moving back in with her parents (also with partner and dog) until one becomes available. There was food, a cocktail or two, and happy reminiscing about mutual friends and experiences, plus a sharing of our reciprocal agitation. Whilst thinking about ‘panic’, and not wishing to repeat the word too often, apparently the word comes from the Greek word

πανικός pertaining to the shepherd god Pan, who amused himself by frightening herds of goats and sheep into sudden bursts of uncontrollable fear. This week has found me muttering at intervals ‘Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring!’ like Sergeant Jones in Dad’s Army.

Yesterday, I lunched with my ex-boss. I’d not seen her since February, when I took redundancy, but she had texted me when she heard of my unfortunate tumble down the side of a hill, resulting in my Stupid Broken Ankle™ - which was kind of her. She told me she had already checked out my website, and I asked her who’d ‘tipped her off’ about it, but her answer was ‘Nobody did, I wanted to see if you’d pulled your finger out yet, and you have and it looks very good.’ That was gratifying to say the least. She invited me back to the office to say goodbye to everyone (again), but I decided against it, as I had already made my farewells at the beginning of the year, and not wishing to disrupt everyone (as you know I would have) thought it would be best not to, besides I had errands to run, so we hugged each other and went our separate ways. It seems odd that I probably won’t see some of these people ever again, having spent twenty years in South Yorkshire and having a number of them in my life consistently over the years, and a few of them more sporadically. However, with the wonders of Facebook (and say what you like against it, it’s been responsible for some great reconnections for me, as well as keeping up with everyone’s ups, downs and bumpsadaisies) I know that all these people are only a laptop/phone screen away!

So, we have a further weekend of farewells, and alcohol, and pub lunches, and chatting; it’s a tough job but we can do it. Then from Monday we have to knuckle down, pack our few remaining possessions, take the all-important meter readings, take delivery of a van, load said van, hand over our keys to the estate agent (who has been pretty bloody marvellous) and set off with nary a backward glance onwards to sunny Devon. No mortgage, no energy bills, no council tax, no house insurance, no TV license, just a mobile phone and car insurance to have to fork out for ... I wonder how much ‘rent’ I can get away paying my Mum ... don’t worry, I’ll be a good girl. If not, you might find me under some bridge, a cardboard box for my bed, with my dog on a string.

Oh, and I nearly forgot - if you type your email address into that little box up there on the right (2018 EDIT - or somewhere else that I've not worked out yet), then you will be instantly notified the next time I write some more egotistical ramblings from this rambling egotist.

********************************************************************************