Tuesday 2 October 2018

Moving on

Green front door, brass knocker and wisteria
Closing the door on the past
It's finally happening. After three years of viewing properties and hoarding house particulars, we are on the move. Let's not get carried away, it's only five minutes down the road, but this is a BIG deal for us! Most people would be super-excited (and we are) but we're also feeling a little bit funny inside... It's us after all. Our family is not known for its gung-ho, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants approach to life. There's just too much fretting to fit in.

We've lived in our Edwardian semi for 12 years, watched our kids (and a puppy) grow ever upwards, built snow-people in the garden, added on a kitchen extension and generally made ourselves feel at home. Now that our time here is running out, we've been struck down by nostalgia.

Every time I sit in the kitchen, I gaze wistfully at the modernist glass and the reclaimed brickwork and the sunlight falling in geometric patterns on the stone floor. Because we helped to design this room, it has always felt like we were somehow part of the fabric.
Open-plan kitchen
Mourning my kitchen 😔

Equally, all of the reasons we wanted to move - my son's bedroom feels too bijou, a bigger garden for the dog - have faded into insignificance. It's our home, nowhere's perfect, you know!

But then my husband and I go to bed chanting: change is good, change is good. We re-hash endless pep talks - how boring it would be to stay in the same place for ever; we need to reinvigorate ourselves; we need new challenges. Yes! We can do this! High-five and turn out the lights.

And we will do it, because deep-down if nothing changed, we would feel disappointed. Our teary affection for our current house is well-placed - we were happy here. That's not to say we won't be happy five minutes down the road. There will be adjustments but new experiences await us. We'll have a fresh set of walls to paint with our memories, our parties and our family Christmases. 

What a boring story it would be if the scenery never changed. So it's farewell Edwardian semi and hello lovely house-of-the-future. It's time to stop moping and to start packing.


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