Life in the boxes

D-day minus four and I’m sitting in the lounge surrounded by bare walls, cardboard boxes and scattered toys.  At then end of this week we’re moving into Walnut Tree House.  We’ll be nearly doubling our living space, more than doubling our mortgage and taking on a list of necessary and desire improvements so long I can’t even begin to think about writing it all down.

This is the biggest life change since the last one (Ula, not yet two years old) and somehow the most daunting.  Life here in Doris is comfortable and easy.  I’ve developed a happy routine and Islay and I have have created a lovely, if slightly drafty home.

And at Walnut Tree House, who knows what new routines will develop?

Like my father, I’m a worrier, so in no particular order, here’s what I’m worried about:

• There’s so much work to be done, and so much work we’d like to do.  How can we afford to do it, and what will it be like if we can’t


• I won’t be able to have a beer after work and wobble home from the station on the bike


• Islay will have no immediate support network, how will she cope?


• What are we going to with 3/4 of an acre of garden.  At the moment we barely cope with a tiny patio, now we’re getting so much lawn we need two mowers, an unmaintained tennis court and a vegetable patch bigger than our current back yard.


• I like walking into town when I’ve nothing better to do of a weekend, what will I do instead?

Ah well. The die is cast now, on Friday unspeakable sums of money will shuffle between bank accounts, and fifty boxes and crates will bounce in vans the 15 miles from here to there.  And when that’s done we’ll have to get on with answering the worries above, not worrying about them.