It took a lot of cleaning, and lot of chaos and a lot more cleaning, plus shed loads of revisions on paperwork and more paperwork, but finally it was the BIG Day, Wednesday 4th May. The removal team had arrived. And arrive they did at 8:30am in the morning.

I know they said that they would arrive between 8 and 10 am in the morning, but I had honestly thought I might just have a few more minutes grace than 8:30am. We hadn’t actually finished eating breakfast. So the suggestion of the kettle was made and gratefully received and they had a whirl wind tour of the house (an ex-stable block, 2 stables and a tack room) and a labelling system as to what was being packed and what hasn’t being packed and taken by them. Virtually all the furniture was either not going, or was our landlady’s anyway, so that had a red ticket on it. But then life also had a complication because chest of drawers were not going, but the contents usually (but not always were). So there was a green ticket for packing and red ticket for not being packed and drawers had additional tickets to say if the contents were/were not going as well.

It had seemed easy at the time.  And on the whole it worked, but there were to be one or two slip ups…

Once drinks were out of the way, all of the bikes, the trike, and their numerous parts were rounded up and taken outside where luckily (and rather unlike British weather) it was a lovely sunny day outside. Dusty (our landlady’s Irish Wolf Hound) came out to say hello and then settle down to watch proceedings with the bikes and trikes plus all the parts, rounded up to be together (so trike parts with the trike box) and everything wrapped carefully and boxed and labelled. That actually took most of the packing and most of the morning. Slowly the house emptied and it was time to have a stop for elevenses and an assessment.

They would be done before lunch.

There wasn’t actually much left to pack after the 6 bikes and the trike, plus the towbar mounted bike rack. My big camera was to also go in its own box and then be crated by itself for protection and insurance reasons, but otherwise very little needed to be worried about because the rest of the house was pretty much either, cycling clothing, bedding or kitchen stuff.

And that was how it was to work out. All done and dusted in under 4 hours. Our lives packed and on their way to Australia in a shipping container.  Well actually they left the place in a luton van bound for a warehouse where they were the bikes, trike, and camera were to be crated up and then the lot transported to a shipping container to disappear for the next x many weeks.

So was that the house empty?  Well, no.

• There was still all the crap that wasn’t going,
• the stuff that we needed for the next 2 weeks,
• the stuff that we would need when we got out there,
• the white goods,
• the furniture that we needed to get rid of, and….

You get the idea but the house was a lot emptier and cleaning for leaving the property could at least now start, once I had had a rest!  Nope, think again girl.  No rest for the…

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Getting the house sorted and everything clean for the 4th May was to prove hard.  Very hard. Almost more than I could manage and some things had to give.

And the only way of getting sorted was to make the existing disaster zone even worse.

Priorities had to be set.  At least 2 bikes a week had to be stripped down to components and cleaned thoroughly.  That even meant the rim tape had be to be removed from the wheels, the spokes had to be cleaned and you know that those bits where the spokes cross over – that had to be cleaned as well… and to top it off, there wasn’t actually enough time to average only 2 a week…

More chaos than normal was to reign.  Plus there was the ongoing issue of our landlady, not unreasonably, wanting to show people around the house.

Where to start?  The cleaning, then the sorting or the sorting and then the cleaning?

It was to be the sorting and the cleaning.  Pull the kit out that we wanted to take to Australia, sorting could sort of happen at the same time.  Boxes were needed: boxes for stuff the be cleaned, boxes for stuff to stay, boxes for stuff to be sold, boxes for stuff to be recycled, boxes for stuff to be thrown.  Oh, we all ready had the 2 latter ones; the recycling boxes and the black wheelie bin!  But we couldn’t actually pack anything – that was the curious part.  Anything in boxes would be unpacked and repacked by the packers so that they could list everything in the boxes.  Ahhhhh.  Talk about making life difficult.

Oh and then there was all the paperwork to sort.  Anything wooden had to be listed.  Anything with alcohol in it had to be listed – do you have any idea on the number of bottles of whisky we found that people had given to us that we had not yet drunk?  Plus there was the case of that magnum of champagne we have been sitting on since our 10th wedding anniversary when we failed to drink it.  What to do with that.  Stuart’s parents had been caretaking it for the past 4 years.  My parent’s prior to that.

Then there was the list of items with natural materials in them: getting the sewing machine serviced.  My head ached by the end the paperwork and the number of revisions that got sent to the poor removal agent assigned to us… that poor woman.  I asked so many questions of her, the curiously I actually reassured her according to her emails!  Apparently she realised I was taking Australia biosecurity controls seriously!  I had just thought I was bombarding her with daft questions and very quickly going mad!

An extract from one of my emails to her: “Page 4, Section 7 – asks about articles subject to quarantine laws.  This may seem like a totally mad question from myself, but it mentions feathers.  Do I need to answer yes or no for my down duvets, down sleeping bags, down jacket, or any woollen products?”

And then I had to find a home for our rather large friend… Grannie’s Christmas Cactus.  Thank you Catherine.  Last time it was different Cathy….  This time she has been temporarily been rehomed in Preston along with rather a lot of food which I also could not take.