17. Of Castles And Vampires And Will The Couch Fit?

I'm sure you'll have heard that comment about moving house standing alongside death and divorce on the stress-inducing scale. It's a lie. It's much worse. And I've experienced all of them.

At least when you're bereaved or in the throws of marital breakdown people are generally sympathetic. Not so with the house sale. It's seen as a self-inflicted wound, so it's every man for himself and devil take the hindmost.

You're on your own. Get used to it.

The whole procedure goes against nature, from the minute you call one of that much reviled breed, the Estate Agent, and in he comes, to wander round your home, probing your every nook and cranny in a way that you wouldn't normally allow your best friend to do. It's unnerving. If anybody else did it you'd be pointing at the door and throwing the nosey bastard out. But you've invited him in, albeit reluctantly, a bit like you would with a vampire. And the analogy doesn't stop there. When he sits you down for the 'little talk', during which he tells you the value of your crumbling but much loved edifice and thereby breaks your heart, he will attempt to suck you dry of  as much of the pathetic amount he's just quoted as he can.

E A: For an additional squillion pounds you can have an extra TWELVE photographs in your brochure.

        (Note. Whilst 'brochure' may conjure up for you, as it did for me, something glossy and
                    impressive it actually turns out to be a couple of sheets of A4, stapled together in
                    the middle.)

Me: No thank you.

E A: Or, for just a squillion trillion pounds you can have a walk through video and voice over on the
         website.

Me: No thank you.

E A: Would you be interested in having a Premium Listing in return for the blood of your firstborn?

Me: Absolutely not.

E A: (Deep sigh, as he reaches for brief case) Best crack on then?

Me: Yep.

Mind you, I was intrigued by the idea of the walk through thing. I tried to imagine the voice over man, struggling to find the words and speaking in sonorous tones about 'fashionably retro features' as the camera lingers lovingly on our ancient kitchen cupboards and ghastly pink, sixties bathroom suite. It might have been worth it for the laugh. As it was, the Estate Agent returned, a few days later, and pointed his Box Brownie at our best bits for the permitted number of pictures that poor people can have, and that was it.

And thus the beastliness began.

An Englishman's home might be his castle, but once it's on the market you have no choice but to lower your drawbridge and welcome the marauding hoards to go rampaging about on your battlements, unhindered. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, you have to try and be tidy all the time, in case you get a call to say another batch of Visigoths is due at the gates. It's awful. And you're not allowed to slap them. Not even when they criticise your decor in stage whispers and snigger openly, just because you choose to use the airing cupboard to store your Merlot. Well it keeps it at the perfect temperature! It makes total sense and is much more important than things like dry bedding. A bit of damp never hurt anyone....and you don't notice if you're pleasantly drunk.

And then there's the other side of it. You have to go and do a spot of marauding yourself.

Now, I am here to tell you that there should be a law against the 'feature wall.' Unlike some of the viewers of my house, I am a polite woman. I have bitten back the shriek of alarm that has risen in my throat when, without warning, I've been confronted with yet another expanse of huge and garishly coloured flowers, usually in a very small sitting room that's just not equipped to cope with it. It's like being trapped in some nightmarish version of 'The Day of the Triffids'. I don't know which twit of an interior designer came up with it but they should be horse-whipped. I bet they live in Shoreditch.

I have developed a strategy for when I ring the bell of a total stranger and invade their privacy in a manner that really goes against the grain. I fix a smile firmly on my face and, three paces in, I say 'Oh, this is nice!' very brightly. I utter these words whether it really is nice or actually a dump. I feel it's the least I can do in this wholly unnatural situation, and it gets us off to good start. Once I relax I quite enjoy chatting to the owners and mentally scoffing at their plastic flower arrangements. Oh yes, I'm as critical as the next snob. I just hide it well. I get all friendly with them and then try to trick them into telling me the real reason for their move. Is the kid next door learning the trombone? Do the elderly couple over the fence sunbathe in the nude? I need to know these things. It can be quite fascinating. My husband, however, only perks up and shows interest if there's a shed involved. He does love a good shed.

And a shed could be what we end up living in if we don't get a move on as, miracle of miracles, it seems we may have sold ours (house, not shed...though some would say they're the same thing) in fairly record breaking time. Just goes to show. There's no accounting for taste. So we have to find our perfect Des. Res. pretty damned quick.

Thus, we must somehow pack up the detritus accumulated over more than forty years, and move on.
It's a fair sized house, and I'm no minimalist. I have some clutter. I have a lot of clutter. Loads and loads of clutter. I prefer to think of it as a collection of fascinating and beautiful items. But it's clutter.
Downsizing is going to be hard. But the fact is, we no longer need all this space, or all these things.

And whilst Mr. Estate Agent  valued our bricks and mortar in purely monetary terms, he could have no concept of all that it has meant to us. Over the decades it has housed us through thick and thin, the good and the bad times. It sheltered me during the disintegration of a bad marriage and saw the forging of a good one. Our children were all carried in to it as babies and left it as fully-fledged, independent adults. I suppose the turmoils and the tears, the joys and celebrations and, I'm pleased to say, all the love and the laughing of more than forty years are interred somewhere in these four walls. But I expect they're in me as well.

So maybe I shouldn't worry too much about what I should keep and what I can bear to throw away.
The memories are going with me anyway, and they don't weigh a thing.



Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share.