By

Craig Ennew

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Nine: A Wait on Our Minds

This week : Craig contemplates the long wait as time drags on

I’m avoiding looking people in the eye. Although those I speak with on a regular basis have stopped asking, intermittent contacts still demand: ‘How’s the move going? Have you got a date through yet?’ The answers remain ‘Slowly’ and ‘No.’ I’m getting a t-shirt with this emblazoned on the front to save the exhausting process of moving my lips.

It’s one of those things everyone does: they see you, remember the last chat they had with you, then the conversational apathy sets in: Face recognition engaged. It’s Craig Ennew – the one that’s moving to West Lulworth. Spontaneous response: he’s insane and it’ll be a bloody long commute. Polite response: ask him how it’s going and if a moving date has come through yet. If you can be arsed, tell him that he’s brave and that you’re jealous.

As a teacher, I get this kind of thing every September – usually from other teachers – the key questions then being:

a)How was your Summer?

b)Did you go anywhere nice?

The t-shirt for that one looks like this:

Following on from last week’s ‘short but serious’ blog entry (see Eight: Clouds on the Horizon), people have been approaching me with renewed engagement. I’d like to assume that this stems from genuine concern given the plaintive tone of my recent scribbles. However, being on the jaded side of middle age, the cynic in me sniffs the lingering aroma of schadenfreude. It’s there in the wringing hands and the furrowed brows as they beetle up to me with that little dollop of relish behind the mock-concern:

‘Has something happened?’ Awkward pause. ‘Is it all still going ahead?’ They stare greedily into my eyes for those little titbits of pain, heartbreak and misery.

I just mutter, ‘It’s a bit tricky’. I like to present as a human version of one of the spinny buffering symbols you get half way through Your Home Made Perfect on BBC iPLayer.

But I can assure you, Reader: things do continue to trundle along, albeit slowly. I will update.

Firstly, our estate agent continues to be good value for money. The worried poppet is on the phone two or three times a week, telling us that he’s petrified that everything’s going to fall through if we don’t do X or Y. There’s clearly anxiety there – probably index-linked to percentages and commission. His Essex twang gives the impression that he’s on the failing end of a drugs deal rather than an exchange of contracts. Then there are the solicitors, who appear to have holidayed with Lord Lucan and Agathe Christe. My impression had been that they were responsible for the searches, rather than being on receiving end of them.

Added to this, my wife has now met Will the Builder in person. Turns out he’s ex-army – this can only be a good thing, surely? Their romantic rendez-vous was at The Shack itself; and she is thrilled to report that Will ‘can see no problems’ with the plans that we have in mind. Of course he bloody can’t, I tell her: he’ll wait until we’ve spent eighty per-cent of our budget, then demolish the last of the walls revealing the fifty shades of shit-show that he knew full well had been there in the first place. Hashtag: asbestos.

I’ve had the less glamorous job of tasking removal services. I’ve written previously about the dilemma of squeezing a three storey Victorian semi’s worth of life junk into a decrepit bungalow (see Five: Space Exploration ). I’ve also used the word ‘decluttering’ in a gung-ho fashion whilst doing jack. It follows that, when the boss of the removals company comes to see what we want shifting, I find myself giving him a guided tour of our house whilst pointing to large objects: ‘That won’t be coming with us; neither will that. Or that.’ I say this without having the slightest idea of how I am going to get rid of said objects – it’s a theoretical declutter. It therefore comes to pass that what was once a beautiful drop-leaf Victorian conversation piece has, through no fault of its own, morphed into a very heavy piece of wood that I would probably pay someone to take away. Facebook Marketplace has been of no use whatsoever: I have a thousand messages asking if things are still for sale, followed by radio silence. On the plus side, it has made me question my materialistic behaviours.

So I ask Mr Removals for a ball-park quote on the spot, but he won’t commit. Instead, all he leaves behind is a worryingly tatty-looking business card looking so dog-eared that I expect him to ask for it back. When the quote comes through the post three days later, I understand why he doesn’t do numbers in person: he obviously has an aversion to folk passing out on him.

…everyone puts on their bullshit-tinted spectacles

‘D’you think,’ my wife says, ‘that we could manage the move ourselves?’ Let’s get this out there: everyone who’s moving says this at some point. When it comes to saving money, everyone puts on their bullshit-tinted spectacles. You think about the cost of hiring a van, you optimistically strike a nought off the end of your outgoings. We should know better: we’ve moved ourselves before. But this was when we lived in a small barn conversion and had less gear. The van we hired was hopelessly inadequate: the move involved seven or eight trips between houses. The round trip was, though, less than twenty miles, back then. This time, the distance between houses is much more significant and we have three times the amount of stuff (even after decluttering). And that’s not even factoring in my bad back.

‘There’s no way we’re moving ourselves,” I say.

When all is said and done, and as our half term break approaches, a visit to Lulworth Cove is definitely in order. We need to remind ourselves why we decided to do this thing in the first place!

©Craig Ennew 2024

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