moving

Tomorrow

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

Tomorrow morning very early my furniture will arrive in Granollers.
Hopefully!

It began its journey last Wednesday when the men arrived here in Lamorna to collect it. After weeks of worry and indecision I had decided to use a local firm and to pay for a direct delivery rather than entrust it to a larger anonymous company as a part load. I read all the websites I could find on how to do an international removal and got more and more entangled in the possible problems. I had started with only a few items to take – things I really want to have with me like the piano, my treatment couch and some paintings and sculptures. This list grew as it was obvious you pay for the journey and so you might as well take more things when you are paying so much.
So, it has been en route for the past week and tomorrow it will arrive, in my absence, in its new home.


The idea of the piano going to Catalunya seems especially exciting!
We don’t know exactly how big the van will be but I can imagine the scene in our busy street while they unload.  It is a large town with a village feel – the butchers, the tabac, the sports shop, the neighbours – they will all be watching as my stuff is carried in.

Zen House

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

I’ve been living like this for months now

But today this happened


(Yes it was raining!)
The dogs worried about what they would need to pack

 
 (the lasso thing is actually a lead!)
But my stuff almost filled up the van!


And now we are living in a state of ZEN

Apologies

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

I’m sorry if you drop in here regularly hoping for news from Catalunya. For the moment at least I am totally absorbed in the business of moving house and especially what it is like when you are moving from one country to another. For anyone who is interested in this process perhaps I am describing fascinating things but I would like to reassure the others that soon……very soon….the posts will be back to normal(whatever that is!)
I start with this as I noticed yesterday that I had lost one of my ‘followers’.  I have so few of you that each and every one is important to me and I notice when someone appears….or disappears. I don’t know why some blogs have hundreds of followers and I do not but I do want to say to those of you who are hanging on in there with me – thank you!

So, back to moving house. There is a lot of pressure nowadays to declutter. To let go of stuff and live a minimalist life.  Even if you don’t want to live in a white monastic uncluttered  box, most people including me want to feel free of all the gubbins that we accumulate throughout life. Somehow life flows better when it doesn’t have to fight for breath under piles of clutter.  When you are moving house obviously this seems the perfect time to separate out what to keep and what to say goodbye to.

In Chinese Medicine this process of sorting and separating is governed by the energy of the Small Intestine.  An imbalance here can lead to either holding onto everything or letting go of too much. With obvious parallels in the physical body.

But the process of sorting and separating is work – it needs time and it needs clarity of purpose. It is very depressing to spend half an hour indecisively putting things in one pile only to move them later to another.  I started with a dream of only taking things that are 100%  beloved or useful with me to Catalunya. But now in the later stages of this process I find myself packing small items that I could live without. I imagine myself unpacking them at the other end and wondering why I brought them. I am constantly swithering between a desire to travel light and a fear of floating off into space without enough baggage to tether me down.  I will probably send off my goods on Wednesday with a removal van from Cornwall to sail over to France and drive down to Catalunya and be received in Granollers in my absence.  It feels unreal. I look at my home which is slowly turning into the minimal white monastic cell I dreamt of and I wonder why it is so hard to create this space to live in!

Packing dilemma – what to do with a bag of knitting needles and wool?  Like many others I get the occasional urge to knit something – not often but every few years this comes over me. So do I take this bag with me or accept that I’ll have to buy it all again in Spain?

Bonfire Night

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

Last night we decided to light the bonfire and burn the mountain of wood that has accumulated over the past few weeks of building work. Sometimes fires take ages to get going and you end up having to throw some petrol over them ….very nervously in my case!  But this fire wasn’t like that. With loads of dry gorse on top it went up like a rocket and soon was crackling and snorting with flames and puffing out smoke.  Soon the pile was disappearing. Some of it was still damp but this fire didn’t pause or falter.
It’s a great way to get rid of things too.
I threw on old bank statements and accounts. Old client notes from London times. Two fat diaries full of angst from a few years ago.
I went and brought out two chairs that ‘could be fixed but I’ll never get round to it and there is no way I am dragging broken furniture all the way to Spain’. We have plenty of broken things over there already!
Then the shopping basket – ‘oh it’s so nice I can’t bear to let it go but the handles are broken so I can’t use it..maybe it could be fixed….” NO!  Onto the fire.
What joy!
The flames are cleansing and exhilarating.
There are things you can sell and give away, things you can throw away and some things just need to be burnt – there are things that can’t be donated or sold or relegated to the dump – burning is the answer.
I had a lot of those programmes you get when you go to a funeral. I suppose they remind you of the person but really I’d rather remember them alive.  And the growing pile was depressing in itself – so many people gone.
Anyway, you may be glad to know the teddy bears are still safely propped up on the piano – no furry animals were cast into the flames.

Changing times

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

Duna is on heat.
It is not the best timing but must be dealt with amongst all the thousands of other issues that are bubbling around in my life. I am trying to clear the house and yet all available time goes on helping to renovate an outdoor shed to make it ready to receive those things that I will leave in Cornwall. As with most jobs this one has expanded to fill what time is available so other things like packing boxes and painting my house and organising paperwork….have been squeezed into little corners in my days.
Today the electrics were switched on! And I have been sanding the floor. A kitchen area is slowly taking shape.  It is a palace and once the chairs and tables and boxes have moved in…..they should be very comfortable!

Meanwhile, it rains. The dogs are bored and wet and they can’t go into the new space because of paw marks. Duna has returned to basics – Feeding, Fighting and Fucking.  All her pent up energy is focused on these three activities. She has chosen Bonnie as her rival to growl at and attack whenever they are in a confined space together. Blue is her object of desire in spite of the difference in age

Imagine your 16 year old nephew trying it on with your partners grandmother and you have the picture. Blue is deaf and almost blind and has arthritis and to be honest was never interested in sex when she was young. But now she has an admirer who won’t leave her alone – it’s hard to know when to intervene – Blue sometimes stands in front of Duna waving her tail around invitingly. But when the inevitable happens she will snarl and snap.

I am waking every  single morning around 5am and ….ping….the worries start. I have never suffered from sleeplessness before. Now it is a familiar companion. Everything that can possibly go wrong is imagined in the worst possible light.  I won’t get the van log book back from DVLA in time to leave before Christmas. It will snow or rain torrents all the way through France. Duna will go crazy in the car when she sails from Plymouth to Roscoff this week.  The removal men will damage the piano – or the piano will damage the removal men. Next week I will die under the anaesthetic at the hospital or end up with some awful infection. The person renting my house will never leave. We won’t find anywhere to rent in Catalunya that takes three dogs. Why did I do X?  Why didn’t I do Y? 
It’s as if I think I can avoid all problems by anticipating them. But as the days go by it is obvious that the opposite is true. It is harder and harder to make good decisions in the face of tiredness. One part of me thinks this is an interesting experience but another is shouting louder and louder ‘surely there must be an easier way to do this?’  How difficult can it be to move to another EU country?

Then I take a step back and think of all the others who I know are going through stressful times at the moment. It feels like life is winding up the pressure – perhaps for some good reason that it beyond my understanding. I may feel like a mouse on a wheel and I do want to find a way to jump off and play a little but at the moment these things must be seen through and, if possible, I must enjoy the ride.

There are things to laugh at – Duna met another hormonal female on a walk and they danced around each other happily swapping smells

and things to sadly smile over. One comment from a ‘friend’ was…why are you doing all this, you don’t belong here any more!

Moving away causes ripples all around.  Strange times.
Any suggestions for anxiety relief gratefully received!