There’s no place like home

Well what a day yesterday was.  I feel like I spent the whole day flippin’ cleaning.  Whilst it wasn’t the whole day it was certainly the lion’s share of it!  I was up at 7am to do a few last bits of packing and then spent the rest of the time, until TH turned up at 10am, cleaning the flat.  You don’t grow up as a child in the forces without having the “moving out of married quarters inspection clean” instilled in you as a serious piece of work.  Now I knew that some officer clad in white gloves wasn’t going to come and undertake a full inspection which would include stroking said white gloves over every available surface, but I’m afraid the clean I did would have come up trumps even if they had!

TH’s van was packed up very quickly, so as we were running ahead of the pre-arranged key handover time he set off as an advance party.  I carried on cleaning fitfully (not much else to do really) until Lou arrived and then set off back to South East London.  TH had phoned to say that the route he had taken over Battersea Bridge had been really quick – he was back in 50 minutes, so I decided to follow suit.  Its all in the timing … By the time I was heading back – just over an hour later – whale fever had completely overtaken the Battersea Bridge area.  As soon as I hit the plethora of TV OB vans and heard the helicopters circling above I knew that I was in for a long wait.  Ah well … 2 hours later there I was back in my house, surveying the pile of unpacking that awaited and taking in, with a sinking feeling, the amount of cleaning I was going to have to do …  I shouldn’t have expected anything else really.

So, I did 4 loads of washing (oh joy unbound to be reunited with a tumble drier – what a little miracle to be able to wash dry and put stuff away all in one go – no damp washing hanging around the flat, hurrah!); unpacked all my possessions and put them away; dusted and disinfected all surfaces (no more rolling dust on the piano keys and the white sink is now white again rather than a dirty beige); hoovered all the floors; made the bed; cleaned the bathroom (a necessity if I was going to have a bath!)  

I had just about flaked out when  I received a call from BBW to see how I was doing and who, knowing my love of lists, provided me with one.  

1.  Pour a large glass of wine
2.  Run a bath
3.  Pour another glass of wine to drink in the bath
4.  Have a bath
5.  Maybe have another glass of wine – this item was optional …

Unfortunately having crossed item 1 off the list the rest of list went a bit haywire owing to a random nosebleed.  For goodness sake, I haven’t had one of those since I was in school!  Irritating as nosebleeds are in general, it would have been OK if it hadn’t lasted 45 minutes … That’s quite a long time and I was beginning to get a bit worried.  I had a call from George after 15 minutes of pinching the soft part of my nose, and who left me to it sounding a bit worried and with a request to text her when it was over.  I had a call from Lou after 20 minutes, who left me to it sounding a bit worried but then texted me the number for NHS Direct and asked me to let her know when I was over.  I had a call from BBW who didn’t sound worried at all  but who then proceeded to call me every 5 minutes to see how I was doing, to check that my brain hadn’t come out of my nose and to suggest stuffing Kleenex up my nostril.  Every bone in my body said that was a bad idea, but after 35 minutes I was ready to try anything (except having to get a cab to A&E and sit in chairs for several hours before they stuffed a tampon up my nose …), so after 10 minutes of Kleenex, the final BBW call was met with the reassuring news that it had stopped – phew …

So points 2 to 5 on the list were revised to:

2.  Drink lots of water
3.  Have a shower – felt a bit safer that having a bath …
4.  Go to bed
5.  Item 5 was always optional but was abandoned in favour of sleep

Either way, now I’m back I’ve realised that there’s no place like home (I own a pair of red shoes so feel entitled to use that expression), and whilst I feel really weird (I really can’t quantify how I feel, but its really weird), I expect I’ll get used to it – probably just in time for us to sell the house and to have to move again...!