How did we get here?

We were on holiday in Tenerife with friends when the call came through. It was our conveyancer. "Your buyers want to exchange contracts", she said. "Will you give me permission to go ahead?" We said "yes", of course. Then came the next shock. "You have to be out by the second of March!"

Celebrating our house sale in Tenerife with friends Graham & Heather

In three weeks time we would be out on our ears. When the young couple had first viewed the house, they had asked us whether we had an eye on another property. They didn't want any complications. I said, "no". So what are you going to do, was the rejoinder? I cocked a thumb through the hall window at the caravan sitting on the drive. "We're going to tour around in that, looking for somewhere to live." They exchanged a glance, that said, is he joking?

He wasn't joking. When we told our friends, many of them offered to put us up if the winter cold got too much for us. Lovely people, and we will come and stay, but not yet, hopefully...

But first we had to pack everything, find a removal company and book storage. The last two things were the easiest. We'd been getting rid of things for some time, but we never realised how much stuff we had left. We'd made more than three grand on eBay over the last couple of years or more, selling unwanted items, my vinyl record collection and a pile of scrap metal, Linda had been storing in the garage. But now we had to be ruthless and make some hard decisions regarding treasured ornaments and loved book and magazine collections.

They went - well, many of them did! Then there was the endless trips to the recycling centre, even on the day before we moved out! And trips to the supermarket to pick up countless cardboard boxes. They were all filled, taped shut, or tied up with cord, labelled.

Halfway through all this I had an operation on my left hand. At the recycling centre, one of the staff asked why my hand was bandaged up. I told him I had the 'Vikings' Disease' - a defective gene that caused my finger to bend inwards. The Vikings had brought it over to England when they bred with the Anglo-Saxons. He stroked his chin and retorted: "Those bloody Vikings, they should stay out of our country!" I wondered how he had voted in the EU Referendum...

Things we thought we might need over the next few months were stored in my parents' empty garage, and in a friends' house. It was, and is, very much appreciated. The bulk that was left ended up crammed in a 100 square foot of a storage container.

Came the day, Friday 2nd March, and we were sat at the kitchen table (we had sold some of the furniture to the buyers) in an almost empty shell of a house. It didn't feel like our home anymore, and technically wasn't. We were told that we could be waiting up to 2pm, or even longer, to get confirmation that the money had been paid over. We were sipping coffee at around 10.15 when the phone rang. The deed was done.

We made one last check of the house, which was when I discovered three drawers full of socks! Unbelievable, as we thought we had been so thorough. Socks packed in the car, we hitched up the caravan, and went next door to say farewell to our friends and neighbours. Then, for the last time, we pulled away from the house...

Hitched up and ready to start the adventure...

(Read my novels; Stench of Evil https://goo.gl/VQOVuS and The Devil in Them https://goo.gl/aS1cjZ in ebook format and paperback...)