Onto Pastures New

The last major items have been packed now. There remains the hi-fi (always last to be packed for obvious reasons), the radio, a guitar (see above) and a lamp in my room. It doesn't really seem like my room anymore. It had, over the last seven years, accreted detail and texture through occupancy and use and I have, systematically over the last few weeks, dismantled it all. Most I'm keeping because things like books break my heart to get rid of but some things have gone.

I have binned or shredded a lot of old letters and photographs. I'm not really sure why I kept them all. I can't say it's nostalgia because I never re-read them; they were just there. The same applies to the photos. I kept a selection as old hoarding habits die hard but much of it ended up in the bin. It's a strange mixture of emotions. On the one hand there is a tinge of fear of the unknown and the knowledge that I've disposed of things that at one time held great import to me. On the other I feel much lighter as though I've cast off some unnecessary trappings and can step, however falteringly, into a brighter tomorrow unencumbered by relics of my past. Not that I want to disinherit my past or wish it to fade from memory but just that it's gone now and the past is not a place to revisit often and never a good place to live.

On Saturday afternoon we will collect the keys to our new home, our first home together, and later the same day a van will turn up at Atrocity Mansions to load my carefully boxed treasures and then decant them and me at the all new Schlossadlerflug. Saturday I expect will be hell. I have many books and thus now have many, very heavy boxes. These have to be moved along with everything else across town and then unpacked and rehoused.

The last couple of weeks have already been quite tough enough already. It's the feeling of being ineffectual that creates the most stress. First you have to wait for your references to go through to the letting agent. Then you have to wait for a contact to be drawn up. Next, once all your belongings are packed, all you can do is sit, waiting and staring at your four, now blank walls, until you can actually go and collect the keys and then move in. Until all my boxes rest upon new turf I am going to be twitchy and nervous. As a creature of habit and someone whose nest is very important to him as a sanctuary of retreat and recuperation I find the whole idea of moving all my worldly goods terrifying. But it must be done and underneath the nerves there is excitement about the new life I am to share with my love and the knowledge that whilst it is hell at the moment, once we're in the flat together, with just us and our boxes, it is going to be a very magical place.

Keep your fingers crossed for our move and I will write again next week from work: there will be no Internet in Schlossadlerflug for a few weeks so I will be limited to posting from the studio or the few times I pop back to Atrocity Mansions to work on the bike until my lease runs out here. I will write when I can.