The last couple of months have been incredible in so many ways, and have left me with very little time to write up my blog. But now we are here and things have quietened down (temporarily) I will try to catch up. It will probably take a few posts to bring things up to date.
My last blog was posted just after we dropped our Lamborghini off in Madeira and headed home to get on with packing up our house. We had put the house on the market at the beginning of July and immediately got a lot of interest and some offers, although below our asking price. After around 15 viewings a lovely young couple with a little girl looked around and, within an hour, phoned up with an acceptable offer. Then it was over to the surveyors, lawyers and estate agent to work through the whole process. As anyone who has bought or sold a house will know, even the most straightforward of sales is a slow, painful and frustrating process and ours was no exception, even though there was no chain and no major issues.
While the house sale was working its way through Dave and I continued to sort and de-clutter as much as we could. I ended up selling a large amount of clothes and other items on eBay, which is time consuming and sometimes demoralising, but meant at least I got occasional bouts of exercise dropping parcels off at the Post Office. We continued to try to place as much of our furniture as we could with people who had need of it. As we already have a fully furnished house in Madeira, there was only a limited amount of furniture that we planned to take with us.
On occasion it seemed as though some guiding force was helping us, as we often found good homes for items just when we needed to. For example, when the mechanic who maintains one of Dave's motorcycles was dropping it off in his van, Dave asked him if he knew of anyone needing some furniture. By amazing coincidence, his son was just buying his first house and would happily take several items. So the van went away with a wardrobe, bedside table, chest of drawers, dining room table and numerous other items.
We were delighted that the buyers wanted to buy our piano and some gym equipment which would have been very heavy to move, although they didn't want our snooker table. We had an arrangement for that with the person who supplied it but that fell through at the last minute. Dave put it on eBay on a 3 day listing and, luckily, someone wanting one just like ours happened to see the ad and buy it. He's a builder and drove all the way up from Torquay in his flat bed truck, with wife and son in tow, to pick it up within a couple of days. Similarly, we needed to sell our car (not the Lambo) and there was very little interest apart from some insultingly low offers. And then, when we were about to give up hope, a local couple turned up, loved it and bought it on sight.
We found a couple of charities who were happy to collect other items of furniture which was useful as our car, when we had it, was pretty tiny. Also some of our neighbours wanted a few items so people staggering along the road carrying chairs, sideboards and cabinets became quite a regular sight.
That is a brief description of the practical side of preparing for our move. I'll cover some of the more emotional issues in my next post.
The picture at the top is the sunset as seen from our garden on the day we arrived - to explain why this is all so worth it!
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