Moving house with my Sis and Bro-in-Law
My sister and brother-in-law are a goddess and god among us meagre mortals.
I have a lot of stuff, some of my stuff lived in a 30ft hired container, some in my Mum’s attic, some in my temp’ bedroom, some in Anna’s attic and garage, I have so much stuff that some of my stuff had never met other bits of my stuff.
I did a bit of shopping around and found that I was going to have to pay £500+ for a removal firm to take my container contents up to Copley and I wasn’t too happy with that.
I made my feelings known to my sis’ and bro’ and they wonderfully agreed to help out if I were to hire a van.
My sister and bro-in-law are a goddess and god… did I tell you that.
Anyway after much toing and froing with the choice and source of vans we came up with a Mercedes Sprinter from Northgate vans and my sibling and hubby travelled some 350 miles from their house to help out.
A cold and wet morning we set out with two days to complete the task in the van. Off to the college first where I worked to nab an industrial fridge freezer I’d managed to appropriate that was slightly faulty. That in the back of the van after a struggle and off to the container yard we went, we started loading and I think it dawned on me at this point just what I had asked them to do for me. We loaded up but t was soon apparent how much work we were going to have to do, the £500 or whatever I would have spent on a moving firm was a lot of money but the time and hard work I was expecting from my sis and bro woud prove to be quite phenominal. Not to mention the money they would have to spend to get here and back and the time they would volunteer that was valuable to them in the running of their business.
They are a god and goddess honestly.
The drive to my house is a tricky one, a drive in a large van loaded to the gunnels with furniture and tat would make it much more tricky. I should have driven but I was a pussy (I had had a nasty van scraping incident the other year oeer) and my bro-in-law did all the driving.
Did I say…. Yes they are.
Anway the container took four – or was it five trips to empty. The loading was hellish in the cold and miserable weather and the unloading was just as bad. I have a large and wonderful collection of “Really Useful Boxes” some of them are quite huge and some of them I’d loaded to the brim with shelves of books. Getting these boxes up the stairs in my house after a long trip even defeated me and my bro, it was not an undertaking I woud have volunteered for, however they did.
There were moments of light relief along the way, we adopted a greasy layby café for our two days of moving. The owners were really friendly and when I told them of my impending appearance on Homes Under the Hammer they were starstruck. I was introduced to lorry drivers as a celebrity and it was all very funny, my comment of “I’m a legend in my own layby” will go down as one of my favourite off the cuff remarks of a lifetime of off the cuff remarks.
Anyway the container was emptied, my room was disassembled and put into the van too. We ripped up carpets in the house, placed furniture in rooms where we thought it should be placed and boxes in storage. The fridge was teetered into the garage never to be used – well not till now in February when I’m writing this from memory – boxes were sorted that might be needed soon and everything was done and dusted and the van was returned without even the slightest scratch on it.
Gods and Goddesses are few and far between but I have two posing as my sister and brother-in-law who never fail to not let me down, put up with my maddest plans and be the most generous and wonderful human beings I know.