Moving Tara, Moving House, Moving Town

And moving county, too. 'Cause some towns, they're actually close to each other. Not so these two. There are 4 hours by car between them; 3.5 if you're lucky and not as heavily packed as we were.

Obviously, INITIALLY we had some fun moments! Below you can observe Tara feeding the empty kitchen cupboards lots of raisins, helping greatly with the packing of the CDs, and riding the hover to new heights of performance.


The very best of all, I should think, was riding the office chair (which sadly had to stay behind, though when the picture was taken we did not know that yet) up and down the corridor with mummy and...


...making best friends with the hard working washing machine. When all your other toys are packed you just make do with what's there.



So up to here, we're laughing!

HA HA HAAA! Fun-ny, this moving business!

Note: Waste of space, centre pic!

Ha ha ha ha! And then we stopped laughing, squished lots of boxes into a van, had a bit of a shouting session with BT (as you remember, that's Brit...), said our sad good-byes to darling Leicester, and squished the remainder of our things (the volume of which we had badly underestimated) into the car (did we mention we got a car?), along with Tara and mummy. Now, I'm not sure whether 'squish' is the right verb. Does it convey misery and the inability to move even an inch? Does it imply the following packing order: stuff - Tara - mummy - more stuff jigsaw puzzled around and on top of mummy? Does it imply Tara's chair surrounded by stuff like a sinking wombat in a swamp?

Let's get a tad more visual on that one:

Pic on left: Swamp! Pic on right: child, given up and sunk, child's position indicated by fat white arrow. Asleep for a bit, thank God.

Pic: Anonymous mummy in state of receding amusement and onset of state of mild shock , ashamed of awful bargain buying and hoarding habit unhappily married with inability to bin stuff. Big bag of half dried washing between shins and back of seat, big unshapely bag of unidentified COLD objects on knees, some other unidentified square object poking into ribs; both remain unidentifiable due to other stuff on top of them. The idiot who thought to place the remaining kitchen stuff in a Sainsbury's bag in perfect fly-upon-braking position was NOT the same idiot who thought starting loads of loads of washing on moving day morning was a good idea, though the latter idiot remedied the former idiot's mistake by repositioning said bag while dreaming of the space wasted in the original load in the van (see above pic). Well, well.

This is how the trip went (and luckily not only all good things end, but all bad ones too!):
At first Tara slept for an hour, then woke up and ate some pasta.
And then Tara cried, for an hour.
No picture.
At some point she understood that mummy was not going to pick her up nor get her out, no matter how much she wriggled or stretched her little arms out, and took to only holding one little hand up to hold a mummy finger for support. Heartbreaking.
No picture.
Then, without warning (except more crying), she puked. Pasta, undigested, and some extra bits & bobs.
No picture.
Then she puked some more.
No picture either.
More crying (but less than before the pasta deja-vue), some sighing, and more holding of finger.
Eventually we got there and were unpacked. The inaccessible cold stuff on my knees turned out to be the contents of the fridge/freezer. (And then and there I was GRATEFUL they'd made me throw out the last two eggs!)

And the lesson we get to learn here?
Well.
Everyone is welcome to suggest one. Everyone is also welcome to use the words *DON'T* *BARGAIN* *BULK BUY* *HOARD* *CHARITY SHOP* *TRASH* *(random expletives)*
Tip: It is NOT "Don't ever leave out an opportunity to bulk buy and hoard bargains at charity or any other shops without ever trashing any b*** thing."

That said, I do strongly feel that Tara ABSOLUTELY NEEDS a toy box and a book shelf to make this house a home, that I ABSOLUTELY MUST buy a chest of drawers (since Jose has hogged ALL available drawers to himself, minus the kitchen ones), and that the kitchen would benefit greatly from a cookie jar and a LARGE bread bin (and I HAVE seen a NICE & CHEAP one in a charity shop, although I luckily don't recall which!)