Moving on up

Lydia is moving to Beckenham this weekend and I’ve said I’d help her. As sad as I am to see my pal leave, Amelia’s coming for the whole Bank Holiday weekend and, quite frankly, I’ll do anything to get out of the way. She was fuming actually (Lydia, not Ameila, I suspect Amelia will be over the moon to have her son and grandson all to herself) Mike had obviously been in the house yesterday while she was out with Matthew for the day and had stuck Post-it notes with the word “Mine” written on them. How childish! He’d appropriated several of the easy-to-move-items like CDs, the wine rack (empty) and the lemon juicer as well. Lydia had removed all of the post-it notes, put them in an envelope and wrote on it “be a man and come and see me about which items are yours”. She dropped it through their letter box late last night, she said, after several gins for courage. Atta girl!

The Stewarts - Frank and Marjorie - were enchanted with the house and went into raptures over the breakfast bar. I met them briefly - Lydia introduced me as one of “the nicest neighbours in The Avenue” before they left the other evening. They finish each others sentences. Marjorie giggles like a simpleton at everything Frank says and Frank calls her his “wench”. Perhaps they were nervous, who knows?

Anyway. It’s happening. David said he saw Mike this morning looking highly peeved. Perhaps he’s got wind that Lydia is moving one or two of the nicer pieces of furniture into storage today before he can get his hands on them. Susan is apparently having dreadful morning sickness. Mike had the cheek to tell Lydia this when they met in the paper shop this morning. Mike was bulk buying polos and Lydia said she nearly didn’t resist the temptation to tell him where to stick them. Especially when he called her “naïve” if she thought she would get away with keeping him from his IKEA bed frame. She said she hates the bloody ugly thing anyway (a hundred stubbed toes later) but said she’d rather set fire to it than see it move into the love nest up the road.

Such a shame when a marriage breaks down - not only because of the emotional trauma and upset but the division of goods and chattels. I remember sitting with Saskia as she watched her dad move out of the family home. We were 14 and parked ourselves on the stairs purely because that was the only place we weren’t in the way. Alan took boxes and boxes of stuff from all over the house and dumped them all in the living room as he loaded them all up on a van. There was no other woman/man involved - they simply just couldn’t live with each other any more. And you can see how right they were to do so, they can now be in the same room as each other and actually be civil. At the time though Saskia’s mother Margaret sat out in the garden during the actual move, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine and calling him every name under the sun. Which is probably why she screamed at him like a banshee when he tried to remove the Bhs touch lamp from the lounge. My word, she certainly shot through that house.

David’s out on Friday night with work (if you can call eating a sumptuous meal, drinking fine wine and smoking expensive cigars working) so I’ve said I’d host farewell drinks for Lydia. She’s agreed to invite the Stewarts and Saskia has promised to “thump the crap” out of Mike and Susan if they even darken the pavement outside the house.

Such a civilised evening its going to be!