We'd finally decided on a local firm to move our goods and chattels...they had received the Royal Seal from moving the Queen of England's stuff about so we thought they'd be alright...one of the drivers was called Fingers, which ought to have alerted us...but we paid no heed to that at the time, they brought vast amounts of proper sort of boxes for me to put stuff into...with the assurance I could ask for more at anytime.
One of the escorts on the girls school 'bus asked could she please have the Goldfish in our pond for her pond...she turned up one Sunday morning with her wellies and a coolbox and we set about catching fish...we'd put two small Goldfish in the pond...there must have been at least a dozen. Enormous golden fish with great fat tummies...there were newts as well and two frogs and loads of water skaters and beetles...
We filled the coolbox up and she went away home and came back for the rest...thrilled to bits, she was.
The parrot presented a different sort of problem...as did the Jackdaw. I loved that Jackdaw...he lived in an aviary outside and was so tame...the cats would sit just out of his reach while he stretched his skinny leg out to try to reach their fur...sometimes he succeeded and the cat would let out a shriek and run for home...
The Parrot used to eat the curtains and he'd keep up a constant chatter when we had important meetings...sometimes he'd slither down his cage and walk across the floor...picking imaginary seeds out of the carpet and making the po-faced Social Workers move their briefcases closer to their ankles...we couldn't take him with us...not with a cottage with no windows to speak of.
The Community Nurse said she'd have him...and Jack the Jackdaw...she was about six foot tall and totally and completely and utterly useless...I very much doubt she'd ever be reading this so I can say she was a prize eejit actually. She and her husband already had a Parrot so they took Jack and Algie...and the piano.
I began to pack.
We had about one thousand books which I sorted and dusted and put into boxes...advertised some of the furniture and had a woman come and she bought it all...huge pine dressers and an extending dining table and eight matching chairs...she wanted to buy my needlepoint pictures as well but I refused to part with them...her son and his partner were moving to live in a derelict chateau in France...our furniture went straight into their removal van...
I squirreled the money away, thinking it'd pay Andy or be used for new guttering and remembered that we'd need proper cat boxes for them to travel in, so bought those while I had the cash.
The little girls school made us a video of them and we gave the head teacher all our special lights and other bits and pieces.
We'd always provided respite care for parents with a disabled child and so we needed to tell them about our going and they wept and I felt awful...I'd so miss those children...even Jo-Jo, who was hell on earth and little Amy who never caused a mite of a problem...
I walked about with the baby on my hip and loathed her prospective new parents on sight and refused to budge until the dozy SW agreed to look a bit more until she found people I thought would give her the love and care she deserved and we had endless meetings with everyone and Harry and I began the trawl of the places with vacancies for our adults...Harry with his pipe and me with the baby glued to my hip...we travelled the length and breadth of Norfolk and Suffolk and drank coffee in out of the way coffee shops and fell about laughing at the regime of some of the homes we saw and discarded so many as being out of the question...
We asked awkward questions and met with the strangest and the oddest people and decided that nowhere would live up to our expectations and we'd have to lower our standards...
"Fur coat and no knickers".
Take five, feet up, nice cuppa for ~~ADVENT 9 ~~The Christmas Fairies
