Friday 8 June 2012

Friday Five: Reunited Possessions

Our stuff has arrived from New Zealand - hurrah! On the day it was delivered we were experiencing a weather bomb of pouring rain and gusting winds, so everything was soggy and the removal guys tramped mud all over the place. Fortunately the downstairs has a washable floor - they left everything there to prevent ruining the carpets - but it does mean that I've got to carry many boxes upstairs myself.

When you have movers and packers take your belongings from one country to another, you never know what's going to end up where. I have got the top of my computer desk, but the legs have been packed separately so I've got no idea where they are. I have found the stapler and a broken paperclip, wrapped individually with great care and attention, so that's good then.

Kiwi humour
Even the grammatically amusing descriptions on the inventory ('bear bottles' and 'wetsuites' had me a trifle bemused) don't necessarily help. The box labelled 'reckords' held the document shredder (or half of it anyway) so perhaps the packers have the same appreciation for The Fall as I. Clearly, they have some sense of humour, indulging a litttle trans-Tasman rivalry in pictorial fashion on one of the heavier items.

So now I am surrounded by boxes wherever I go in the house - it's like one of those interminable puzzles where you have only one vacant square that you have to slide everything in and out of until you make up the picture. I never liked them, incidentally.


But Chester loves it. He is 'helping' by jumping into every empty or half-empty box (in this instance, the box being half-empty is a positive), chastising the wrapping paper and bubble wrap into hard-to-reach corners, entwining himself around my legs when I'm carrying particularly heavy or bulky items (especially when there are stairs to negotiate), playing King-of-the-Castle with wobbling stacks of cartons, and falling asleep in new places. He's having fun with this, anyway.

And it's good to have familiar possessions around me. It may be scientific due to objects in a vacuum or something (Dad would no doubt explain, if I let him), but the house just feels warmer. And cheerier. And, when I've solved the space puzzle, it will be a lot more convenient too.

5 Items I'm Very Pleased to See Again:
  1. The 3-piece-suite - it's so much more comfortable to watch the tele from a leather sofa than a hard-backed kitchen chair. Chester is happy to have 'his' $2,000 armchair back too.
  2. Our sleigh bed - it's such a great feeling to sleep in your own bed, isn't it? Of course, I have yet to find the box containing the duvet or the sheets (they weren't in the same box as the pillows, which were each in different boxes anyway), but I'm sure I will soon...
  3. Books and bookcases - Not only do they look fabulous, they hold memories and theories and unexplored delights. I can spend hours arranging and re-arranging my books on the shelves. Seriously.
  4. Cooking equipment - I now have the array of knives, graters, scales, dishes, bowls and baking trays necessary to make proper meals; there's only so much you can do with one saucepan.
  5. Washing machine - taking a whole day to catch to the bus to a suburb with a laundrette, spending an hour waiting for the clothes to wash and then returning to unload the industrial machines and reload the dryers (which remind me of those ones in horrible scenes in prison films where there's always a dead body stuffed inside) and then lugging everything home again hasn't exactly been my idea of fun.

Monday 4 June 2012

Quote for today

“I’m a very good prophet. When it comes to predicting the past, I always get it right.” - Manuel Rivas, Books Burn Badly
The Crystal Ball by John William Waterhouse (1902)