Moving

So. The move.

It was torturous. My notoriously unreliable friend had promised to help me but I was feeling less than certain that she would appear. An enquiring text elicited a favourable response and I felt slightly easier. At 09.05am a the removal team arrived. Two men with limited English arrived to remove my copious belongings from the flat and secure them in a van. They had left the van outside of the driveway, which made it harder for them as it was a fair distance to travel back and forth but the apparent senior of the two managed to communicate that he didn't mind.

The notoriously unreliable friend rang at 09.10am to say she was in a suburb on the other side of The Bridge (the Anzac Bridge, not the one you see on the TV) to collect a tumble drier that someone had kindly donated to me. I screamed internally. She was bound to get stuck in traffic. Fortunately she didn't and burst into the flat in full Technicolour, roaring with delight at the scene of carnage.
"I thought you were soooooo organised," she trilled. "You're wearing rubber gloves! Not ready at all! I love it!!!!!"

I immediately sent her to get coffee from a local cafe. The man carried on packing. The place was an absolute bombsite. We did a carload of fragile stuff as well as things I couldn't be bothered to pack properly. We came back to find the men had finished. Off we went.

I felt sorry for the removalists when they realised that not only had they dragged all my possessions down a flight of stairs and up a driveway but that now they needed to get them across a road and down a narrow flight of stairs. The now reliable friend left me to collect her daughter and catch up on a few jobs. The men finished, I paid them and collapsed on my recently relocated settee.

The friend returned to take me back to the old place. That was when I did it. Locked the keys to the new place inside it, that is. We had to drive to the letting office, run in, collect the spares and go back. The friend left me with a cheery wave and a promise to return on Friday.

I went back to the old place to do some cleaning. I managed an hour and a half before the headache that I'd been brewing all day finally caught up with me, which wasn't surprising seeing as my days dietary intake was limited to one cup of tea, one coffee and a banana. I got a taxi 'home' and collapsed on the settee. I didn't have the energy to make a cup of tea, instead just getting up every now and then to take more Paracetamols. I finally dragged myself up this morning - still with a headache - to go to work. All set. But where were the keys?

In the lock. Outside. Where they had been all night.

It can only get better.