Preparation for the big move

So, after a week of tension in the Pink household, we finally exchanged contracts with our buyer and seller on Friday.  Thursday night was a particularly sleepless one as our buyer's solicitor had discovered a covenant on a piece of land at the back of our house restricting the use to agricultural only - it appeared that we may have breached the covenant by building part of our extension on it (not that we knew it existed).  My night consisted of worrying about how on earth we could get round this and I had visions of the sale falling through and us having to pull down the right hand corner of our kitchen, pay an enormous fine, be put in the village stocks and pelted with all kinds of rotten fruit and vegetables by the other residents, who know that their gardens should only be used for agricultural purposes.  Suffice it to say that a red line drawn on a map was enough to ensure the exchange happened.

After the fantastic news had sunk in, Mr Pink toddled off to Heathrow to catch his latest flight to China, casually dropping the bombshell that he wouldn't be back until Saturday not Friday as usual.  He swears he had mentioned this before, but I think it was probably in one of those regular conversations that he has with himself but fails to vocalise externally!  Fortunately, Grandpa Pink has come to stay for the duration of the trip (and a bit longer) to help me start to sort things out.

Today we decided we would tackle the loft.  Luckily this is a walk in loft not one that has to be approached via a tiny hole in the ceiling - we do have one of those, but it involves me climbing up Mr Pink's shoulder and head to get in as he is too portly to fit through the hatch!  Now, foolishly I thought that this wouldn't be too bad as Mr Pink and I had sorted some things out before we put the house on the market.  Oh, how wrong I was!  Here are some of the items we have either marked for the charity shop or tip:

• a bedside cabinet with no door and a broken leg
• two 'portable' televisions - I use the term 'portable' but they each weigh as much as a baby elephant
• odd pieces of plasterboard
• empty shoeboxes
• Mr Pink's 1980's style flying jacket (he is slightly bulkier now than I imagine he was then)
• 3 computer bags - computers not included
• an empty paint pot
• a box of random ceramic tiles

 We did find lots of lovely 'forgotten' things too:

• 3 beautiful handblown glass baubles from the Czech Republic
• my single and LP collections - there's a whole blog post in there!
• Great Grandma Pink's wooden chair - the leg has broken but we will get it repaired
• Mr Potato Head
• box crammed full of toy tractors and farm machinery

 And then, there are the things that you just don't know what to do with:

• all the notes I made when writing my M.Litt thesis - just what do you do with pages and pages of writing about The Position of Women in Late 19thC Austrian Literature?
• soft toys 
• books that I have read, will never read again, but can't bear to throw away
• wooden kitchen blind - will it fit the new house?

 And that's just half the loft, the other half is still to be done, the half that the rat decided would be a good place to live.  Then there's the shed and that kitchen drawer, you know, the one that everything gets shoved in - who knows what we might find in there?