At around about this time last year the Kickass Canada Girl and I were eagerly anticipating our then imminent excursion to Barcelona on which we accompanied the A level Theatre Studies students from the School. As I wrote in a post at the time, Easter last year fell about as late as is possible and our jaunt to Catalonia was over and done before the feast itself was celebrated.
Whereas the festal day this year is not quite as early as that of 2013 it is still a little on the precipitate side. As a result the weather – until today at any rate – has been anything but spring-like – erring in fact on the side of the distinctly chilly and leaden. Normal Easter bank holiday activities – dropping the top on the convertible, sitting outside some pleasantly rural hostelry nursing a glass of cool Sauvignon Blanc and otherwise generally celebrating of the vernal season – have thus had to be put on hold.
As it happens this is no bad thing as there is much to be done.
The bulk of the holiday weekend was thus spent sorting through cupboards, bookcases, storage shelves and the loft above the garage, doing what Canadians – and doubtless plenty of others (though clearly not Apple who auto-correct the phrase to ‘bucking’) – describe as ‘hucking out’ all those goods and chattels that will not be making the trip to the Pacific North West with us. Normally a brutal operation, on this occasion the task was facilitated considerably by its being the fourth such episode within the last decade. When the Girl and I moved in together in 2005 we had of necessity to find space for our combined possessions. Then, when we first put the Buckinghamshire apartment on the market in 2011, we had a clear out as part of the staging process. Further, when we came to Berkshire later that same year we carried out yet another purge to ease the move.
Now the process must be repeated – this time with an immovable deadline!
All the surveys carried out by our shortlisted international movers agree on one thing – we have approximately 10% more ‘stuff’ than will fit in a 20 foot container. As we are determined that this will be our limit some things clearly have to go. The double bed from our spare room – an inexpensive item purchased primarily for the staging exercise – was an obvious selection. My piano – a rather beautiful Edwardian upright that I inherited from my father – is considerably tougher to part with. The balance is tipped by the knowledge that the trans-Atlantic crossing might in any case prove rather too much for its increasingly fragile fabric. The challenge now is to find a good home for it before we depart.
All else is really just nipping and tucking to bring down the volume – but there is no harm in that in any case.
I am perhaps actually being a little unfair with regard to the holiday break as a whole. The Girl is in the midst of a two week exeat from work – taken in part to use up leave that she would otherwise lose. In addition I took the Thursday before and the Tuesday after Easter off so that we might share a six day recess during which sojourn we could once again rehearse being retired together.
I am very happy to report that it has all gone extremely well…
…as has the opportunity to catch up last Friday with some dear friends whom we have not seen since last autumn. Our most grateful thanks to them for entertaining us so splendidly!
A five hour drive back to the coast the next morning took us to Horseshoe Bay, whence we took the ferry to Nanaimo – home both to the famous Nanaimo bar (look it up!) and to the Girl’s mother.
A night in Nanaimo was followed by a final drive down the east coast of Vancouver Island and a last short ferry crossing – the (slow) shortcut across the Saanich inlet from Mill Bay to Brentwood Bay.
How am I doing at selling you the delights of beautiful British Columbia?
