Patience is a virtue

This has to be the slowest move I have ever made; ironically it is the one with the most helpers.

Here I am, still waiting, to get to the boxes. Greg has gone to Monica's wedding and I am holding the fort hoping the plasterer will arrive, but knowing he probably will not and waiting for Andrew to finish cleaning the house.

After the air conditioner technicians had finished, much of it was covered in brick dust, plaster and concrete and the walls were dirty from the marks of ladders and dirt from drilling.

But, before we can start unpacking we have to go shopping. Stocks are low and it has been such a busy week we have not had time to get to the supermarket.

At this stage I am thinking it will be 2p.m. before we start and there is no way we will be sleeping in our own bed until tomorrow night. However, having waited this long it is largely irrelevant.

Andrew and Limited are going to work this afternoon and we will pay them some extra. We should be able to make a dent in it but we still need plastering and painting where work has been done (see right hand side of pic below) before furniture can finally be put into place. The television has to go underneath the air conditioner in the living room and ideally all plastering and painting should be done first.

Ah well, so much for ideals. It might be Greg's great love but it is after all just a television set.

Where does all this stuff come from? Here we are in a country where people are excited about getting some packing crate timber and cardboard for their homes and we are surrounded by boxes of 'stuff.' Useful stuff but stuff all the same.

Still, I am sure some of this stuff will be left behind when we move back to Oz  in a few years as we have done a number of times in the past. We have left things behind, and no doubt 'set up homes' in India, Angola, South Africa and Zambia. And still we have all this stuff!

We always 'set up home' as much as we can to make it comfortable whether we are living in a hotel room, flat or house and whether we know it will be for six weeks, six months or six years. The fact is, one never knows because six weeks can easily become six years as it did in Perth and six years can easily become six months as it has elsewhere.

This was a pattern established when we moved from Melbourne to Perth for six months and I demanded we pack up and take everything. Luckily we did because we were there for six years.

Actually, we didn't take everything. I foolishly left some things in the storage area under the house .... including a wonderful train set Greg had had as a child ... and when we sold the house a year after moving we forgot about them. I have no idea what else was there but we have always been sorry about losing the train set.

Still, here's hoping it went to a good home. I am sure if we had been meant to have it we would have remembered it was there.

We used to set it up on the lounge room floor... generally late at night after we had been drinking copious amounts of wine with friends ... and watch it run around the track. It even had a light at the front.

Such is life; you have things and then you don't. Well, you have life and then you don't so why should things be any different?

I like to think that if things are lost or stolen or given away because they cannot be carried then they help others. In truth, everything we have in this world is 'borrowed.' It is just that some of us can 'borrow' more than others.

When we left Zambia, after living in a hotel room for six months, we made a 'gift' of a lot of our things, including a small fridge, to one of the maids. She was the one who worked the hardest but it was difficult because, given the hierarchy of such places, it was clear the hotel housekeeper was most unimpressed at her windfall.

We had to oversee the removal of the goods - she brought her brother to help - to make sure it was not taken from her downstairs. Then again, the Zambians have an interesting 'take' on good fortune; they believe it is an indication of evil forces at work so I am not sure we did the poor girl much of a favour.

I have to say I like the unpacking part of the moving process because it is the creative part. Setting up the house and arranging things is fun. I used to do this as a child. I would grow tired of my bedroom and spend a day moving everything around so that I had a 'new' room.

It was always so exciting to sleep that first night in my new room. As an adult the excitement is not sleeping in a new room but decorating the new house. Then again, as a child, there wasn't much decorating done just furniture moved and room cleaned so the going to bed at night in the 'new' room had to be the most exciting part.

Perhaps I knew even then that this would be my life! If practice makes perfect then I must be close.