Making all things new - a Friday Five about moving.

As Friday is now my day off, there's at least some hope that I might get to Friday Fives in better time these days - and how could I possibly resist this week's offering from Mother Laura?

We are right in the middle of a move--only twenty minutes away, but we're still a mix of busy, excited, nervous and surprisingly full of grief about what we're leaving, for me at least. So this week's Friday Five asks about your experience of the marvels and madness of moving...

1. How many times have you moved? When was the last time?
Ummm...about 10 days ago now. When I was a child we didn't move at all. My mother had survived the disturbing experience of leaving China as the Japanese arrived during WW2. She and her grandmother embarked for Scotland, where the only contact they had was the solicitor who had drawn up her grandfather's Will...This somewhat skewed her attitude to moving,- so it just didn't figure in my parents' Grand Scheme. I thus moved for the first time 6 months after my father's death, when Mummy and I moved from the house I'd grown up in, complete with HUGE garden, to something rather more manageable. My next move was from Sussex to London, when I graduated from university. My one bedroomed flat was exchanged for the terraced Victorian house that both Hattie Gandhi and Hugger Steward first called home, then we left London for rural Gloucestershire and Lower Farmhouse when HS was just 1 year old. Our next move was to Privet Drive just before my ordination in 2004, and now here we are in the Vicarage. So, this is my 5th house move in my 5th decade. Could be worse, I guess


2. What do you love and hate about moving?
I love setting up home in a new place... Before the accumulation of family junk takes over it is delightfully reminiscent of playing house as a child. You get to put everything in absolutely the right place, you get a chance to think where the "right" place might be, and it's all new and shiney. On the other hand, there's this ghastly period when there is a place for nothing and you keep on looking for things roughly where they used to belong...And the process of packing and of saying Goodbye is utterly wretched. HATE IT.

3. Do you do it yourself or hire movers?
Thanks be to God, the diocese pays for movers now ours are clergy moves. Not sure I'd ever dare do it myself anyway....the piano alone would defeat me.

4. Advice for surviving and thriving during a move?
Sadly, none. Except to have a box packed with all your short term essentials - kettle, mugs, corkscrew, glasses...and maybe a few bananas as an instant fix. Thriving is way beyond me at times like this!

5. Are you in the middle of any inner moves, if not outer ones?
Hope so. Working hard on growing up and growing into my new roles...

Bonus: Share a piece of music/poetry/film/book that expresses something about what moving means to you.
When I was a student and moving away from home and first love for the first reluctant time, I used to play the Haydn D Major cello concerto to "warm up" my new room..so forever more, this is the "settling in" music of my inner soundtrack. But generally the process of moving is so gruelling that, atypically, I can't connect with those things that generally give my world shape and meaning. On the whole, I guess I'm a seriously unenthusiastic mover - which makes my current vocation a bit unfortunate really.Guess I'd better aim to be here for the long haul.