Under the kitchen sink...

I’m writing this entry on the train from Bournemouth to Walton. We are returning from saying our final goodbyes and after a brief stop off at our house in Walton we will be off to the airport! This week has been non-stop and we are exhausted – hopefully exhausted enough to sleep through a significant portion of our upcoming 26 hour marathon journey Down Under...
We started this week with two days in Poole to see my parents, my grandma and family friends Valerie and Aubrey. After that it was back to Walton to pack up everything in the house ready for the removal men to ship it all down to Poole for storage (aren’t parents great?!). This was a huge task and one that turned out to be full of surprises...

As we’ve only been living in our present house for 3 months, you might assume that we haven’t had much opportunity to accumulate rubbish. Wrong! We found all manner of unwanted things as we sorted through the house, some of which I’m quite ashamed to admit, but as it might make for an amusing read I’ll tell you anyway! Our first and possibly worst ‘discovery’ was a two month old chicken and broccoli pie in the fridge in the garage (the fridge had been turned off for the duration!). Not thinking that we could top that, I then found a Burger King takeaway bag under our bed!! I think I was the guilty party there, but I’m going to blame Tush for leading me astray to Burger King after Kate’s hen cocktails... I now feel suitably ashamed however and promise never to eat a burger in bed again! No more food-related discoveries were made (thank goodness) but I did find a copy of the Bill Bryson book “The Thunderbold Kid” under our kitchen sink, and a “Rustie” toy from the Pixar film “Cars” under the sofa!

Removal man and van - nice headband!

All of our possessions are now safely stored in Poole, after being transported by our sweat-band wearing removal man! After initially questioning this rather bold fashion statement, I was quite glad that he was wearing it to catch the buckets of sweat pouring off him!
Tom and I drove down to Poole the night before our flight – one final trip in our lovely little Ford Focus! We’ve been driving around all week with a for sale notice in the window, but despite a truck driver at Walton tip (sorry, it’s a Waste Transfer Station....) offering us £300 (what?!!!) there was no interest. Dad had lined up a viewing on the car for Saturday morning however and it sold straight away. Thanks Dad!

House let and car sold!

The remainder of our possessions are now crammed into four carefully packed suitcases. Please could you all cross your fingers for us at approx 6.30pm as we check in for our flight and try to avoid excess baggage charges... despite purchasing some digital luggage scales and carefully balancing items between bags there is no getting around the fact that we just can’t fit our lives into 2 x 23kg cases, which is the BA allowance. Some of you will be pleased to read however that ALL of your gifts have made it into our luggage and that essentials such as towels and clothing have been ditched to achieve this!! Who needs jumpers in Australia anyway?! We have also packed all of your cards to remind us of home and for my uni girls... the Percy Pigs have also made the cut! I’m afraid I have eaten the Colin the Caterpillars during the packing process however! Colin was rather yummy though :-)

So all that remains is for us to get on the plane. We are off to Heathrow any minute and I will blog again once we arrive!

Much love to everyone and thanks for all of your good luck messages!

PS I’d like to apologise to those of you who didn’t get a tearful goodbye from me... whilst you might have read about my inability to retain any form of composure in my earlier blog entries, I have become rather well practised at saying goodbye since then, and am now able to keep almost dry eyes! It doesn’t mean I’ll miss you any less... it just saves on waterproof mascara!


Final photo of autumn in Walton.. because I thought it was pretty!