House moves are never pleasant, stress-free experiences. This one was no exception. We had booked a transit van with a local company from 9am-1pm for a bargain £20. We were due to sign the new tenancy agreement and pick up our new house keys at 9am from the letting agent in the centre of Stirling. Knowing that if we move our car from the street in front of our house, someone will nick our parking space, we decide to walk to pick up the van.
Thinking that it will only take 10 minutes to complete the paperwork, Michael decides he’ll wait for me before picking up the van. Nice as she is, oh my god, that woman in the letting agents’ can talk! I really don’t need to know how many picture hooks we can put up in each room. I already know that we can’t be evicted if the landlord defaults on his mortgage. I don’t need or want to know who has previously lived in the house. Thirty minutes later I am still in Clyde property, the van rental company has phoned to ask where we are because they have had the engine running to defrost the van for over 20 minutes. Michael has had to go and get the van without me.
Then the letting agent tells me that she doesn’t have any sets of keys to our new house…. One of their employees has gone to the house to make final changes to the inventory (which, it turned out, was still completely out of date despite his last minute trip) and taken ALL the keys with him. Doh. At this point I doubt if we’ll move house that day. Thankfully she suggests that the inventory checker will drop by our old place to give us the keys while we are loading our van - luckily he manages to get that bit right!
Although we’ve only booked the van for 4 hours and are late picking it up, the van company kindly say we can have it for an extra half hour. Just as well. Because of a burst water pipe, the road between our old place and our new place has roadworks reducing it to a single lane controlled by temporary traffic lights. This means that a 5 to 10 minute journey becomes twice as long – as we only have 4 hours to move everything this is no small annoyance…. We also have to pick up our new, flat-pack bed from a local shop – we had wanted to get it first thing in the morning but they don’t open till 10am. When we get there, expecting to carry the bed through the shop and out to the carpark, instead the staff ask us to go round to the back of the shop – which is not as simple as it sounds and involves driving around a faceless industrial estate. This is around 11am. We have taken one van load to the new house already. I am already knackered.
Finally, we decide we can make only 2 trips in the van within our time limit and we move all the big items that can’t be transported in the car – mostly boxes and some small pieces of furniture plus bikes and a very large TV. The bags of clothes and the plants have to go by car – we have run out of time.
We spend the rest of the day sorting out our new place which is like a palace in comparison to the old, one-bedroom bungalow. My plans to return to the bungalow to start the cleaning are abandoned as we realise that we are too tired to tackle any more big jobs separately. So, we jointly put together the new bed – a solid Scandinavian pine one - put our comfy mattress on it and make up the bed. That’s the best bit of house-moving advice I’ve had - make up your bed first so that when you are too exhausted to do anything else you don’t have to try and find your duvet, the cover, a pillow or put together a new bed!
Front of new house
Around 7pm I pop into nearby Bridge of Allan to the very good chippy (Allan Water Café & take away) and get us each a huge portion of fish and chips. We eat, then by 9pm we are in bed exhausted. We have misplaced one of our car keys and I have a restless night worrying that I have dropped it in the street during the move. The next day Michael finds it in his pocket!
Thursday morning comes. I struggle to find the requisite crockery and cutlery to make a bowl of porridge. At 10am we return to the bungalow to de-mould, scrub and polish. Michael fights with the greasy oven. I battle with mould and mildew. By 5pm we have finished. We had already done some of the bigger jobs such as dug and weeded the garden, cleaned the windows and curtains, the fridge-freezer and microwave. It is much cleaner than when we moved in. We have even repaired things that were broken when we arrived, such as drawers and lampshades. I reckon it took a total of over 20 hours to clean the place, not including the gardening. We are determined to get our full deposit back!
It feels like I am broken. I run a bath and soak- I think this is my first bath in over 2 years. Bliss! The bungalow’s boiler couldn’t heat the water to fill a bath. Another early night - in bed by 8pm. We sleep badly as the heating comes on in the night and roasts us.
Friday, I am back at work. Saturday, we sort out a few boxes. Sunday, I run Michael to Glasgow airport to catch his flight to Bristol so he can go to his Nan’s funeral in Somerset on Tuesday. The flight is cancelled due to ‘pilot sickness’ so he stays at my parents’ and catches a flight the next day instead. I am so tired that I don’t feel safe on the road - the drive home to Stirling takes almost 2 hours instead of one because of roadworks and heavy traffic.
Now we have been in our new place for just over 2 weeks, although Michael was down south for one of those weeks. We have mastered the central heating controls, emptied most of our boxes, settled in the cat, and cleaned what hadn’t been cleaned properly (how galling after the time we spent cleaning the bungalow…). I have even had a few friends over for pancakes. I feel quite at home here. I think we’re going to enjoy living here.
Charlie making himself at home
Speedy chocolate muffins
Veggie pizza with wholemeal dough
Spicy cocoa cookies - suitable for vegans! 
Oatcakes with cumin and chilli
Focaccia with olives and sea salt
Chewy molasses ginger cookies- they are a bit flat and rectangular because they spread more than anticipated in the oven and I had to cut them into cookies! Next time they'll be round - I still have half the dough in the freezer! 
