Leaving our house

Last night we slept in our new sleeping bags on a bare mattress, and this morning got up with a real spring in our step. There were a few last minute things to throw onto the mounting rubbish heap in our front garden, and I needed to move the last remnants of my CD and vinyl collection downstairs. They are all going to charity now. Even though we were very close to being ready, somehow the number of things we needed to do expanded to fill up exactly the time available, meaning I was still scrabbling around taping up a last box for storage when my parents came to pick us up.

We had spoken about the 16th of December for so long that it had to started to become a mythical date always on the horizon, until we woke up to find it was suddenly the sixteenth. A mixture, anxiety and a bit of exhaustion filled the two hours before Bob and Wenda arrived to take us to the airport. Miraculously we had actually managed to sort the house out by the time we left, with just a couple of odds and ends for Bob and Wenda to take care of for us.

We had a picture taken outside the house, with our backpacks on - the great explorers! - jumped into the car, and waved goodbye to our little house which had served us well for the last five-and-a-half years. I'm sure we would have felt more sentimental about it at the time, had we not been on autopilot to get to the airport to begin our journey. It certainly hadn't sunk in that we were leaving our little house forever.

I got all my hair shaved off on Wednesday. I'm not overly keen on it to be honest, I think it adds several years and several more kilograms to me.