verging_on_random

The joys of moving house

July 30, 2006 on 11:03 pm | In Uncategorized |

When I moved to the Tweed Coast from Sydney in 1993 I bought a big caravan with a rigid annexe to live in while I worked out what I wanted to do. 12 years later I was still in it. Actually it’s not so bad living in one of those mobile home parks, at least you don’t have to cut the grass. The people are mainly old so you don’t get dysfunctional families screaming abuse at each other at 3am, plus theres not as much chance that I’ll be one of those sad bodies that they find have been dead for seven months and nobody realised …. though the neighbours did wonder about the bad smell . At my park they’d come see if I was OK within no more than two weeks of me going invisible - a month tops.

Anyway I decided I might as well stay where I am until I can retire to my dream home of 5 acres in the northern tablelands. Except I would probably hate the cold so I might just stay here for the rest of my life, although that’s a faintly depressing prospect. I’m at that time of life where I start thinking “hmmm, I wonder if this is the last car I’ll ever buy …. the last house I’ll ever live in …. the last time I’ll use the stairs instead of waitng for the lift.” But I digress.

Last year I bought this second hand relocatable home and put it in storage. The idea is I’ll get rid of the caravan and put the home on the site instead. It’s a great site, I’ll put up some pics one day. I had this naive idea that I’d invite some builders to give me a price to do the job, pick the best value for money quote and get it all done well before last Christmas. Hahahahahahah.

Builders are all so busy erecting prefabricated houses (kind of like playing with Lego only bigger) nobody wants to know about some crappy little job in a caravan park that actually requires trade skills. It’s taken me more than a year to find someone to do the job, and needless to say I’m being ripped off, but what can you do? So that will be happening over the next few months and in the mean time I’ve moved into a rented townhouse.

Damn I’d forgotten how much fun it is to move. I swear someone was getting stuff from the new place and sneaking it back where it came from when I wasn’t looking. And of course the PC didn’t like the move so it stopped working, and my broadband connection was stuffed at the new place, so in the first week of semester when I had to get four courses up and running I had to spend about three days frigging around getting online.

It’s just about all done now and guess what? I’m living next door to a dysfunctional family  who think 2am is a great time to have an animated conversation while they hang out the washing. And if all goes well with the builder (which I wouldn’t want to put money on but anyways) I’ll get to do it all again in a couple of months.

So if I seem a bit  this semester, now you know why.