It’s more than two weeks since we moved from South London to South Bath; eighteen days since we swapped the bars, restaurants and sirens for the stillness and silence that surround our new home when darkness falls.

It feels like a lifetime, or another world at least. We lived the communal life on the fifth-floor of an art-deco block of flats with views north and south over shops, streets and houses; now we live in a cottage with walls twice as thick as my head on a hill I can barely walk up.

The transition from one to the other is a blurred memory, a series of fevered images punctuated by desperate resolves …

… never again will we stay up until 5am saying goodbye to friends, especially if they are the same friends who will be helping to carry stuff the following day …

… never again will I assume it will be fun to carry a 13-inch thick double mattress that doesn’t bend, down ten-flights of stairs and then, at the other end of the move, into a tiny cottage with a narrow, sharply-turning staircase. (Note to mattress manufacturers: please put carrying handle on all four sides.) …

… never again will I hire a van that’s too small to take all our possessions …

… never again will I select a route to the new house through West London on a day when a home nation is playing at Twickenham in an international rugby tournament …

There were some positive resolves too, such as: always stop for an XL double bacon cheeseburger when you are at your lowest ebb (thank you, Joe), and when finally it’s all over and the back-door of the ludicrously small removal van has been slammed shut for the last time, always eat pizza and drink prosecco.

Cigar optional.

We still have things to collect: books, films, photographs – all the knick-knacks and miscellany that make a house a home. Such as the microwave. How could we leave that behind? And how can I make my morning porridge (porage, porrige, parritch) without it? Don’t talk to me about saucepans and hobs. It’s simply not possible. I create concrete.

And we are still unpacking, still sitting on camping chairs, still hunting through boxes, still learning that our cottage laughs in the face of level floors and right-angle corners, still appreciating that to live in and around Bath is to embrace hills, still remembering to step up from one room and down from another, still sitting up at night and listening to the utter quietness outside, and still staring at the jaw-droppingly beautiful views that make living here like being on holiday every day.

Which way is home?

But we’ve begun to put down tenuous roots. We’ve met the neighbours (and even swapped bumper paint as we master parallel parking), been to a local wine tasting, drunk in the local pub, been to the local cinema, cycled along the canal and established a broadband connection. We know in which bins to put our rubbish, where the post-box is, and when the trains run to London.

Perhaps the thing I like most about our new life is the physical effort that’s needed to move around. My car has broken down (again) and so now I must walk or cycle to get anywhere, and because anywhere is a hill, it’s like being on a permanent resistance machine in the gym, or being in one of those dreams where your legs become leaden and useless.

Even moving from room to room in our new home requires a level of athleticism I don’t have. The garden is level with the first floor and the front door is six-feet above the pavement. But I am adapting, and I’ve learned that the best way to carry anything up any of these narrow winding steps and staircases (other than a 13-inch thick double mattress) is to walk like Groucho Marx – knees bent, back horizontal, head up.

Cigar optional.

Categories: Strays

Tags: Bath, Groucho Marx, Humour