Moving out

Cath reminds me that we moved to Blackburn in 1983, so deciding to move to Berwick-upon Tweed is significant. Still, we feel that we would like to choose where to be for our retirement, rather than being driven by the need to find work.  It has taken nearly a year to sell Albatross Villa, which we have occupied since May 1989 but, after two extensions, major alterations and landscaping, it is time for stage 3 of our lives.

The frustrating business of moving reminds us why we have avoided it for so long. Bad faith or ineptitude lower down our chain led to a long period of vacillation and uncertainty and a complete unwillingness to allow enough time between exchange of contracts and sale completion. As a result we have had half our stuff boxed up for weeks and then only 5 days to pack the rest before the removers arrived to take it away. This was not nearly enough for an orderly house clearance and we had to work very hard to keep the removers (Baxters who moved us in 1989) supplied with stuff to move. We just managed it but it was stressful, not least because they kept putting stuff on the van that I needed for last minute jobs and cleaning. We lost the main tubes and brush from the vacuum earlier today and need them to clean through in time for completion on Monday. They were towards the front of the van and, fortunately, were found and returned to us before it was too late.

All was gone by about 1:30 to a heated store near Leigh, apparently. The pile of stuff we kept back to tide us over for three, six, nine months (who knows?) does seem worryingly large but we very much need wine and computers. But do we really need a Japanese mushroom brush and a yellow plastic builders' bucket and a small hifi?

And so, to to the newly-constructed Premier Inn in Blackburn. How different the Boulevard and the station are from when we arrived here in August 1983. Blackburn then, too, had only one hotel, The Saxon Inn, a fake tithebarny motor inn type place but generally the town was on its knees following Thatcher's harrying of The North and the closure of so much more industry on top of a prolonged decline of the cotton industry from 1914 onwards. The town centre is tidier now and there have continued to be significant improvements in living standards over our time here. That trend may now be reversing, as reduced home ownership, zero hours contracts and the impact of disruptive technologies take their toll. But the town has benefited greatly from the accelerating entrepreneurialism of the younger Asian populace.

We have now come back from an excellent meal of fish, chips and mushy peas at The Oyster and Otter in Feniscowles, The Hordern Rake when we moved here, and are relaxing with a bottle of Chateau Lary 2014, a modestly-priced but very pleasant Bordeaux from The Wine Society's fantastic Clarets For Drinking Now case. Tomorrow we return to cleaning and minor decorative works and a final visit to The Millstone to say goodbye to Russ Bedford, our neighbour who, like a number of others is a fixture.