HOW TO SURVIVE 46 MOVES

Moving is supposed to be as stressful as divorce, so why do people like me move so often?  I could site insanity, but I think one of the main reasons people move constantly is because of what happens to them as children. My father welcomed new challenges and was ready to move anywhere, but  my mother wanted to be near our large family and wouldn’t move from Swansea. My father’s compromise? To move within Swansea. By the time I was sixteen, I had moved houses and schools six times and I’ve never stopped; I’ve moved from county to county; country to country and learnt a great deal about people and psychology.

Here is a small sample of the incredible things that have happened to me when moving.

I’d given up my lecturing job to write and was living in a beautiful Victorian flat overlooking the sea in St. Leonards-on-Sea. It was an inspirational place where I wrote my WW II novels, but it became blighted by the freeholder; a man who modelled himself on van Hoogstraten, so I was desperate to move. David [my partner then, my husband now] and I were viewing houses in Tunbridge Wells when a stranger gestured to us in the street. A little worried, but intrigued, we walked over to him. He told us his house was just on the market and would we like to view it? We said we would and we both loved it. When we went to his estate agents and he accepted our offer, we were overjoyed. The feeling faded when we tried to get another viewing - the vendor was reluctant. We tried to get a moving date  - the vendor wouldn’t respond. This strange behaviour continued for a month before the estate agent told us [with some embarrassment] that he couldn’t get an answer from the vendor and we should look for another property. We never discovered why he wouldn’t move out and I often wonder if this strange man is still enticing people into his house.

After this debacle, we bought a cottage in Lamberhurst, but lost our sense of humour on the day of the move. When we arrived at the cottage, we were stunned to discover our vendors were still in situ and hadn’t finished packing! Our removers told us that they had another job in two hours and if the vendors weren’t out ‘sharpish’ our furniture was going in the garden. We helped the vendors pack. We even smiled as they drove off; then found they’d removed most of the light bulbs. By this time it was getting dark so the removers put most of our possessions in the garage as they couldn’t ‘see a bleedin’ thing in the cottage.’ After they’d gone, we found a bottle of wine, but no wine opener. I leave the rest to your imagination.

Five years later, we were on the move again to a beautiful Victorian house in Tunbridge Wells, but the move was on a par with the last one. The day the contracts were going to be exchanged, we discovered that the vendors, Paul and Rachel Chandler [ yes, the people who were kidnapped!] had fallen out with their estate agent and wouldn’t speak with him. Our buyers were screaming down the phone to our estate agent saying they were going to pull out if we didn’t sign that day. We couldn’t sign if the Chandlers wouldn’t sign so I asked for Paul Chandler’s mobile number and calmed him down by saying I would speak with his estate agent and sort out the problems so that the chain wouldn’t be broken. It took an hour. When I got back to Paul, he realised that if our buyers pulled out, he and Rachel wouldn’t be able to live their dream of sailing around the world. The contracts were exchanged two hours later.  [Who could have predicted pirates?]

That move should have been our last, but last year, David got a new job in Canterbury so after having to sell our beautiful home under its real value because of the stress [ we had 4 house chains break down! The last one because the owner of the house we were buying decided not to sell two weeks before we were supposed to move in! We had to move into a rented house on an incredibly noisy road, then three months later, into a house in Whitstable which is near the sea. Two moves in six months. An experience I never want to repeat, but my 46 moves have taught me a lot about the pitfalls buyers can face.

Here’s a list will I hope will help you in the future if you’re thinking of moving. 

•    Don’t pack a] your favourite bottle/s of wine, b]  bottle opener, c]  wine glasses, d] emergency food rations, e] kettle and lead,  f] tea, coffee and cups, g] light bulbs  h] the cat, i] your sense of humour with your furniture. Take them all with you in your car.

•        Buy a book called How To Remain Calm in a Crisis when the vendors threaten to pull out of the sale because they hate their estate agent.

•        Remember to label all your boxes correctly and force the removers to put them in the right rooms.

•        Try to get into your new house before your furniture van arrives to make sure the vendors have moved out so you can clean everything they’ve left [mainly dirt] and replace any light bulbs they’ve removed so you can see it.

•        Check the neighbourhood you’re thinking of moving to at different times of the day/night to make sure it’s the right location for you.

•        Find an excuse [like asking about good builders/plumbers, etc] to speak to the neighbours to find out what they’re like before you move next to them and want to kill them.

Good luck!