Empty Nest

It’s my birthday this weekend, and as birthdays go, this has to be the most bizarre birthday I’ve ever had.

It starts early in the morning, and I’m torn between ‘really not wanting to wake up as this is the last time I get to sleep in my bed’ and ‘Yay it’s my birthday, I want to wake up and celebrate’. But in the end I have no choice… People are arriving early to start taking stuff away, and that is what this day will be all about; letting our stuff go.

Instead of having a nice cuppa in bed, taking my time unwrapping gifts and generally having a lie in, Stuart gives me my cards and some gifts of chocolate and wine before quickly getting up and getting ready to get to work.

Soon the first van arrives, and my beautiful bed is taken down, along with other furniture. Throughout the day people are popping in to collect various items from the loft, from around the house and kitchen.

By the end of the day, our study, bedroom, dining room and little lounge are empty bar a TV stand and a spare bed. There are a few little bits left to be picked up during the week, but at this point we’ve probably sold anything we could and we’re left with little bits for the charity shop.

Our friends, who bought a lot of our furniture as they were just moving house, have kindly agreed to let us keep the kitchen chairs until we finally move out, so that we can sit down to have our dinner.

We finish the day with a lovely roast dinner and a glass of prosecco, with a strange mixture of feeling exhausted with a sense of achievement in a really weird way on a really weird day.