Moving house with a hiss and roar

Press, 20 July 1987, Page 4

Moving house with a hiss and roar

By

DAVE WILSON

Wilsons Week...

Laws of nature absolutely govern moving house.

Toothbrushes are always lost, and then found packed in a box of toys. The cat terrifies the new neighbours by performing air raid siren impressions from its carrybox.

The removal men listen to your radio all day but forget to pack it in the van. They do remember to pack two bags of rubbish you had earmarked for the tip. Moving house particularly invokes the application of Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong — and when you least expect it.

Having just experienced the unrelenting application of that law, it is clear

to me that house shifting can appeal only to people who would have liked to organise the evacuation of Dunkirk. But even the best organised organisers must, surely, leave a little something behind — a broom, the rubbish bin, one of the children. We had several weeks to prepare for our shift from Timaru to Christchurch. But in the best family traditions we began packing in earnest only as the big removal truck inched up the driveway. Within moments our possessions had vanished into the juggernaut and with them went my carefully planned routine.

I had laid aside sufficient socks to tide me over between moving out of our old home and moving into our new home —

a gap of a fortnight. I placed the socks on the bed; some men appeared and took the bed away. When this fact dawned on me, several hours later, I appeared at the cavernous loading bay of the truck and inquired of the dark interior, “Is there a bed in here?” “Yes,-mate,” replied a voice from behind the Welsh dresser. “Three of ’em. Why?” “It’s just that my socks

were on the bed, and, ah. I’d rather like to have them with me on the journey north.” “Mmmm,” the voice responded, adding an extra'm' for effect. "Difficult, mate. See, the bed’s in here behind half your household effects. Sorting it all out now would take hours.” “But I have only the socks I’m wearing. What will I do for the next fortnight?" “Wash them every night” At the shout, when packing was completed, that man got the warm bottle of beer. Cats complicate the trauma of moving house. You can’t persuade them of the benefits of living somewhere with six-digit telephone numbers. They must be grabbed in a commando-style operation and forcibly taken to their new home, and there wooed into liking their new surroundings. Some people butter their cat’s paws, lock it indoors for days and heap the finest steaks on it, all in the name of persuading puss to adopt her new home.

In a desperate moment I fleetingly considered — but dismissed — a radical solution: superglue her paws to the kitchen lino. An angry cat transported almost 200 km against her will is a creature to respect, particularly when its claws are

rapidly converting the carry-box into cole-slaw. Releasing this cat is a task best undertaken with great care, preferably by someone else. An irate cat is quite happy to sharpen its claws on a convenient hand. My tolerance of temperamental felines had been tested by the discovery that homes in Christchurch cost an arm and a leg more than in Timaru. This had dawned during early telephone conversations with a real-estate agent who asked for an outline of our wants. “Oh, a nice modern four-bedroomed family home in RedcliffS/ Sumner, with a view. But it has to be under $70,000.” What sounded like gargling drifted down the telephone line and then she composed herself and suggested: “’For that, Sir, I think I could find you a nice kennel. If it’s a house you want in that area I do think you are looking at paying a little more.” “How much more?” I spoke in my keep-it-within-five-figures voice. She gave a six-figure reply. She then suggested cer-

tain suburbs where I knew our neighbours would be gentlemen who liked to practise formation motor-cycle riding. Eventually a former Timaru real-estate agent now in Christchurch saved us from a fate worse than Harley Davidsons. With the passage of time and large sums of money we found ourselves in a new home, surrounded by hundreds of anonymous cardboard boxes that the children were building into Fort Apache. Late that first evening in the house I committed a grave navigational blunder. My internal guidance system was still preset to our Timaru home. In the darkness, and without my glasses, I set out in a sleep-befuddled state to find the bathroom. Accordingly my nose was violently introduced to the hall wallpaper. Muffled oaths filled the air as I staggered through the kitchen and activated the cat-proximity warning system. This is achieved by accidentally standing on the cat’s tall. It was a suitable end to the day — two confused shapes hissing at each other in the dark.