I've just woken up from a 2 hour sleep. And I never sleep in the daytime! Probably not the best of times to write a blog, but somehow I feel inclined. So much has happened since I last wrote.
The house sale completed on Friday, just as it should have done. The removal chaps turned up at 8.30 and all the contents of the house were loaded by 9.30. As we took one last walk around the place I felt curiously unemotional, but welled up when one of our neighbours caught us on the way out and gave us a good luck card. Even though we did so much of the DIY ourselves, I don't think I'm particularly attached to the bricks and mortar of our house. But I'll miss Stoke Canon a lot.
The call from the Solicitors came at 10.30. Paul took it, I was driving. The house we had bought 20 months ago with the intention to set down roots in Devon for good was no longer ours. We had stepped off the cliff and into the unknown.
And so we headed off to Oxford. The journey was fairly uneventful, we took what we needed for Friday night. To-ing and fro-ing from car to flat we met 3 other people who live in the block, and all were lovely, asked us whether we had everything we needed and if there was anything they could do. What you'd expect of trainee-vicars I suppose.
We had dinner at the Bat and Ball pub in the village which was absolutely super and for the one and only time that day it actually felt like it might just be my 25th birthday!
Yesterday, the men turned up again at 8.30. We spent the morning unpacking boxes and positioning furniture, a job we didn't manage to complete, and headed back to Somerset at midday, a journey which should have taken 2 hours 20 minutes but took almost double that due to all the holiday traffic.
This morning was our last morning at St Davids and, actually, the most emotional moment of the whole weekend. I knew it would be. St Davids has been such a wonderful place to be. I somehow managed not to cry through repeating the mantra of 'now come on Hannah, you're going to be a vicar, if you blub now however are you going to manage weddings and funerals?' But it was a struggle. We'll visit, of course. But my valuable days of being a normal congregation member in a church now appear to be over. I think that St Davids will feel like 'my church' for a long time yet.
On the way back to Somerset from St Dave's we snuck by Barton Close. There is a car and a van outside, a blue sofa in the lounge and mobiles in the bedroom window. I felt strangely happy that someone was enjoying the place.
St Davids aside I thought I was handling the weekend pretty well; chilled-out, relaxed, taking it in my stride. And then I came over monumentally tired a couple of hours ago. I said to Paul, I think sometimes you think you're taking things in your stride but the effects of change run pretty deep. And, I suspect, the effects of 4 hours sitting on the A303 staring at Stone Henge run pretty deep too.
Well, writing this post has woken me up at least. So I'll splash my face and get myself off to Nan's. These few days are for finishing off at work and making the most of some quality time with the fam. See you later.
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