What a strange carry on. Most peculiar. As I type these words, I am sat on a sofa in a hotel room not far from the centre of downtown Auckland. In fact not that far from a perfectly nice home that we own. It’s no exaggeration to say that I could put on my running shoes and be home (more on that term in a minute) in less than ten minutes. And no, I’m not a fast runner!
Well how did I get here?
It’s been a odd few months. Firstly up was leaving a perfectly pleasant and well paying job and not having another one to go into. Elected unemployment you could say, or as I like to call it, temporary retirement.
Hot on the heels of temporary retirement came the uplift. Which is a rather grand way of saying the contents of our home - there’s that word again - were packed up and shipped out. According to the tracking data, they are currently stacked in a pile at Singapore docks waiting to be collected and transported on the next leg of the journey northwards.
The dust hadn’t even settled when ten days of intense decorating commenced. Boy that was hard work. More tiring than working for a living for sure. Normally I don’t mind a bit of DIY because the end results are worth it, but in this case it all seemed a little pointless - it was for the benefit of the potential buyer and not us. But room by room, and in the heat of an Auckland summer, the work got done.
With our furniture gone and the house looking spick and span, we now needed to rent some more furniture to help stage the house and thus encourage a sale. So more furniture and fittings were brought in by a firm offering such services and the house was ready to be shown to the hopefully interested public.
So surrounded by chairs we couldn’t sit on, a sofa we couldn’t lounge on and beds we couldn’t lie on it took on a surreal aspect. It was our house, but it didn’t feel like our home. Not really. Even the books that had been brought in to decorate the shelving that had been erected just wasn’t us. With titles like “An introduction to calculus” and “Wood fired gourmet pizza recipes” it made us sound like pretentious twits. Hey, I heard that!
So what exactly is home. Hopefully not where one’s possessions are - it would be hard to call a container in Singapore docks home. Equally it can’t be just bricks and mortar. We do have a shelter over our heads but it doesn’t feel like home, not in the way it used to. Surely then if it’s none of those things, if it’s not a physical manifestation then it must be less tangible. But something that creates a strong emotional response yet can’t be packed up or sold. People, places and memories perhaps.
Whatever home is, I’m really looking forward to being in one again. Sure, camping in our own place has been kinda fun but the novelty is starting to wear off. Nah, scratch that it has worn off. Sleeping on camp beds and sitting on camping chairs has been okay but it’s not comforting, it’s tiring.
As is tiptoeing around our own house for fear of making too much of a mess - we’d only have to tidy it up again, probably at short notice if a viewing had been arranged. Camping equipment aside, we’ve got one bowl, plate and knife and fork each. A single frying pan, one pan and a spatula makes up our entire cooking equipment. Yes, I know we could go and buy some more but what a waste. Besides, I’d much rather whinge about it. You know I would.
It has been really tempting on several occasions to say stuff it and just dive headfirst onto one of the beds. We’ve been avoiding using the beds, and the rest of the furniture for that matter, because it wasn’t ours and we didn’t want to spoil the staged look. It was only recently, when I was trying to hide some dirty laundry under one of the beds, that I realised that they were actually just inflatable mattresses resting precariously on plastic storage tubs, all carefully disguised under bed linen.
I’d like to think that I would’ve seen the funny side of it, having dived onto the fake bed and then suddenly disappeared into the inflatable mattress as it sunk between the crates. I’d like to think that, but in my current state of mind I have my doubts.
And so we booked ourselves into a nice hotel
In downtown Auckland for the Easter weekend. A little bit of luxury away from the house that used to be our home.
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