Home Sweet Home Again - Sunday 14th Sept

All that remains of our forty boxes

It's done! ALL the boxes have been opened, and thanks to the huge amounts of cupboard space, plus a very big garage, we have actually managed to find a home for everything. I made it my final mission to clear the dining room table this evening, and the old oil cloth has been removed, the surface polished and once again it has become part of the decor instead of a dumping ground.

All we have to do now is to load up the piles of collapsed cardboard boxes and get them down to the tip tomorrow, and it will all seem like a dream. Of course, what would make it like a dream come true is for the remaining three bags to appear, but for the moment, they are on the other side of the Channel, and right now, we are too tired to care.

Thank heavens for the fact that we have a long passage-way which leads from the kitchen through to the bedrooms and I think it is going to become the photo and art gallery. I had no idea how many framed pictures we had, and I feel sorry for Jean who has to do battle with steel nails and a concrete drill to make any impact on the solid stone walls of the house. He has been such a star and all our old favourites are up on the wall and in the right place. We noticed that there were any number of hooks already in the walls, but not a single one was where we needed it to be.

And so our little village house which has stood empty for so long is really taking shape as our new home, and it is such a joy to once again be surrounded by our possessions. We always laughed when we were on the farm, and said that if a thief were to appear, we would happily follow him round until he found something of any value. The value of everything lies in the stories and the memories which go with them, and from a tiny piece of carved rock which came from Jean's birthplace in what was then French Indo China, to the treasured items of pottery from Lesotho and the water colour paintings of Africa, we have travelled many miles and lived many different lives in order to make this collection.

Family and friends have added to it with things as diverse as photos of new grandchildren and fridge magnets from extraordinary places plus some wonderful paintings done by my mother who proved that retirement is an excellent time to take up watercolour. My book collection had to be severely cut back when we left Miami, but all my favourites are still with me, and the photo albums are safely on a shelf awaiting a rainy day when I might look through some of them again and wonder if I really did live that extraordinary life.