A friend of mine, on reading this old post, about my 16th house move in 18 years, said she felt a little bit sick at the thought. Well, friend, if you are reading this, I think you may be about to vomit, because we have spent four and a half years at our current flat, and, knock me down with a Covid-infected feather, we are moving again. Him Indoors and I have never made it to five years at any of our places of residence since we left home in 1997 and 1998 respectively, so, you know, we thought, let's move house during Ramadan and a global pandemic, because we are MENTAL.
I have shared the above picture with you, taken this morning, because Him Indoors pulled off the miracle of completing the complicated admin involved in getting the keys to the new place today, despite everything that is going on, so the movers are coming at 9am tomorrow. You read that right.
The movers are coming tomorrow.
The. Movers. Are. Coming. Tomorrow.
As you can see, we have packed not a jot, because we are taken up with schooling (me) and work (him). Luckily moving is a pretty common occurrence in Dubai, what with one thing and another, so moving companies will do the lot, pack everything, right down to the 10 year old novelty pants stuffed at the back of your underwear drawer, and then pull down your curtains and put them back up in the new place. So it's fairly easy. In normal times. Now, of course, is not normal. Normally, one of us would supervise and the other would take the kids off somewhere, but there is no somewhere because everywhere is closed.
The malls are open but kids under 12 are not allowed in them, and even if they were, entertainment options such as soft play and cinemas are closed. You are allowed to take them out for a walk. For one hour. Parks are closed. Swimming pools are closed. What the hell are we going to do with a five year old and a one year old while we get our worldly possessions crammed into a lorry and driven 500 yards down the street to our new, bigger apartment? I have literally no idea, but I think it is going to involve going for the obligatory hour long walk when the movers first arrive, then taking the kids to the new place to run around until the movers get there, then bringing the kids back to the old place to play cleaning so the movers can do their thing at the new place.
Why the hecking heck of all f***s are we doing this to ourselves? Well, there was a half-hearted plan to move to an apartment nearer DB1's school because the commute is a pain at 7am and there is a school bus option, but it goes all around the houses, and it would take her the best part of two hours to do a half-hour journey on the way home.
This did not happen because of some tedious stuff to do with the landlord changing their minds about notice periods needed to move from one development to another, even though the landlord owns both. But, we did have the option to move somewhere bigger within the same development, and because there are currently five of us in a two-bed apartment, which, as Him Indoors would say, is not premium, we decided to go for it because if we don't do it now, we won't get the option until the same time next year, rents are at an all time low, so we are getting a bargain, and the alarming combination of restrictions plus UAE summer means we are spending a heck of a lot of time indoors, so we need more space.
There is also the fact that our unbelievable bellend of a downstairs neighbour has started thumping on the ceiling like a caged gorilla when DB1 does her 15 minute PE lesson twice a week, I can only assume because she has the temerity to to sound like she might be having fun and these people are the enemies of joy. It is, of course, beyond him to give us a tiny bit of a noise-based leeway for a child who is literally imprisoned in a two-bed apartment 23 hours per day seven days per week. Of course it is.
Five of us, you say? Have I squeezed out an extra kid without mentioning it? That would be very unlike me. No, our formerly live out nanny has had to become live in for the time being as the Covid restrictions mean she would not be allowed to come and go from our house. As great as our nanny is, it has been somewhat cosy over the past month or so. The new place has an extra bedroom, a little room that I can use as an office. And a store room. A store room! AKA a place where I can throw all the stuff in that I swear I am going to sort out but never get around to, close it and forget about it. This may not sound ideal, but believe me, it will be better than the hourly rages about the fact that my house is full of stuff that I have nowhere to put and there is nowhere I can look without seeing a surface piled up with children's toys, school-related gubbins, lego, old notebooks, stationery, nick-nacks and piles of dust.
This will be fine of course until more stuff makes its way in to fill all the spaces, and the stuff in the store room gradually forms into a monstrous sentient being made up of old wires, forgotten birthday cards, clothes that I am too fat for and old baby paraphernalia that I want to sell but can't because of the restrictions, and crawls out and assumes command of the apartment and makes us all its slaves.
Anyway.
I really should go and do a bit of packing so I do not have to suffer the indignity of a team of movers hurling my ancient nursing bras and piles of dusty desk-based rubbish into the same cardboard box.
Wish us luck.
I have shared the above picture with you, taken this morning, because Him Indoors pulled off the miracle of completing the complicated admin involved in getting the keys to the new place today, despite everything that is going on, so the movers are coming at 9am tomorrow. You read that right.
The movers are coming tomorrow.
The. Movers. Are. Coming. Tomorrow.
As you can see, we have packed not a jot, because we are taken up with schooling (me) and work (him). Luckily moving is a pretty common occurrence in Dubai, what with one thing and another, so moving companies will do the lot, pack everything, right down to the 10 year old novelty pants stuffed at the back of your underwear drawer, and then pull down your curtains and put them back up in the new place. So it's fairly easy. In normal times. Now, of course, is not normal. Normally, one of us would supervise and the other would take the kids off somewhere, but there is no somewhere because everywhere is closed.
The malls are open but kids under 12 are not allowed in them, and even if they were, entertainment options such as soft play and cinemas are closed. You are allowed to take them out for a walk. For one hour. Parks are closed. Swimming pools are closed. What the hell are we going to do with a five year old and a one year old while we get our worldly possessions crammed into a lorry and driven 500 yards down the street to our new, bigger apartment? I have literally no idea, but I think it is going to involve going for the obligatory hour long walk when the movers first arrive, then taking the kids to the new place to run around until the movers get there, then bringing the kids back to the old place to play cleaning so the movers can do their thing at the new place.
Why the hecking heck of all f***s are we doing this to ourselves? Well, there was a half-hearted plan to move to an apartment nearer DB1's school because the commute is a pain at 7am and there is a school bus option, but it goes all around the houses, and it would take her the best part of two hours to do a half-hour journey on the way home.
This did not happen because of some tedious stuff to do with the landlord changing their minds about notice periods needed to move from one development to another, even though the landlord owns both. But, we did have the option to move somewhere bigger within the same development, and because there are currently five of us in a two-bed apartment, which, as Him Indoors would say, is not premium, we decided to go for it because if we don't do it now, we won't get the option until the same time next year, rents are at an all time low, so we are getting a bargain, and the alarming combination of restrictions plus UAE summer means we are spending a heck of a lot of time indoors, so we need more space.
There is also the fact that our unbelievable bellend of a downstairs neighbour has started thumping on the ceiling like a caged gorilla when DB1 does her 15 minute PE lesson twice a week, I can only assume because she has the temerity to to sound like she might be having fun and these people are the enemies of joy. It is, of course, beyond him to give us a tiny bit of a noise-based leeway for a child who is literally imprisoned in a two-bed apartment 23 hours per day seven days per week. Of course it is.
Five of us, you say? Have I squeezed out an extra kid without mentioning it? That would be very unlike me. No, our formerly live out nanny has had to become live in for the time being as the Covid restrictions mean she would not be allowed to come and go from our house. As great as our nanny is, it has been somewhat cosy over the past month or so. The new place has an extra bedroom, a little room that I can use as an office. And a store room. A store room! AKA a place where I can throw all the stuff in that I swear I am going to sort out but never get around to, close it and forget about it. This may not sound ideal, but believe me, it will be better than the hourly rages about the fact that my house is full of stuff that I have nowhere to put and there is nowhere I can look without seeing a surface piled up with children's toys, school-related gubbins, lego, old notebooks, stationery, nick-nacks and piles of dust.
This will be fine of course until more stuff makes its way in to fill all the spaces, and the stuff in the store room gradually forms into a monstrous sentient being made up of old wires, forgotten birthday cards, clothes that I am too fat for and old baby paraphernalia that I want to sell but can't because of the restrictions, and crawls out and assumes command of the apartment and makes us all its slaves.
Anyway.
I really should go and do a bit of packing so I do not have to suffer the indignity of a team of movers hurling my ancient nursing bras and piles of dusty desk-based rubbish into the same cardboard box.
Wish us luck.
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