We really are back!

We dined last evening on baguette and cheese and rabbit terrine and drank the juice of freshly crushed apples with strawberries the size of for want of a better description, big strawberries, for dessert and then collapsed at seven, unable to stay awake a moment longer, grateful that we had elected not to dine in the motel restaurant.

We woke of course, not entirely refreshed, a little after one, and wondered why they just couldn't move France closer to home. By five we had nodded off again until a much more sensible hour had arrived, waking to our first day in a "proper" spring.

When it all boils down spring seems to be just lots of lovely green shoots and every tree covered in flowers and petals falling from the sky, paving the roads in pink, and we think we like it. When the time came to move once more, we headed west instead of east and drove in a big loop to Lagarde, breathing in the countryside as we did, trying at once to linger in the scene for as long as possible while anxious to arrive. We could have driven through it all day, but we had things to do, people to see.

Again that feeling of not having left enveloped us, and we had coffee with Jacques and Maggie, and tea with Chris and Helen, and coffee with Bill and they told us of winter and wondered how it was that it seemed like yesterday that we had left, and we told them how much we had to do to unpack and clean the boat and how we must get going, but we didn't.

We had planned to do quite a lot yesterday actually.

Now we plan to do it today, or perhaps tomorrow, or maybe next week.

It's good to be back!

Perhaps it's the jetlag, coupled with the cleaning and moving-house lag, but we are distinctly confused by the impression that time has stood still in our absence.  Just as when we arrived home last year, we were uncertain of whether we had really been in Europe, now we can find no evidence that we ever left.

Strangely when we arrived in Luneville this afternoon, it too felt like home, even though we are as yet a day and thirty kilometres from the boat.  It was the  baguettes we were served at the two am "dinner" en route that triggered the feeling that not only were we back, but that nothing could possibly go wrong, and even if it did we had made no plans so how would we know?

In Paris despite our fuzziness, we fluked a succession of flawlessly timed transportation interchanges, which allowed us to avoid a three hour wait in a cosy cafe in Paris, and allowed a one hour wait in a cosy cafe in Nancy instead, and saw us arriving in Luneville exactly two hours before the car rental people were due back from lunch which as fate would have it, was where they were when last we dropped a car off to them.

Perhaps therein lies the clue that we have indeed been away.   Had we not, we would have planned for but one thing.

We would have planned NEVER to arrive ANYWHERE at lunch time, EVER.

Time Travelling Again

If the past five months went quickly, the last two weeks have simply dissolved.

The house is habitable and (mostly) furnished and we have been able to thoughtfully dispose of much that which was too large for the new more diminutive spaces. Actually they are more like the spaces that we were accustomed to for all but the last eight years, so it's a bit like pulling on a favourite old pair of jeans that one hasn't worn for a while, right down to being the same length but not quite wide enough in spots, but if we breath in we still fit.

Yesterday, mid afternoon we declared it done and drove the rental car to the big smoke in a sort of jet lagged fug. This is not necessarily a good thing when one hasn't yet commenced one's journey, and it must be said that we left with the feeling that there simply weren't enough goodbyes to go round properly, wondering how those we hold dear have put up with our busyness for the past few months.

Suddenly it all stopped. The Big E hid his tears behind his shades, ours held off until we were out of sight. We were in the air, and the washing machine that has been our life turned off, we left the roller coaster and ran to the merry go round.

Here we sit in Singapore. In transit, in our old seats in the Qantas Club, trying to believe that we have actually been home, trying to come to terms with all that has happened in that time, excited to be seeing our Northern friends.

By dawn we will be in Paris.

Shabby Chic

It had been a rather full-on weekend by the time we found our way through the boxes to the bridal suite, discovering the mattress and a couple of objects which felt vaguely enough like pillows to rest our heads upon them.

If indeed it is not age that wearies them, then surely it is moving house a week before moving countries.

Despite, or perhaps because of the distractions, we have made good progress.  Thirty years of other people's lives are slowly being erased under swabs of bleach or being captured in vacuum cleaners.

We have achieved shabby.   Now we just need to find some chic.

Pandemonium

The scruffy hordes descended on Dickyworld in numbers today, large numbers, although not quite as large as the number of years we were celebrating since the birth of the matriarch, and it must be said it passed it's first test in flying colours.

There was a bit of flying dust too, helped along by one of the mother's of our grandchildren demonstrating the powers of her super duper vacuum cleaner, rendering the stairs and carpeted areas walkable in bare feet, a not insignificant achievement.

Mister Four seemed to approve of his special bath in the linen cupboard, and pronounced the plastic channel drain bisecting the backyard to be "cool".  Miss Lily did her bit too, polishing every visible timber floor with the knees of her pyjamas, while the Big "E" feigned disinterest as only a four month old can do.

By the time the sun was over the yard arm, we'd been to the beach and failed entirely to buy her a new iPad in the face of the world wide shortage, but succeeded to pass off some of our now surplus furniture over the course of our twelfth coffee for the day, and Raymonde produced the most extraordinary chocolate truffle cake and we ate and drank and laughed until the wee small hours.

Actually it seemed like the wee small hours, but from memory, by the time the little hand had reached the nine, I was the last man standing.  Barely standing, but standing none the less.  

Happy Birthday Jojo.

Fatigue

We've been here forever and we haven't scratched the surface yet.

We have disposed of enough boxes so that we can walk around the house at least, and a few gallons of bleach later most of the things that once smelled ever so faintly of someone else's dog no longer do, at least until it gets damp again, but the ceiling fans have thus far escaped.

We are unsure quite what to do you see.   They once were white, but now they are not, like wanna be Rastafarians they hang from the centre of the living room and our bedroom, with dreadlocks of dust trailing in their wake.

If we could crochet, I'm sure they'd have little caps by now, sort of bulging beret things that would keep their hair safe, but we can't.

I think they are in for a trim tomorrow.

The First Day

Today really did feel like the first day of the rest of our life, we have barely a week until we leave the madness that has been the last quarter of a year, and the endless round of "welcome backs" is merging rapidly with an equally endless round of new farewells.

As the sun rose over Twoway Creek this morning, it was the dawn of the day after we bade the Home of the Biting Midge our final farewell; the first day in Dickyworld completely unshackled from the past decade, ready to start afresh.  That journey is finally over and a new one begun.

We think we are really going to like it here.