Ephemeral Isle

The Moving Never Stops

I read an article a while back with the headline “Are Men Obsolete?” I didn’t give it more than a second’s glance. It was the sort of piece that editors run every couple of years in the misguided belief that it’s sensational instead of fatuous. I’ve been reading that sort of thing about men, pubs, PCs, Western civilisation, white men, white Europeans in particular, and the human race in general over the past thirty years and they all have the same tone. Some tidbit of information about parthenogenesis, web-based applications, wine bars, immigration, or even the weather as the turning point that would herald the extinction of the item in question with the writer, in a fit of revealing wishful thinking, implying that no great loss would be involved. Normally, I don’t give any thought to this sort of boilerplate journalism, except that I couldn’t help thinking that the answer to “are men obsolete?” is: “Not as long as women keep moving house.”

I don’t know where women get the impression that I’m some sort of a navvy. For most of my adult life I’ve been a teacher and writer with little natural inclination to lift anything heavier than a pint of Guinness and with encroaching middle age the drop in stamina and the rise in aching knees makes the inclination even less. Yet, as a man who has known his fair share of women in his day, I’ve learned that if I am involved with a woman, sooner or later she is going to ask me to help her move. And by help, I do not mean being asked to nip ‘round to the post office for some change of address forms or making sure that the phone service is switched over. Help means hauling boxes, bundles, anvil collections, and various loose bits of equipment from one domicile to another. This will also involve several flights of very narrow stairs, wildly inadequate vehicles, and possibly animal life. It goes without saying that there will also be at least one bizarre disaster which will have me looking over my shoulder for Rod Serling, such as the time that I was helping a girlfriend move from Bergen to Oslo only to end up shifting her kit from a derailed passenger train deep in the mountains.

As a married man and father, I’d hoped that encroaching respectability would somehow lift this burden from me. Turns out that it just multiplied that stuff to be moved by at least three and adds a toddler to be kept track of and away from the steak knives during the proceedings.

The last time we had a major move; we rented a lorry and did the hauling ourselves. The big stuff, of which there was way too much, we managed to get up all those flights of stairs without too much grief, but the frequent trips up and down during the course of the day to shift the medium and small stuff caused my knee to come near to collapse and the first few days in our new place saw me literally hopping up and down the stairs.

I swore that I would never go through that again, so this time we hired a company of professional movers. No problem, I thought. Just box everything up and let the lads do the rest. God, was I the optimist! The movers not only came late, but when they finished they left behind a few “small things” that we were supposed to transport ourselves. When it came time for us to pick up these “small things” it turned out to be enough to fill four pick up trucks. Now, these things didn’t just leap into the truck by themselves. Oh, no. Somebody had to haul each and every one down the stairs and out to the kerb. Since my wife had to watch the baby, that left yours truly to once again sacrifice his knees to the move despite having shelled out almost a thousand bucks to the alleged movers.

After we moved two pick-up loads to the new place, the other two were supposed to be driven up to my in-laws for a jumble sale. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas. When we’d started the move, the weather had been sunny and warm and had remained so straight through, but as I schlepped down deck chairs, boxes, and lamps, the clouds began to gather, the air rumbled and as we pulled away from the kerb the first load was caught in a very atypical thunderstorm and was so soaked in a matter of minutes that we just gave up and drove the remainder to the municipal dump. Then it was back to the old place to remove picture hooks, Spackle the holes, and make some sort of an effort at cleaning. This takes only a few minutes to write, but over a fortnight to accomplish from beginning to end. Having a 21-month old in tow who tried to eat the Spackle, drink the window cleaner, climb the ladder, and hang herself on the blinds cord naturally expanded this period to several parent years. At last, we dropped the keys on the kitchen counter for the landlord to collect and hauled the vacuum cleaner and a few odds and ends down to the car, but like a final twitch of a dying monster the old place took a last shot at me when I nearly ran into a low hanging branch that had caught me on the forehead at least twice in the past.

To quote Ron Stoppable: “Place of Evil!”

We still have boxes dominating every room of our new home, there are pictures to be hung, things to be sorted for the storage unit, the contents of my office to somehow be unearthed (Lord knows where any it will go, since I don’t have an office anymore), but since every obsolete male muscle in my obsolete body is screaming in fatigued agony and I have a massive ache in my obsolete sinuses from all the dust from the obsolete move, I think I’ll just close my obsolete eyes and hope it all goes away. That never works, but it’s worth a shot.

2 May 2004

Overlooking the Sunglasses Factor Department

Adrian’s triumph at the World Tanning Championships was short lived.

Monday

3 May 2004

Coming to a Cinema Near You!

Tuesday

3 May 2004

One Day in Piccadilly Circus

At this point, Howard swore that he would never make another election bet.

Wednesday

5 May 2004

We are experiencing technical difficulties. Normal services will be resumed as soon as possible.

Thursday

6 May 2004

Perils of the Space Age

Damn! I warned Carl about chugging that crate of Slimfast!

Sorry about the lack of a new column yesterday. Emma had an asthma attack, which is the equivalent of hitting the Skip button on my day.

Friday

7 May 2004

Famous Last Moments

Most people are not aware of Mary Poppins’s fate during a Zeppelin raid in 1918.

Saturday

8 May 2004

Troy Premiere

The opening night audience for the new blockbuster Troy were a bit disappointed to learn that the Brad Pitt stuff was just filler and that the film was really a biography of Mr. Donahue.

9 May 2004

Happy Mother’s Day

Foresight Lacking Department

Though it impressed the ladies, Harry realised too late that leaning casually against a car that had been sitting out in the summer sun all day was not the brightest of moves.