Postcards From Across the Pond

Wow. 2021. WTF happened there? Bit of a shit-show, wasn’t it?

Well, Happy 2022. Let’s hope the New Year is nothing like the Old One, or its older sister, 2020.

I’ve been spending a good deal of the day off-loading stuff I have collected over the various lockdowns, hobbies that I once thoroughly enjoyed but now—with more freedom and less confinement—just don’t have the time, or ambition, for any longer.

I didn’t do anything useful, like learn a second language, something I could simply forget and that didn’t take up any room. Instead, I’ve got jigsaw puzzles and paint-by-number sets and, for some reason, an A0 sized map of Horsham in the 1880s. (If you are not familiar with the A-sizing of paper, a standard sized paper you might use in a printer is A4, and A0 is 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times larger than that. I ordered it because I can’t do spatial multiplication in my head.)

Anyway, all the old stuff is going so we have enough room to fit in all the new stuff we got for Christmas. I’ve talked about the size of this flat before, and about our efforts to squeeze as much space out of it as we can. And when there is nothing left to squeeze out, we bend the laws of physics and invent some. Well, lockdowns and Christmas acquisitions hammered home, once again, the inescapable fact that this flat is simply too small, and there is no other solution except to move. So, we decided to make moving to a new, larger flat our 2022 project.

A good night’s sleep, however, brought us both—individually—to another, inescapable fact: we don’t want to move. We love this flat. Not only have we spent considerable amounts of time, effort and money getting it just the way we want it, in every other aspect it is (very nearly) perfect: it is in a nice, quiet neighbourhood, getting into the town centre involves a lovely stroll across the park, everything we want to do is within walking distance, and the upstairs neighbours willingly put up with my bagpipe practice. We are never going to find another flat that meets all those criteria, no matter how big the second bedroom is.

And so, once again, our thoughts turned inward—wrestling with the improbability of finding more space where there is none—for the solution. And one has been mooted. It’s radical, but right up my street, and I am looking forward to seeing if it is possible.

In the meantime, we are reclaiming what space we can by jettisoning anything that is not necessary.

It’s a fitting way to say, “good-bye” to 2021 (and 2020) and look forward—with optimism—to 2022.

Unless, of course, we are diving headlong into another shit-show.