I wrote this post just before we left to move to Australia, but it got buried in my drafts and it made me too sad to read back over it. So I’m publishing it now, on the eve of my first expativersary. It all still rings true.

Leaving has got me all nostalgic about this little house of ours and how much I’ve loved living here and getting to know the town of Bedford over the last 3 years. This is not a post about all the people I’ll miss when we move to Australia, because that makes my chest hurt a bit.

Us – on the day we moved in to our Bedford house. Look how long my hair is!

I’ll miss…

…our neighbour who likes to sing country, opera or Tom Jones at random times of day or night. He’s got quite the theatrical warble and it carries quite nicely through our shared wall; I do find listening to him genuinely amusing and when I was home alone for a period of time it was nice to know someone was around

…sitting on our bed reading while sunlight streams in through our big windows and falls across my feet

…sitting outside on the deck of our suntrap garden when it’s warm, and listening to the neighbourhood dogs barking

…walking to the Coopers house to get a lift to homegroup or church

…big nerdy board game gatherings

…having homegroup camped out on a random assortment of chairs in our sitting room, sharing our lives and our faiths each week

…our beautiful Victorian fireplace, and all the character that comes with an old house

Excuse the mess. We’re all friends here. And this was taken at peak moving/decluttering so… moving right along…

…hiding from the carol singers at Christmas (I just don’t know what you’re supposed to dooooo and I’ve never had a street facing front door before)

…our kitchen, which for all its faults is a great place to cook and bake and has plenty of space for me to spread out

And for balance, here are the things I won’t miss…

…the teenagers next door who thunder up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. I’m not sure when they go to sleep, or go to school for that matter, because I can hear them yelling at each other in the middle of the day sometimes too

…how cold it gets in the winter, and all the draughts from all corners of our charming Victorian house

…our slightly feeble shower (that never looks clean no matter how much you clean it)

…the uninsulated Pantry of Doom, which means subjecting yourself to a temperature change of a significant number of degrees whenever you want to go and fetch something (and the door that sticks)

…the curtain hooks that stick

…the Stairs of Death

…the street light that’s directly outside our bedroom window

…the single glazing in our bedroom that means it’s significantly colder in winter and hotter in summer than the rest of the house. The windows are pretty though, so there’s that

…fighting for a park on the street outside – oh and parallel parking. On the plus side I’m significantly better at it than when we moved here (although that could also be attributed to getting a car with parking beepers)

(Although I will miss the trees that line our street blossoming in the spring)

It’s quite strange to read this back now, and remember the things that I really loved about our old house (I hadn’t really forgotten them) and the things I was really fed up about (I’d forgotten most of these). There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

-Rachel

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