Anna's BIG MOVE

The late 1980’s in Ireland was a challenging place. It was hard to find employment and opportunities were few and far between. So it was, that like so many of my generation, immediately on graduation I emigrated in search of work and opportunities.
 
I found them aplenty in London – my teaching experience opened the door to my first job in educational publishing and the rest, as they say, is history*…
 
Then a few years ago, after almost 30 years living and working in the UK,
I decided to return to Ireland.

We had lived next door to our wonderful neighbours, the Rehman family,  for almost 16 years, so we told them about our intended move. We had known Atif and Shamila since they were children.

Atif was now married to the lovely Safra and they had two wonderful children. Afif said the family would like to buy our house so he and his family could continue to live in the neighbourhood, and right next to his mother and sister.

That made everything SO easy and the family were exceptionally kind to us in the weeks coming up to our move. Safra and Atif’s mom, Rubina, cooked for us, which was both delicious and so helpful.

The local council, on the other hand – argh!!!
Our houses as you can see, are right on the street, so we had to get a permit for the removal van to park on the street outside for a few hours as it would restrict the street to one lane.

Reader, we woke up the morning of the move to discover that the council had ALSO given a permit to the development opposite to connect utilities that same day – and they’d gotten the upper hand by putting out bollards and signs, restricting the road to one lane (the one we had permission to park in - we needed to park in the area marked with the x).

They even had a sign directing traffic to use the (only) lane outside!

Rescheduling for another day was not an option as the movers had already booked a place on the ship to Ireland!
 
As Tom Waites wisely says,
 ‘the large print giveth and the small print taketh away’

and we were extraordinarily blessed with the young man who drove the enormous removals van. I have never seen anything like it, so readers, I present to you Hunts – who parked on a  dime and saved the day!

Snug!!!!!

There was something poetic about coming back by ship… though our little cat didn’t like the journey one bit and howled from a few miles outside Slough for the 18 hours it took us to drive through England, Wales and across Ireland to Kerry. (There's a whole separate blog about her journey!)

The contrast could not have been more stark – here’s our removals van arriving (our stuff was in storage for a few months while we renovated our new home) and parking in a huge place where locals stored their boats in winter!

Then we started the process of settling in...
I revelled in the abundant berry harvest from the hedgerows around the house - perfect for with my morning yoghurt!

And the journey to the first conference I attended was a little different too - no more M4... which is not to say no more conjestion - but traffic calming measures in Waterville are furrier!

I also set up my office and got back to work...

I learned quite a lot from the move and it's all gone into my new book.
Click on the cover to find out more, and here for moving tips.

UK & Ireland edition

US and Canada edition