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A whole new world.

I appear to have moved into the pub.

Now, I don't wish to give the impression that this has come as a complete surprise to me, we'be been planning to do so since shortly after I bought it, but still, it's sort of snuck up on me and now I'm waking up and thinking what happened? How come I'm here?

The reason for this discombobulation is that this move was initially a temporary measure. Mrs Coastalblog had some relatives coming to stay, and it made sense to put them up in our house while we decamped to the flat. It's still a work in progress, but a mad week of cleaning and carting stuff around made it habitable. I had a suspicion that once we were in we'd be back and forth for a few weeks. As with many of my hunches, I was completely and utterly wrong.

As it turned out, once we were here, we were here. Things moved at pace and, now our kitchen appliances have been installed, there's no going back, the old house is unusable. It's left me with slightly mixed feelings, it's good to be here (and, I note, is now the shortest commute of my life, down the fire escape and a stroll into the kitchen) but I'm left with a slightly wistful feeling that I never really said a proper good bye to the old place. There's probably a German compound noun for the sensation, but essentially I wish I'd known that that was the last time I was sleeping in that bedroom when I did so, two of my kids were born in there, after all. As it turned out it was a bit like leaving for University, I left, and I never came back.

Well, almost, we're still back and forth, moving in instalments, but I no longer live there. Yesterday afternoon, in the split between lunch and evening service, I wandered down and had one last sit in the conservatory looking out onto the garden that we've transformed in the last fifteen years and where I've whiled away many afternoons watching goldfinches and coal tits squabble over the bird feeders. That helped, the slight feeling of dislocation eased, when I went back to the flat, it felt more like home.

I could reasonably be accused of sentimentality for that last paragraph but, in a relatively peripatetic existence, that house was the longest I've stayed in one place. I did need to say goodbye to it, rather than just leave.

And now we're here, and things are different, and it's harder to differentiate between work life and home life, a lesson I'm going to need to learn quickly. But it's good, difference is good, doing something new is good, and it probably was time for a change. So, if you need to find me, look for the sign of the Kicking Donkey, I'll be there somewhere.

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