Moving With Children - Redux

I'll admit it.  I hate change.  Actually, that's not true.  I love change, I just hate changING.  This may come as a surprise.  After all, I DID uproot a perfectly content family and move them to the rainiest, greyest, most expensive place on the planet on a whim, but that's different.  That was change initiated by ME.  That kind of change is A Good Thing.  Moving to London, Good Thing.  Buying a Mac, Good Thing.  But today, due to events largely outside of my control, we moved house.  Not a Good Thing.

For starters, there's the issue that it wasn't ME who initiated the change, it was our landlord.  He's lost his job in South Africa and has to move back, so he and his family need a place to live.  As our lease was conveniently at an end, out we went.  And there's the fact that the only house we could find that would actually fit our American furniture (for example, we brought with us a bed the size of Texas), is kind of on the wrong side of town and has very little storage.  By very little, I of course mean none at all, unless you count the shed and the spare toilet room that we've pressed into service as a coat closet.  Yes, there's something unsettling about having a slash in a room full of jackets, but it's either that or leave them outside.  

Then there's the heat.  The house has no thermostat, just a timer.  So our house has two temperatures: hot and otherwise.  I didn't discover this until after we'd taken possession of the place.  Caveat emptor, you may say, but seriously, would YOU think to check whether there's a means of controlling the temperature in a residence you were considering living in?  Who the hell installs a heating system with no thermostat?  I had the managing director of the estate agency around to validate my findings (or lack thereof), and he tried to sell it as a benefit by drawing a comparison to his under-floor heating system, which apparently needs a few hours notice to heat his house.  "But with this system, the house will get warm immediately"  As he was quite posh, "immediately" was pronounced "ee MEED jut leah".  Gee, thanks, bub, and I suppose you'll give me the rundown on the fab Instant-On Lighting, right?

But then, there's the kitchen.  Ah, the kitchen; the soul of the home.  Except that our soul is apparently a hard little pimple on the ass end of the house.  Diminutive counters and a dearth of cabinet space, an aging electric stove squeezed into a corner and fixtures from the Thatcher era make our kitchen the culinary equivalent of a double-breasted suit, shiny with overuse and two sizes too small.  Julia Child is doing turnovers in her grave.

So why, you may well ask, did we choose to move here?  In actual fact, it's really not as bad as I've made it sound.  The house is very old, but it has some gorgeous and seemingly original Victorian features, like big thick doors and chunky moulding (I do love moulding) and intricate ornate plasterwork on the ceilings.  It's an Upstairs, Downstairs sort of place, we've got the fancy rich guy part, and a couple of Russians have the servants' quarters in the basement.  I wonder if anyone's told them what I like for breakfast.  

The kids bedroom is also large enough that we can fit both of their beds AND both of their dressers in.  Now Michael won't have to sleep on the pullout mattress under Caroline's bed, and he can keep his clothes in a proper dresser, not the plastic 3 drawer thingy we've had him using.

It also runs about £300 a month less than our old place and, get this, includes a gardener twice a month, so it appeals to both my unemployed status and my terminally sedentary nature. Woohoo!

I'm sure that once we get everything unpacked and put away, and once we get used to the chavs down the street and the Russians living in our basement, it'll all be fine.  It's funny, though, that the kids seem to have inherited my distaste for changing.  Tonight, his first night sleeping in his OWN bed, Michael wanted to sleep on the pullout mattress under Caroline's bed.  You just can't win with us.