The Home Straight

The past few weeks have a been time of much activity. The apartment is being sold furnished, so I had to draw up an inventory of the furniture items that are included in the sale. Having signed up a removal company to collect the stuff we want and take it to England, I had a second inventory to draw up for that. That meant that between us we could now identify those items which were not on either inventory; in other words, we weren't leaving them for our buyers but we don't want them in England. Fortunately, my wife volunteers in one of the local charity shops so several loads of clothes, books and assorted bric a brac made their way to Nerja. That task, I'm afraid fell entirely on my wife's shoulders as my back prevents me from doing any meaningful lifting and carrying.

Then there was the little matter of my paintings. Having had the space afforded by a staircase with four flights and two landings, plus a living room and three bedrooms, there has been ample space to hang them all. That's unlikely to be the case in our next home! Savage pruning of the 'portfolio' to a handful of special favourites left sixteen pictures to dispose of. Fortunately this is a Spanish village so there was a simple solution; line them all up propped against the wall out in the street with a notice inviting people to help themselves if they saw something they liked, and within a few hours everything had been carried off to a new home.

The other daunting prospect was cancelling utilities and our mobile phone contracts. The Spanish property transfer procedure works in our favour here. Apparently the utilities change over is done by the buyer's lawyer. The phone contract, I discovered can be dealt with easily by phone and selecting English as the language I want to use. Health care doesn't need anything to be done here. I simply speak to the International Section of the Dept of Health on an English phone number. A meeting with the bank this past Tuesday has clarified the onward transmission of the payment for the apartment to our UK bank account. We go to the gestor on the 15th to formally sell our car to some friends, and then to the Notary on the 20th to complete the sale. We have booked into the big hotel in the village from 14th when the removal company come to pack everything and set it off on its journey to England. We will be there until the 26th, so tomorrow I shall book our flight and then book a taxi from Gatwick to our daughter's home - and flop in a heap!

It was daunting in prospect; it was daunting in the process; now though the great bulk of the hassle is behind us and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. What kind of Britain are we returning to? Well hopefully next Thursday will answer that question.