Down in the Valleys

Here we are.

 In Wales.

 In the Valleys.

 In the green part of the world.

 We are here.

 It has been three weeks since we arrived and I have hardly had a moment to write for the blog. Have you missed me, oh best beloved? I have missed you. My life is so full of blessings and good things and happiness, but it has also been rather busy and hectic.

 We have just moved to another country after all.

 Let me just say, it has been a strange time of attachment and letting go. We found as we packed that there were lots of things we could let go of. Things we loved, but somehow it felt right to give them up. Our collection of 40+ hedgehog figurines were lovingly boxed up and sent to St Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital so they could sell them in their gift shop to raise money for animal welfare. Visit them here http://www.sttiggywinkles.org.uk/  to see all the good they do for animals. They even said some of our stuff might go in their hedgehog museum!!!  

We also gave up our rock and fossil collection. Really, if I am honest, it just collected dust. It was on top of a book shelf (one I had to stand on my tippy-toes to see) and so I rarely saw it (or dusted it) and we knew it could be better used elsewhere. We gave the rocks to my old school for their science cupboard and the fossils to one of my favourite students who used to drive me potty with his hyperactivity and his constant tapping and humming, but enchanted me with his deep thoughts and ability to take anything electrical apart and put it back together again. He also said funny things like “George the third is my favourite king of England because he went mad” but he couldn’t write the alphabet.

not actually our books, but it felt like that

 

We also weeded about a hundred books, which brought us down to about 573 books.

 

Yes that is brought it down to 573 books.

 

We still have a lot of books. 

 

We looked at things that we have loved, but were extremely fragile and decided they might not survive the move so we gave them away.

 

K-9 was adopted into to a very good home--the Doctor Who crazy daughter of a friend.

 We had a lovely wooden tree that we used to decorate with each season, changing the decorations with each solstice and equinox. It was so fragile that every move we had ever made within Hitchin we had asked a friend to drive it over so it wouldn’t get broken. That just wasn’t an option with this move. So we gave it away.

 

But don’t worry--I came up with a wonderful plan to have a similar but much more compact version that I will share with you soon! Plus some extra wonderful to ways to mark the seasonal changes. Stay tuned!

 

 

 

In the end we gave away dozens upon dozens of boxes to charity shops.

But there was still so much stuff.

 

So very much stuff.

 We like to think of ourselves as minimalists but clearly we are not. We may have a more minimalist lifestyle that most of our peers, but damn we have lots of stuff.

 

Lots of good stuff.

 

Art and books that feed our souls, but take up way too many boxes.

 

But we wouldn’t want to live without them.

 

We wouldn’t be us without them.

 

So I don’t mind.

 

Okay, peeps, that was the getting ready stage--stay tuned for the actual moving day!