Developments at the Chateau Patterson

I lived in Reading for eight years, went to university there (five years, a long story), ran a small (and not particularly successful) business there for three years, met, (married somewhere else) and set up home with Clare in Reading.

Eight weeks ago we moved, heading east on the M4 to Crouch End in London. It's strange in a way: Eight years, pretty much my entire adult life, was spent in Reading, and now we've abandoned ship, with neither fanfare nor huge fuss. For such a considerable change, it's all happened quite fast. We only really started thinking about moving when Clare got a job in London, which happened at the end of September. We started looking at which bit of London we fancied moving to in October, settled on Crouch End and started house hunting in mid October. We found a flat, (after a couple of weeks looking, we ended up going for the first one we had looked at) and moved in on November 27.

Anyone who's helped me (or me and Clare) move house knows that they usually regret it. Ben has born the brunt of this, over the years, and although he had sworn never to help us again, he relented. We had promised that this time it would be different, and it was. It all went rather smoothly, in fact.

The big difference was that we had a plan this time. The plan revolved around two things. The first was that we needed to be ready to go on moving day, with (ideally) no packing left to do by then, so that moving day would just be about hefting boxes and loading, and unloading, the van. The second thing was that we'd get lots of people to help, thus making it easy for everyone. We also wanted to make the best use of people, and the best use of time, so we decided to ask people in both London and Reading to help, and also to rent two vans so that everyone didn't have to wait around for four or five hours doing nothing while a van did circuits between Reading and London.

We didn't quite make the first goal. We were very close, and we did manage to involve lots of people at both ends, so the dregs of our stuff were taken care of. In fact, they were taken care of remarkably quickly. By the time Ben and I returned from the van hire place (Amusingly, he wound up with another Luton, because there weren't enough high-top Transits) with the vans most of the clearing up had been done, and stuff was being ferried down from upstairs ready for moving.

I then had to take a bunch of things to the dump, and by the time I got back the Luton was nearly finished loading. I was only gone for fifteen minutes, too! The rest of the day proceeded like this. The first van was loaded and gone by 11.00, with Ben and Clare on board. My van was loaded, the house cleaned, and keys handed over by 12.00, and we (Dougal and I) were gone by 12.15. It took us almost exactly an hour to arrive in Crouch End, where Ben, Clare and (another) Matt were busy unloading the first van. We parked up and I discovered that were mostly done unloading. A bit later on Paul joined us, and there actually wasn't that much left to do.

We were finished by 2.00, and people had only arrived at our old house at 9.00! It was the most spectacularly smooth and uneventful house move I've ever been involved in, and probably the best one we'll ever manage.

Needless to say, for those veterans of my previous moves, no-one was more surprised than I.

Things are pretty much settled down now, we've done most of the organisation stuff around the flat, and and we're starting to explore our new area. So far, we like it a lot.

All that's left is for me to thank all those involved (in no particular order): Ben, Becky, James, Dougal, Ian & Sue (Clare's mum and dad, who came up to help and brought fab sandwiches with them), Matt, and Paul. Thank you very much, all of you.

• 22.1.2005, 9.13
• File under: moving house, Reading, London, logistics, backstory