If I’ve learnt anything over the past few months, it’s who my true friends are. Graham, my son in law, offered to take a week’s leave to come over and help me in January. He arrived at Lourdes airport on a bitterly cold, windy, wet day; he’s never been here in winter before and was shocked by how foul the weather can be. All the energy I’d put into my vide maison had left me feeling flat, but with Graham’s enthusiasm I was soon back up to speed. 

We sorted stuff from the attic; piles to go to the tip, to the charity shop or to be kept and with his encouragement I started the task of rationalising my fabric store. Some fabrics I’d had for over 40 years! If I hadn’t used them yet, I was unlikely ever to do so, so they were boxed up for the charity shop; I actually managed to get rid of quite a lot. The rest we boxed up and put into the now nearly empty wood workshop, along with my sewing machines, threads and other equipment.

We also packed into boxes all the jars of chutneys, sun-dried tomatoes, lime pickle and other home produce from the arrière cuisine ; I had no idea how much there was!

My house buyers arrived with what they had described as their first load of stuff, to put in the garage. The weather was so awful that it had taken them 9 hours to drive from le Mans, instead of the usual 6. They brought three lorries full of stuff, one of which scraped and damaged the guttering on the back of the house and pushed a load of roof tiles out of place. Kieran put the tiles back in place, but could do nothing about the guttering; at least it’s not my problem.

Some local hunters turned up to help them, friends of Jeff, the buyer, as well as several other family members. I gave them all coffee to warm them up, then closed the door on them and left them to it. The garage is bursting with their stuff and there’s a lorry and a huge wooden box on the drive too. They came back the following day with workmen to estimate for various jobs; I just tried to ignore them, I don’t want to know what changes they plan to make. They both seem like nice people, but when they told me that I’m welcome to come back anytime, I just burst into tears; once I leave this house, I can never come back, it will live in my memory as it was.

Once they’d left, we went back to sorting the attic; Graham, being a photographer, was delighted to come across a slide projector and boxes of slides and we spent most of the following evenings digging out boxes of slides at random, mostly having a good laugh (and occasionally shedding a few tears) at what we found. Kieran’s promised me a digital scanner for my birthday, so I’ll be able to share them with the family. 

All too soon it was time to take Graham back to the airport; next time I see him I’ll have moved and will be living in a much smaller space, where I fully intend to live by the ethos of William Morris, who’s quoted as saying  “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”. I must say that decluttering has lifted a huge weight from my shoulders and now that it’s nearly done I certainly don’t want to leave to my children the sort of nightmare task I’ve had to undertake over these last few months.