The Swedish house when I moved.
The house sale turned out to be too good to be true - the buyers got cold feet when they realised that it requires quite a lot of hard work and money to keep an old house from falling apart, regardless of how charming it looks...
In the middle of this process, I moved without the family. First to an apartment on High Holborn, which was quite ok and a nice ten minutes walk from the office. Then a flight back to Sweden to pick up the car and some furniture so that I could take possession of the house in Guildford.
My brother and I made the drive (almost 1000 miles) in the annoyingly slow family Renault in a day and a half using Google maps print-outs to guide us, and assistance from home in finding a b&b in Gent in Belgium. The landlady was much impressed with us having a call-centre back home to sort us on the way - we were quite thankful to Mel that we didn't have to sort it ourselves... And apart from it being very close to the Red Light district in Gent, it was the perfect place to stay.
A 1000 miles...
When driving out of the diesel-smelling belly of the Calais - Dover ferry, my greatest worry was going over to the wrong side of the road... It turned out to be quite easy, and a signpost at the slip-road for Maidstone service station actually told to keep on the left side of the road in Swedish ("Kör på vänster sida av vägen"). I guess quite a few Swedish people pass by, and forget which side to drive on...
Having moved into the house, I have been living here for about two months with one bed, one chair, one table, one lamp, a coffee machine and a kettle as my only companions. That has been an interestingly spartan way of life, and it was quite a weird place to go home to after work...
The Guildford house in its spring splendour. The confused man to the left is me.
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