I know I’ve forgotten something, but in the meantime

This moving business has proved to be much more emotional than I thought it would be. Look. Here is my father’s recipe for worcesteshire sauce (complete with vinegar stain) thrown into my suitcase for safekeeping in the last move. And here is a colour photograph of my nanna and her sisters, taken by my grandfather and pushed into a book, one of the few books I brought with me. She died an untimely death many years ago, but I have, oddly enough, said her name a great number of times in the last few months as youngest boy grapples with the names of people he has never met but seems to want to know.

The plane leaves at midnight, which makes for a long day, particularly when it begins at six, because everyone is too excited to sleep.

The apartment, dusty and dismantled, smells still of the sunblock the mister applied to the children before they went off for their final swimming lesson this term. Youngest boy can get himself from one side to the other now. Wish I had time to tell you more.

I have a New Yorker and a Margaret Drabble for the plane, although hopefully I will not need them, because the lads will drift off to sleep, easily, and for long enough. Eldest boy has Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, though he has already read it six times since we bought it on Wednesday afternoon. Youngest has another Junie B Jones. And fully charged DS machines of course, though I do not encourage their use, because the lads end up fully wired if they get too much DS.

My mostly-formed script is in my bag, along with a diary, notebooks of half-formed thoughts, The Comic Toolbox book and supplemented by a shit-load of cords and wires, two for nearly every appliance – one to charge and one to connect to the netbook. SLR camera, simple camera, phone, my ipod, lads’ mp3 players…not only is there no such thing as the paperless suitcase, those wires don’t weigh nothing you know.

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