Steph and I moved to Bromsgrove, a small market town in northeast Worcestershire in the English Midlands, in July 1981. We had just returned to the UK after a little over eight years working with the International Potato Center (CIP) in Peru and Costa Rica in Central America.

In January that year I flew back to the UK to interview for a Lectureship in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Birmingham, and was successful. Since I was scheduled to begin there on 1 April, we (and three year old Hannah) returned from Peru in mid-March and moved in with Steph’s parents near Southend-on-Sea in Essex. I then moved up to Birmingham, spending Sunday evening to Friday there each week, and returning to Essex for the weekend.

And while starting my teaching career at the university, I immediately began the search for somewhere to live.

Before arriving back in the UK we had already asked different estate agents (realtors) for details of properties close to Birmingham to be sent to my in-laws, and we had several hundred to peruse (and mostly eliminate as being unsuitable or not in the right area). Anyway, to cut a long story short, the house we purchased was, in fact, the very first house that I went to view. It was the Wednesday of my first week at the university. There were no classes, since Wednesday afternoons were turned over to varsity sports. So I headed out to Bromsgrove as being the easiest place to visit, just 13 miles due south of the university on the major arterial A38 road. I looked at three properties that afternoon, but knew immediately that the house we eventually bought was the right one for us.

I phoned Steph that evening, and asked her to come up to Birmingham to view the house. We put in an offer, and after successfully negotiating a mortgage (at 16¾% interest!), moved in during the first week of July. Thirty nine years ago!

And now we are on the move again. Last year, we finally decided it was time to be closer to family since we no longer have any ties in Bromsgrove. Elder daughter Hannah and her family live in Minnesota in the US Midwest. So the USA was out of the question (for several reasons). Our younger daughter Philippa and her family live in Newcastle upon Tyne, some 250 miles northeast from our current home. We bit the bullet last autumn, and even by November had begun to look into the housing market in the Newcastle area.

We put our house on the market in mid-January, and before lockdown in mid-March we’d had about ten or so viewings. But nothing promising. And with the Covid-19 lockdown, all real estate transactions were put on hold. Just before the official lockdown, Steph and I had already decided to self-isolate, being in our early 70s, and not accept any more viewings. However, we did go ahead with one final viewing as we had agreed to it a week earlier.

Then everything went quiet, until a month ago when estate agents were permitted to begin operating again. The folks who had viewed our house just before lockdown asked to return for a second viewing. Although we hadn’t wanted to go ahead with any ‘speculative’ viewings, we thought a second viewing was one we would entertain.

We ‘escaped’ from the house while the prospective buyers looked around, who made some measurements with the builder they had brought along. The outcome? They put in an offer the following morning and, after a counter offer from us and a little negotiation, we accepted their revised offer. So No. 4 is Sold (Subject to Contract). The sale is in the hands of our solicitors, and hopefully we will have exchanged contracts with the buyers before too long and agreed on a completion date.

Hopefully we’ll be on our way to Newcastle before the end of August, and there will be no glitches.

We have already settled on a local company to undertake the removal: quite expensive but actually not as expensive as I feared it might be. Steph and I decided we would do much of the packing ourselves, since this gives a good opportunity of carefully going through all our possessions that we have accumulated over almost 47 years of married life. And decide what has a real sentimental value and we want to take with us, and what not to take.

A couple of days ago, the removals folks delivered a whole stack of collapsed cardboard boxes. I’ve been busy putting these together, and packing books away.

We’ve been quite ruthless, and still have nine or ten boxes of books. I hate disposing of books. Normally we would donate spare books to one of several charity shops. However, considering the Covid-19 crisis and that these shops are only just opening, and have been overwhelmed with donated items as everyone it seems has taken advantage of the lockdown to have a clearout, we’ve reluctantly sent several boxes of books to landfill.

Until recently there was space in my double garage for my car and many other items that were stacked to one side. But we have had a massive clearout here. Some old items have gone to landfill, or recycled in one way or another.

We have been able to gift a whole range of items: loft boarding, paintings, some small items of furniture, and others through a global network known as The Freecycle Network, that originated in Arizona in 2003. We belong to the Bromsgrove group.

It’s simple. You post an OFFER, or request for a WANTED item, and wait for responses to land in your email box. I have been astonished just how quickly some items have been snapped up, sometimes within minutes of posting an offer. It has been gratifying to see items that we no longer need being placed in homes where someone can appreciate them, rather than going to landfill. We still have a three seater leather sofa to get rid of, and a matching armchair. That’s going to be a challenge. But who knows? If someone decides to take them, they’ll need a large truck. Upcycling is the thing!

We don’t have anywhere yet to live in Newcastle. Had there been no pandemic we would have been able to travel to Newcastle and continue our search and viewings for a new home. As it is, we decided weeks ago that we would find a rental property and use that as a base to search for our next home in a more leisurely fashion.

Wish us luck! Newcastle here we come. We look forward to exploring Northumberland, its hills, moors, and superb beaches. Another exciting chapter in our lives is about to open.

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