Open Writing

Change, no matter how beneficial the end result, is always stressful. Marriage, birth, death, divorce and moving house are listed among the most traumatic experiences.

Marriage, of course, is a combination of changes: from being alone, or living with one’s parents, one has to adjust to living with someone else. No matter how much you love your new partner, there are usually vast differences to be negotiated between you – budgeting, spending and strange sleeping habits are just a few areas that can cause differences of opinion or lead to serious arguments.

Getting married frequently also means moving house. In our complex society in which people marry, divorce and marry a second, a third and sometimes more times, complications are added to those of ‘merely’ moving house: “Whose dining room suite will we keep; and how many books are you bringing with you? Forty-nine boxes of them? Nine book shelves? Wherever shall we fit them?” and: “I love that painting, but really can’t live with any of those; and I just can’t bear nick-knacks…” This last, if you collect bibelots, could almost ring a death-knell to you relationship.

Later, a new house is bought; one that both partners fall in love with. Soon, the home they settled into together, where all their earlier differences were resolved, is stripped. The washing machine is disconnected – what a nightmare! Pictures come off the walls, revealing ugly nails and chips in the plaster. Boxes clutter the hallway and windows are naked without curtains. The removal company arrives, furniture bumps its way out of the house and you negotiate who will carry which valuables in your respective cars.

After a lot of hard work at the new house, curtains are hung, hi-fi’s and washing machines connected, boxes unpacked, and furniture placed in the perfect position. The new house gradually becomes home, a place of comfort and joy.

That is, until the builders move in to make those desirable alterations you’ve agreed are necessary: adding an additional garage, breaking a doorway from the new garage directly into the kitchen and ripping up the lawn to be replaced with paving that will never need mowing.

The house is filled with dust. Though the workmen are outside most of the time, there is continual noise, and you can’t leave the house unsupervised. It’s like being in prison – no time for a hair appointment or a cup of tea with a friend, and no escaping the endless thumping as the ground is compacted in preparation for the paving bricks. There’s nowhere to hang the washing other than in the bathrooms – the house looks like a laundry.

Then, for two weeks the workmen don’t arrive. Everything is in a state of suspension, including an endless supply of dust, which settles and is vacuumed away, only for more of it to settle and be vacuumed. There is a gaping hole, covered with a yellow plastic sheet, in the kitchen wall, leading to an incomplete garage; outside, dry, very hard ground lies dormant and dusty – or muddy when it rains. The builder, when questioned, says he is waiting for the ground to settle; the doorframe he ordered hasn’t arrived yet. Besides, his men are on strike. If only they’d finish the work and let you live in peace! It’s all so messy. One consolation - there’s time to work out at the gym, have that hairdo and meet a friend for tea before the upheaval begins again.

At last, the renovations are finished. You and your spouse breathe sighs of relief as the last of the dirt is vacuumed and polished away. Your home is beautiful, and filled with love, sweetness and light.

Until - “The walls are looking a little grubby, aren’t they?” he asks one day. “I think we should have the place painted.”

Soon, along with cans of paint, metres of sandpaper, ladders, brushes and rollers, in move the painters, and out move the furnishings. Once again your home is stripped. This time it happens one room at a time, all the contents moving to odd corners in the house where there is room for them. Books are piled on the dining-room table, rugs are rolled up under couches, book shelves and beds move from room to room as the painters progress. You spend three nights in the spare bedroom without access to your bathroom or your cupboards. Thank goodness for a comfy bed and the spare bathroom!

One room is finished, put back together again and immediately becomes unliveable as it turns into storage space for everything from the next room. If you can bear to remain in the house with the smell of paint permeating everything – or dust flying as ceilings are sanded and walls scrubbed in preparation – it’s a good opportunity to have a grand clean-out, to throw out or give away those books you’ll never read again, to re-sort your filing cabinet and part from one or to bibelots. Or maybe it’s better to go out to work and leave your loving and patient spouse to supervise the work this time.

Just as the end is in sight – only the study to finish and the doors and door-frames to do – the painters disappear. The builder in charge, the same one who did the earlier, excellent but long-drawn-out additions, explains that the paint for the doors hasn’t been mixed yet and besides, he needs his painter for another job on the other side of town.

After a week or two, at last the paint is ready. Your spouse fetches it. You live in hope that tomorrow the painter will arrive and finally finish the tedious job. Then, just maybe, you can settle down once and for all – for at least ten years – to enjoy your home in peace and quiet.

“You know those cracked tiles in the passage floor, Darling?” your loving spouse says, in that same tone of voice which presaged the move, the renovations, the painting… In your mind you can already hear chisels and hammers, smell glue, envisage upheaval, weeks of inconvenience and interrupted work before things return to normal.

You may be excused, at this point, if a loud, shrieking sob escapes your lips – “I want to go ho-o-o-ome!”

He may be excused for reminding you that this is home, sweet home!

Until next time, “here comes Treble!”

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