Graaagh; moving. Yes, that's right, I started with a foul expletive - "moving".
Moving sucks.
It's just downright annoying.
It's not unlike being poked in the eye with a blunt stick.
It's not way removed from being kicked in the shins by a whole troop of dib-dib-dibbing scouts wearing bovver boots.
It's one of those "necessary evils" we all know we're gonna have to do one day, and the worst bit seems to be that if you don't do it every now and again it gets harder the next time ... I'm really dreading my parent's next move, with 21 years of accumulated "stuff" to shuffle around ...
I know that Julian must know what I'm talking about. He's not only been in the same place for more than a few months (unlike myself), but his move involved travelling across about a half of Australia. I didn't cope all that well this time (I'm still limping around on the knee I buggered); what chance would I have had if I had to do it all in one single hit?!
But there are a number of things that come to light as a result of all this moving around: just how many parts are in a car, even a simple car. And how much floorspace a dismantled car can take up in your garage, shed, under your bed, in the back of the moving van, and temporarily (despite multiple death threats) on the dining-room floor. And I think I've figured out the mechanism that leads to having more stuff than you ever purchased or acquired.
Yes, I know the project car's only an Escort; which has to be one of the smallest cars around. But they still seem to disassemble to cover a lot of floor. And yes, I do need a few sets of wheels, because the tyres on half of them are bald. And yes, I do need a few entire wiring harnesses because you never know - one might be a dud. And yes I do need to keep two spare sets of guards for it; what happens if one gets dented - they're original Twin Cam guards and they're hard to find ya know.
And what about those little things that never occur to you when you're sizing up a potential house to rent? The weaker, duller and less enlightened folk are inside checking out the size of bedrooms, the number of toilets, the functionality of the kitchen. But of course, those of us with more understanding of what's important in this world are outside pacing out the garage, checking its height and ability to hold important items in the rafters. And checking out how much room there is in the garden shed. I mean, who cares if the toilet doesn't flush; if you can fit both project cars and all associated parts in the garage, then you have to be ahead don't you?
So the shed and garage are fine, but what about the width of that brand-spankers driveway that runs down beside the house? Sure, the garage is great, but when you have to roll shells down the hill by hand because the car trailer won't fit between the chimney and the fence, and that's something you didn't notice until you signed the lease ... grr.
And then, there's the moving itself. All seems well before you look in the previous garage and/or shed. I mean, all your mates turn up, the furniture goes easily on the back of the truck, all the clothes are individually sealed for freshness in their little transportation boxes. Of course, those boxes are always marked with what's not in them, due to writing from previous moving efforts when you cared a bit more, but it's all pretty easy really.
Until you crack the seal on the garage door, and start to look at what's really lurking in there. I mean, there's stuff you never bought which is in there. Junk obviously has a quasi-gravitic effect on other junk, which is able to transcend all space and time barriers. I mean, when did I get an 18RG injection manifold; I've never considered owning a Celica. I do vaguely remember getting an exhaust manifold to match the T25 to a Lotus Twin Cam engine ... the memory is obviously from a time distant because this particular piece of "junk" hasn't yet totally entwined itself in this plane of reality (and does that mean that it'll only work partially if I were to fit it?), so it's only partially altered my memory.
I do clearly recall buying a factory woodgrain kit for the Escort, but when you consider how stupid you'd have to be to buy such a thing there's no way I would've. So it has obviously also attached itself to the junk-pile in my garage and quite completely wormed its way into this world - I bet you could even find someone who "remembers" selling it to me.
Why is all this relevant in any way? It's a warning to you and yours. You see, when it comes to moving house, all this stuff has already been sucked into your "junk black hole", and normal physics applies. That is, it all reverts to normal volume and mass (and therefore, weight), and you have to carry it with you. I tried moving 75% of it and waited for the "junk gravity" effect to take control, but it obviously doesn't happen immediately. So I was stuck with doing a half dozen trailer and wagon and ute loads back and forth. And let me tell you, considering how "light" a 4-cylinder engine reputedly is, there's a helluva lot of weight in a 2-litre Ford "Pinto" motor and a 2.3 litre Volvo engine. At the start of the day a few gearboxes and tailshafts did feel a little heavy; by the end they counted for nothing compared to a Pinto block.
And when all that stuff's safely packed away, it deceptively looks like there's not that much of it and it's controllable.
But I now know that, even as I sit here and type, more stuff is appearing down in the garage. In fact, the windows are open, and I'm sure I can hear the faint rustles of a junk-gravity wormhole forming down in the garage ...
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