The Move – April 1st 2008.

Of course we had final packing to do and it was all a bit stressful. I left in the van at about 10:30. It was windy and the high sided van was buffeted all over the place. As I approached Forth road bridge there were signs all over saying the bridge was closed to high sided vehicles.

Naturally this didn’t apply to me – but I was fighting with the wind and I didn’t want to risk it so I diverted via Kincardine. Clearly no white van man worth his spots would have done this and it shows I’m a sham of a white van man.

Jussi Ailsa and I met up at Dalwhinnie (twinned with Las Vegas) for lunch. They’d left Dunbar about an hour after me and arrived in Dalwhinnie about 10 minutes ahead of me. After a fine lunch we set off again.

I trundled along at a steady 60 passed Inverness, up the A9. It was still very windy and crossing the bridge to the Black Isle felt a bit hairy. On and on….. I had planned to stop at the campsite café in Lairg, but it was shut so I carried on looking forward to a coffee at the Altnaharra hotel.

After Lairg the road goes single track – but the view of the road, especially from the heady heights of a Mercedes sprinter, is fab, so I was able to keep to a fairly steady 50. It was only after encountering a BT van and a rubbish truck that I decided a steady 40 and no fifth gear would be better. The fully leaden van had a pretty long breaking distance.

“Lammer auf dem strasse” is a sign that the Altnaharra is close and boy was I looking forward to that coffee. They serve good coffee in cafetieres with home made shortbread and a pick of the daily papers, or Hunting Shooting Fishing magazine if you prefer.

The Altnaharra Hotel was closed.

I had a couple of bananas to keep me company though. The road to Tongue takes you passed a huge loch and it started to dawn on me – big time – I was moving man – this is my new stomping ground – **cking look at it. **cking **ll. **cking **ll. This was repeated – many many times, with various emphasis and variable volume on that part of the journey. I simultaneously marvelled at my vocabulary – but really – no other words could express the rich depth of my emotions at that point.

This is amazing – well done Simmy boy! Well done Jussi. Well done Ailsa. Unbelievable. Wow man!

I was the first to arrive at the cottage. Jussi and Ailsa had taken several detours but they soon arrived too. We got in, let the cats out and cracked open the champagne as the cats scratched and sniffed their way around our new sitting room.

After a bit of van unpacking it dawned on us that we had singularly failed to comprehend the shift from a big 7 room house to a small 4 roomed one. All that packing is going to have to be unpacked – essentials sorted out – and then repacked to return to Dunbar and thence to storage.

In our stressful last minute packing we’d failed to pack Ailsa’s bear bag – that bag with the special things she really really wanted to have with her. Aaargh the guilt. Poor Ailsa. She took it very well and resigned herself to it without tears. Very brave of her – but at the same time that degree of emotional control suggests that the temporary loss of things so dear to her pales to insignificance against the anxiety she holds for this new life.

On the other hand, when she first arrived she ran around shouting “I was made for this place.” She’s as mixed up as I am.

Jussi cooked our first meal – potato scones with Belhaven smoked trout fried with Crunchy Carrot Veg Box runner bean doused in The Co-op Truly Irresistible Caesar Dressing. Not gourmet – and here’s a tip house movers – it’s a good idea to plan and pack your first meal, make it something nice and celebratory – but I was very grateful that Jussi had the energy to cook.

I’d lit the fire – so there was a glow to the dining room – though precious little heat – and this goes onto my list of things I should have realised I would miss about living in Dunbar - Warmth.

I was done in, late and sleepless nights, early mornings, the general stress of moving and an 8 hour drive in an unfamiliar van in strong winds and single track roads followed by a couple of glasses of Champers had truly finished me off. I was in bed by 8:30.

Jussi on the other hand was a Whirling Dervish. She’d knocked back two cans of red bull to keep her from driving off the road.

In my thermals and under two duvets I slept like a trout.

Day One – Wednesday April 2nd – Of badgers and posh shortbread
I was awake by 5am though. Partly woken by the cats scratching about but mainly by a great looming sense of…..THERE”S THINGS TO DO! I poked my leg out from under the duvets and quickly realised my mistake. It was far too cold! So I stayed in bed contemplating, not, it shames me to admit, the lengthy list of things to do, but rather what I was going to write in my blog. I fear this is insufferably vain – particularly as I have no evidence to suggest that anyone is reading The Blog. In fact it’s so vain I would go so far as to say it’s vainglorious. I say I would, but I wont because I don’t know what vainglorious means. But it sounds right doesn’t it?

It may be that vainglorious means “pertaining to badgers”. In fact perhaps I could get this blog quoted in the OED as the first use of the word with that meaning. That would be an achievement – it’s one thing to invent a word but to take an existing word and give it a new meaning would be something else. Examples of such usage might be:
“Daniel’s project management was renowned for being vainglorious”
“Chris’s approach to selling carrots was vainglorious”
etc
No offence intended obviously.
So dear imaginary readers, do me a favour this week and use vainglorious as pertaining to badgers. As you can see from the above examples it can be quite challenging to find a situation when you want to say ‘pertaining to badgers’, but I’m sure you’ll manage.