Last week I put the two dogs, one cat and two chickens into the car and left our house for the very last time. With my mother who had come to help, we made our way slowly - the car was very full - and within half an hour we were outside our new home ready to start our new adventure.
And it’s going to be very different to the last seven years or so.
This new house has a normal sized garden, no pond, no stream, no place for ducks and no hundreds of trees.
Now if you’ve been following me for some time you might well be a little surprised by our decision. I shared the stories of the chickens and the ducks. I’ve talked about how they’ve inspired me, how they’ve given me confidence, and I spoke about the land and the animals with love.
The truth is, though, I’ve been wanting to move house for some time. With land and animals comes responsibility and a substantial commitment of time. When my son started preparing for his GCSEs I got a bit of a shock. How come he was suddenly old enough to take his exams? Soon he’d be taking A-levels and then perhaps leaving home for university…what about all the plans we had to travel and explore with the children before they go off and have their own adventures?
We were a bit trapped by the space we had. If we wanted to travel we needed someone to look after the animals. That required money, organisation and quite frankly the benefits of the land for the first time was being outweighed by the burden and responsibility.
Additionally my writing was taking off. I loved it and wanted to spend more time on writing and creating videos and less time on cleaning out the chickens!
Then we had the devastating fox attack. That pushed me towards the decision to move.
We’ve been here eight days and it already feels like home. We moved for the reasons I explained above but I also hadn’t appreciated how knackered I had been living at my old house and how I had this low level anxiety all the time because of everything that needed doing.
So this video is a little diary from May about how I was dealing with the move whilst also trying to write and create. Once I’ve recovered from the move and packing (and unpacking) I’m looking forward to cracking on with the writing and, of course, spending time with my family.