18 years later…

I moved back in with my husband and two children!

And my brother and his girlfriend are also living here. Yet there remains a spare bedroom still. I think my parents house is too big!

We left Lynda & Stuart’s at 10am and headed straight for Sussex. Thanks to the toilet on board we didn’t even have to stop for loo breaks so drove straight down, sustaining ourselves with cheddar biscuits and opal fruits (they’ll never be anything other than opal fruits to me!).

It felt like the oddest homecomming ever really. When I was barely 18 I went away for a long weekend to stay with my then boyfriend who had been sacked from his job for stealing and gone home to stay with his parents. I remember catching a glimpse of myself, car keys in one hand and big overnight bag in the other as I walked past a certain mirror in my parents house and thinking I looked somehow different, as though I was leaving home although it was only for a few nights. But it felt like a big adventure, driving my car, all alone, along the south coast to stay with a family I’d never met any of before in such very strange circumstances.

I left properly when I was 19, to move in to a rented flat with Ady. I think my Mum was a bit pissed off as I’d only just started paying her keep, having barely finished my A levels and started working full time. I was not properly ready for it really, I remember the deal being I bought all the food shopping instead of paying rent in our shared flat (shared with Ady and another ex boyfriend) – after the first week’s failure when I bought enough proper food for just one dinner but lots of packet cake mix and jellies we re-looked at that arrangement and I went thirds on everything instead with the proper grown up (Ady) taking responsibility for things like food shopping.

We moved back in for a month while our house sale went through when I was 20 – the gap between our tenancy on the flat running out and getting the keys to our house. It was tough, even after just six months to return, living in my old bedroom now dominated by our double bed and clutter.

My old bedroom is now Frazer’s room and has been for years. The room Ady and I are staying in was my parents bedroom when I was a little girl and then the spare bedroom for years after they built an extension. It will always be ‘the pool room’ to me as for several years we had a pool table in here which Dad and I used to spent hours playing on until Mum got fed up with it and sold it.

I’ve no real idea how it will pan out staying here this time. Dad says Mum was already muttering about it last night but she’s been lovely to our faces today. I have made it clear we are here because we want to spend time with them NOT because we have nowhere else to be and that we intend spending some time away anyway. Also that we want to help out rather than be a nusiance and will do cooking / cleaning etc. So far she’s said she would rather we use the laundrette for our washing!! Dad was horrified at this and told us to pretend we have and use the washing machine and tumble drier here while she’s at work!

We arrived home and Dad and Frazer were here so much gleeful reunions all round, then the kids got stuck straight into unloading a few boxes to find their stuff – geomags came straight out as did some of Scarlett’s reserve team of cuddly toys. Davies is desperate for plasticine and his animation station so I imagine those will be dug out tomorrow.

Mum arrived home and Dad offered a takeaway for dinner which we gratefully agreed to, so a massive Indian was ordered and delivered. That was really nice and came with a couple of bags of free chips and a complementary bottle of wine :). We had a bottle of fizz in the van which had got bunged in with all other remaining alcohol in our fridge when we left but grown in meaning to represent something fragile and special that had travelled all that way with us (we also have a tiny pine tree which Ady dug up when we first reached Scotland and repotted. It’s been tended and watered all the way around Scotland and one day we hope to replant it and have it as a Christmas Tree). We opened it this evening to mark the end of that period of the adventure.

Mum & Dad have been initially interested and supportive of the whole Rum idea. I am sure there will be issues and concerns raised along the way but Dad appears to have had some sort of epiphany (must be his age! Seriously though he has lost several friends and peers in the last year or so and suddenly concluded life is very short and you must make sure you really live it) and is advocating chasing dreams and experiences and making every day count. It’s a bit like listening to myself…

The kids are sleeping upstairs, insistent on sharing a room, we have moved enough stuff around to put our bed back together and actually sleep in it tonight although we are still surrounded by boxes and piled up stuff. Over the next day or so we’ll go through everything. Some can be got rid of – we have clothes that are now too big so they may as well go and we’ll kit ourselves out at charity shops in the next weeks, and everything needs repacking really to be in any sort of condition to be moved all that way north at some point in the future.

I have a real mix of emotions – tiredness at being at the end of one big adventure staring the next chaper in the face, I imagine all four of us will go down with coughs and colds now we are safe inside a warm, dry house with running water and electricity and no WWOOFing work to do or worrying about where we’ll sleep tonight. I am relieved to be here, knowing we can relax, the kids can delight in their stuff and their grandparents, trepidatious at living with Mum and Dad for a month, excited at seeing family and friends again and both thrilled and terrified at the propspect of what happens next!