Packing Up

My ex-step brother rang to remind us they're having a barbeque on Saturday, which was lucky because, what with all this gadding about, it had gone clean out of my mind.

"And are you still going back to the UK soon?" I asked

"Yeah. Sunday actually"

"What? This Sunday? Do you still want to stay in our house?"

"Yeah, if that's okay"

"Well we'll have to get a TV licence. You can't sit there for three weeks without watching the telly"

"No, not really. But I can take some of your stuff back, I'm travelling business class and they usually let me get away with 38 kilograms"

"I'll pack a bag".

So this evening I arranged for a new TV licence, though I was a bit stumped when it came to the bank details and sat looking at all the cards in my British purse (because I have an Australian one as well), unable to remember which account was which. And then I dragged a case out from under the bed, one of the cases that doesn't have mould growing inside it since the damp Sydney winter, and I started packing. Packing up.

It's exciting packing up, exciting thinking about returning to a normal life and a normal house with washing machine that doesn't eat your clothes. First I put in some bath towels; he can't stay at our house without our bathtowels, and in any case, Darren's stolen one from almost every hotel we've visited, so we've enough here to last us a month.

After the towels went the walking boots, my shirts for work and our fleeces, but I wasn't sure about Darren's Berghaus coat so I went back into the sitting room where he was tapping away at the internet and held it up.

"What about this?" I asked. "Do you need it?"

"I'm going to Lancaster" he replied, a statement my brain struggled to compute; were the chopperdocs sending him overseas again? To Lancaster? Because he'd definitely need that coat in Lancaster, or hang on, was it a Lancaster bomber? Because an image of one flashed across my mind. I looked at him quizically.

"In January, I mean. I'm in Lancaster for six months"

"Lancaster? Jesus. What sort of commute is that?"

I went back into the bedroom and zipped up the case and suddenly I didn't like the idea of packing up. Suddenly I wanted to stay in this grotty flat, cockroaches or no cockroaches.

Back to the NHS training scheme, the programme for training consultant doctors playing havoc with their personal lives; not just the time and personal expense of sitting exams (which cost thousands of pounds for every attempt) but the long hours and lack of predictability, the rotas that change every week, the same rotas that don't get published until a week or so in advance, making planning your personal life a real headache. The nights, the weekends. It's depressing.

And after all that, after years and years of flogging themselves to death, so many of them planning to leave the NHS for Australia. You can hardly blame them.

Anyway, I've written Steve a list of things he needs to know about the house; the ignition doesn't work on the fireplace, that sort of thing.

"Daz, when you reset the burglar alarm, what do you press?" I shouted

"I can't remember"

"And the telly, you have to press a series of buttons to get it to work"

"Yeah, but I can't remember them"

"How do you turn the central heating on? I can't remember"

"Neither can I"

Oh well, your Dad knows how everything works. Now where's your door keys? We'll have to send him with those because his flight gets in at seven o'clock Monday morning.

"My keys?" there was a long pause. "I haven't got a clue where my keys are".

We looked at each other blankly. We've abandoned our home and the only thing we remember is the address.