A Trailer, Packing Boxes, Whiskey and Prozac

They say that, aside from the death or serious injury of a loved one, moving house is the most stressful thing you can do.

I’ve never been entirely sure who ‘they’ are supposed to be – government, the Mob, or that Illuminati that Tom Hanks chases after – but my guess would be if moving is so stressful for ‘them’ then they must lead pretty dull lives.

Try telling James Bond that packing your belongings into boxes and getting some hairy guys to move the telly was more jarring on your nerves than having a laser beam pointed at your balls, getting chomped by metal teeth, or whacking your willy in Grace Jones.

I’m sure he’d disagree.

My guess is that the more nice stuff you have, the more you worry.

We’ve all the seen the Stuttaford’s Van Lines ad, with the sad country song and everything falling out the truck, and one can only envision the twenty grand flatscreen smashing to bits along the highway.

But, as usual, there’s more to it. It’s not just the imminent destruction of all we possess that makes our hair go grey.

I know a lot of hoarders – people who can’t bring themselves to even throw away a cardboard bogroll holder, let alone that yellow, dog-eared copy of Green Lantern 50 – and the thought of having to dump a lot of that useless shit they’ve accumulated over the years leaves them petrified with grief.

Also, it doesn’t take a fancy couch and frilly pillows to make a comfort zone. Leaving behind space that has become so personal can well a nostalgic tear up in the old wailing ducts.

Settling in a new place takes time. You need to get used to traffic noise (or lack thereof), find out where the local KFC is situated, and draw a mental map of the place to avoid cracking your ankle on a chair or walking into a wall in the middle of the night.

Moving house is generally a pain in the arse, and my guess is that James Bond – cool in the face of Oddjob’s flying hats and bollock burning laser beams – would rather get Pickford’s in than hitch a trailer on the back of his Aston Martin.

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