Stop Press: teddy bear arrives

After 85 days and 12000 nautical miles my boxes arrived yesterday morning at my house; confounding my belief that they were in fact somewhere in the Thames estuary. If life ever gets a bit dull, I can recommend sticking some of your favourite stuff in boxes and storing them in the loft for 3 months. It's very exciting opening them. Having picked up what seemed like an unfeasibly heavy wall-hanging, my lovely red vase from the Pier, which had survived the perilous journey by sea, fell out of the bottom and proceeded to disperse itself quite dramatically across the floor. After a moment feeling like a muppet, I philosophically told myself that this was symbolic of the need not to be attached to material possessions. Anyway, the arrival of my 'stuff' provided a catalyst for sorting out the house, and for directly addressing Kit's obsession with hording absolutely everything in case it 'might come in useful'; this involved emptying the space under the stairs of countless empty boxes, and using it to store other things - which actually means my kite, surfboard and kite equipment...

Most exciting, and therefore equally sad, was the discovery that I had indeed packed my bear. There are also several prints I've collected from my various wanderings over the years, which are now hanging around the house. Having exhausted every possible t-shirt/shirt and jeans combination (I only had two pairs) in the past 3 months I now have what can be fairly called, in both the collective and literal sense, a 'wardrobe' of clothes as opposed to a 'rucksack' of clothes. We also now have a stereo at last. The makeover has prompted Kit to frame some of the amazing prints of photos he's taken of Australian landscapes, which we will hang around the house too; he's also got a great photo of him clipping a ball to third man for four, which will hang next to my rugby photo from the Sydney Morning Herald when I played here in 1996.