We have moved house. Or rather, we find ourselves between houses, in temporary accommodation while we do work to the house we have just bought, two miles down the road from the house we just sold, smaller in scale but already, for me at any rate, larger in the imagination.
We were very happy in the house we have now left. This was the house that brought us to the island, the house that sheltered us through lockdown and that features, in various guises, in several of our novels. The decision to sell it was difficult and arrived at only gradually, founded upon the fact that the house was too big and too expensive for us to maintain, that its unsuitability would only increase with the passage of years.
The past six weeks have seen us undergoing all the familiar, unavoidable, anxiety-inducing accompaniments to moving house: the sense of disjuncture, the inevitably upsetting process of dismantling a home and the queasy feeling of unreality that comes in its wake. There has also been the intensely practical problem of downsizing our library of books, CDs and DVDs. It has been incredibly important to us that they find their way into the hands of readers and listeners who will appreciate them, which has meant several trips into Glasgow in order to donate them. I am terribly glad we did this, but it has, in the midst of the numerous other chores and missions of madness, been exhausting.
Keeping me sane through the whole process has been Laura Thompson’s unusually candid and spontaneous biography of England’s most famous crime writer, Agatha Christie: An English Mystery. I am sure there will be those who find Thompson’s approach too open, too opinionated and too personal, but Thompson’s singular willingness to put her own heart and soul on the line has been precisely what I like and admire about the book, a hefty volume that nonetheless has been stimulating and thought-provoking through the whole of its length, and that I have always felt eager and grateful to return to at the end of another tiring day.
Now begins the process of building back up. I love our new home. I feel especially lucky to have retained my cherished view of the Firth of Clyde, albeit from a different angle. I cannot wait for us to move in properly, to get back to work. My current work-in-progress seems like a distant, unfamiliar land. I will need to reacquaint myself with it. I know there will be changes, because I have changed. I look forward to finding out exactly where I have arrived.