Moving house is indeed a highly traumatic activity (I should know, having moved both houses and entire continents in recent years) but helping your parents to move out of the house in which they’ve both lived and raised a family for over forty years is the stuff of nightmares. ‘And what do you need a book on ornithology for right now?’ barks Mum, frantically scrubbing the inside of the kitchen cupboards as I come in from clearing out the shed. ‘We’re moving house today. Can’t you do something useful for once?’ ‘I said I’d lend it to George at number seventy-three before we left,’ says Dad as though this sentence makes perfect sense in the current circumstances. ‘He’s got this dark-brown bird with a white head that keeps coming into his garden and he wants to know what it is.’ ‘Can’t he just take a picture and be done with it? Anyone would think that you don’t want to move the way you’ve been messing about all morning. The removal men said that they would be needing to leave by eleven if they were going to get the job done and at this rate we’ll be here until midnight.’ ‘Is there any need to exaggerate?’ asks Dad.
