dismal dismantle

THOSE AMONGST MY PUBLIC who have attempted tirelessly to stay with the posts that appear from this quarter in my blog Driving on the Right, will be aware that there are sweeping changes afoot. The time has come. 1ruefb is in the process of being sold and after one false start, it looks as though this time our buyers will persevere with their purchase and see us off the premises.

If we had known at the outset, what a disturbing and unsettling process this was going to be, well I doubt we’d have gone for it. I’ve explained elsewhere the rationale for drawing stumps in Sablet which you will have read, or can read now, or which you can choose to ignore, if you don’t mind dwelling in ignorance. This post is just an indicator of how we tried to combine an autumn residency in Sablet with the rather daunting compromis signing (quite easy in the event) the necessary considerations of what to keep and what to dispose of, contents wise, how what we decide to keep is to be brought back to our estates in Devon, where to have lunch, who with if anybody, and what to do about The Table.

After the Compromis is signed, (the compromis being the contract between the buyer and the seller and is binding) there is a ten day cooling off period, during which our buyers can have second thoughts and withdraw from the process without a stain on their characters. Just like our first buyers did. I applied a considerable stain on their characters, the tikes. There is no withdrawing allowable on our part, the sellers. If we both passed over even, the son & heir would still have to complete the sale. Thankfully the current buyers seem to be serious and are far from being 12 year olds. Not from Paris neither.

So, despite the risk of starting dismantling our lives in Sablet before those ten days are up, we have been working our way through the house, sorting, just about ever since we arrived. Thus far we have not troubled the déchèterie itself to scrap our detritus (next time we will) but have made two trips to the Ressourcerie. They take usable cast offs that can be sold on or employed to support those in need of help when setting up home.

We are not sure how we accrued quite so much clobber that falls into this category, but we have and its gone now. Mostly. The binoculars I lugged all the way to Everest Base camp and back: they’ve gone too. Several framed pictures posters and the like: gone for ever. I’m welling up.

Then there’s the books: we've been recycling them in various villages and towns that have book boxes. Clothes and shoes? Down to that hopper thingey behind the Marie. 

Furniture we can’t use, or want, or export, or sell on, well, the Ressourcerie folks will come and take that as well, by appointment and in their van. That will be about the last act prior to the final depart.

So why not just hire a van and take it all back to Bullsmead Court? Dear reader! You cannot be serious.

In simple terms, the accumulation we might want to reuse in blightey just isn’t worth the hire of a van. And anyway, those of our circle who have had the good fortune to see inside Château Bullsmead, well they’d no doubt confirm that it is, as it were, quite comprehensibly furnished already. Above all, nearly all the items with which we gentrified the chambers of 1ruefb were specifically chosen for that location. True, we are attached to many of these artefacts but we are being hard faced about it. They have served their purpose, for us at least. So we have largely reserved the boot space of the trusty motor for what we broadly classify as ‘personal effects’. And the pegs!

Which is why we’ve got to come back to Sablet one more time and why this post is headlined pénultième (humour me re the poles ventoux landscape employed to display this title, it seemed appropriate somehow).

And there is The Table.

The only thing that might have swayed us towards van hire is The Table. Prices start at £700 to get it back to Bullsmead. And once there, there is nowhere that immediately springs to mind, to put it, back at base. It weighs massively. It comes apart. 

So instead, we’ll sell it! Get our investment back. Give it a new home in Fr where it belongs: form a queue for your chance to own this magnificent piece of hand crafted furniture…… yeah, right. 

 We’ll leave that issue, for now.

The Elephant in the room… and about the same weight…

For an itinerary of our experiences out-and-about in this thirty-fourth sojourn, I refer you without hesitation to Mme Melling’s blog; the exemplar of just how posts should give the essence without burying the reader in extraneous detail, side-issues and irrelevances. Keep them wanting more, and all that. I can only admire the economy, wit and pith she demonstrates therein. I soldier on – but readily acknowledge my shortcomings after each post I struggle to get out, when the paucity of my efforts are invariably brought once again to my reluctant attention.

Anyway, for those with an interest in these things (like having waited in all afternoon for a fellow to come to eyeball The Table with a view to purchasing same, now appearing to be a no show, we'll have to try again at the ultimate return), I am closing now with the amended road plan to get us back to the Motherland earlier than originally planned*. We raise anchor tomorrow, at dawn (or shortly thereafter).  

*NB: I have, as a result of us changing our return route so radically, decided to omit the route  originally displayed below as great chunks of it were deleted and other byways adopted instead. Variety!