Hah! You had two blog posts yesterday due to me accidentally not scheduling the Broken Cat post correctly.
Anyway, this one continues from my rambles about unpacking our "everything".
I believe house adornment should evolve, not be forced. Tim believes otherwise. Mind you, he's probably right because if I had my way, we would still have unpacked boxes in four years time when we move again. (That's actually not a bad idea. It would save a lot of time and effort...)
Therefore, I spent about 16 hours yesterday (Friday) unpacking all but about ten boxes. I shall finish those off today - they're clothes, handbags and whatever random articles are also included in the upstairs boxes. Oh, I've forgotten about the exceedingly heavy garden ornaments. Goodness knows how we'll do that. I'll have to research how they made Stonehenge and devise something similar on a smaller scale.
In between watching the Royal Wedding online - with no commentary, which made it fun trying to work out who everyone was - I hit the box fort with a vengeance. Tim wanted all the packaging out the way as soon as possible. Besides, we can't move freely around our house at the moment.
Unwrapping everything today reminded me of an endless game of 'Pass the Parcel'. Countless layers of paper protected everything with the china and glass wrapped in layers of tissue, several layers of thick white paper and either bubble-wrap or thick brown paper. There was a lovely prize in each parcel.
Some of my things have made incredible journeys and I got quite emotional at one point. Opening a mysterious parcel to find a large, fragile stone cat my brother brought back for me from Egypt many moons ago. It's been from London to Northampton to Tokyo and has now reached Berlin still intact. Items inherited from my Nana - not particularly old, but sentimental nonetheless. Particularly poignant were some little gifts I'd bought for my Dad in the past and received back after his death.
Other items have travelled extremely far; I backpacked throughout South America in the mid-nineties and my souvenirs not only survived being stuffed in an overfull rucksack for months, they've all made the same relocations as me. Pots and figurines from Bolivia, a blowpipe from Venezuela and spindly wooden birds from the Galapagos are all now piled in a cupboard awaiting their latest resting place.
Even more incredible was unpacking my Japanese porcelain. Some of these items are well over 200 years old and must have been through countless earthquakes (although not the Tohoku earthquake of 11th March as everything was packed safely in a container by then). All unscathed. They are so well made and so beautiful. But as yet I don't have the space to display them properly.
The other things we haven't got around to yet are working out where to put our pictures and other wall hangings. That will have to wait until Tim has a drill. Unlike the cardboard walls we had in Tokyo, which just needed a pin to hang small pictures and special hanging chains for larger art, the walls here are solid concrete. Once they are up, this house will begin to feel like home.
So how did I do on my predictions from the other post?
- There will not be anywhere near enough 'display' space for my many ornaments: CORRECT, woefully correct. Not only do I not have enough space for my ornaments, there are numerous pieces of kitchenware for entertaining that I cannot find room for. Yet.
- I will need to utilise another room's wardrobe space: PROBABLY: I haven't unpacked the clothes yet. And let's not mention my handbags...
- I will end up rearranging the kitchen yet again: YES. But not just yet as there's too much else to do at the moment. I will wait until we can all find stuff then confuse the hell out of everyone by moving it all around again.
- Some items may have to disappear for our stay here due to lack of display space. That's OK, it's good to have a change of view. DEFINITELY. For example, I'm now bored with looking at my paperweights I started collecting when I was about 14. And some pictures need to retire for a while.
What have I learned today?
- That I have too many collections.
- Japanese packers are the only ones to correctly mark boxes with Ikebana and Obi on them.
- They also wrap stones as carefully as they wrap glass (yes, I collect stones too...!)
- I'm an unexpected control freak when it comes to unpacking. Tim is banned from unpacking anything of mine which, of course, makes even more work for me.
- My desk will evolve, I need some sanctuary away from the rest of the mayhem. It's just a shame the place is open plan. I can't hide properly and my mess will be on show. Ah well.
- I miss Japan very much at the moment.