Sunrise/sunset: 03:42/21:59 Daylength: 18hr16min

I had hoped to share my house sale brochure with you this week, but it hasn’t gone live yet. No word from the estate agent or the surveyor on what they think the house is worth either. Though I probably should have chased it up, it’s just another thing on my enormous list of things to do. I haven’t taken many photos this week, but I did send some to the estate agent: pictures taken from around the house during the year I have been here. If you read regularly, you will have seen them before, but I will scatter them through this post as a reminder of how beautiful it is.

Things I have achieved this week include painting the third wall of the garage, getting the front door steps and decking around them stained, preparing the house for photographs and having the photographs taken and booking two ferries, to get me from Norway to Emden in Germany and from Amsterdam to Newcastle. I’ve also booked an AirBnB in Amsterdam for two nights and the woman who owns the house we will be staying in has supplied me with the name and address of a vet in Amsterdam. Though Triar has a pet passport and has had his rabies vaccination, he needs to be wormed by a veterinary surgeon between 24 and 56 hours before entering the UK. Doing it myself isn’t enough. I need a different vet and a signature. I haven’t rung the vet yet, nor have I made final arrangements on how to get down to Kristiansand, or all the transfers. Still, at least I have made a start, and the best news associated with that is that Anna has agreed to come over and make the trip with Triar and me. We would have probably managed alone, but it would have been a challenge every time I needed to buy food as there’s no way I would leave him tied up outside a shop and he almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed in most of them.

The whole process of selling the house is further complicated by the fact that I am on holiday at the end of next week and will be away for a fortnight. The estate agent said they normally try for a visning (open house session for potential buyers) a couple of weeks after the brochure goes live. John is coming back from his holiday the day before Andrew and I go away. I don’t want to have a visning when I’m absent, so it will have to wait until I’m back, but the idea of arriving straight back from being away, to get the house organised immediately is daunting. In effect, I have to try to get as much done as possible before I leave. So painting the fourth wall of the garage is non negotiable. It has to be done this week. If I experience a rush of energy from somewhere, I may get the veranda cleaned and stained, but that is a much bigger job, and one that isn’t started yet, so possibly best left for now. I’m having to accept that I’m not going to get everything done, so prioritising is the name of the game.

Though the house is tidy, inside and out, the garage and the room beside it are in chaos. Some of it will go away with Andrew. When I said I am going on holiday next week, what I’m actually doing is driving him down to Stavanger, to his new folk high school, where he starts on 26th August. We have quite a lot of sports gear, such as skis and diving gear, and he will be taking some of that with him, which is good. Unfortunately, the garage and its attached storage room are also where we have been dumping everything as we gradually did the house and garden up. There is old wood from some horrible decking we removed and a large wooden toy van that was also in the garden. I looked into hiring a skip this week, but it seems the decking wood was impregnated with nasty chemicals and therefore can’t be put in normal waste. I’ve taken some of it to the dump in the car, but am considering how to get the rest of it away.

From inside the house, there are various shelves we have taken down and all the tools that have been used are scattered around. There is John’s shearing equipment and an old mattress from a bed that I need to throw away, which is blocking some other shelves. There’s also the air conditioning unit, that I had vaguely thought we might use in the garage store room, before I realised it had a heated floor.

When we moved in, the previous owner had left various things that matched stuff in the house, such as tiles and flooring. There was also a bunch of paint tins, a few of which contained viable paint (I have painted the garage without buying new paint, for example) but most of which I have been gradually taking to the dump as the paint has solidified long ago. I guess any of the decorating equipment that she left might be left as it still matches the things in the house, but it very much depends on the new owner. If they demand I remove everything (as is their right in Norway) then I will have to do it. Depending on when the house sells, doing so might be complicated.

Things I haven’t started yet include getting quotations from international removal companies. I need to get three and getting them is quite complicated. The companies require a fairly detailed list of what you want to take, as well as an address where they have to deliver it, which I can’t supply yet and probably won’t be able to do until I actually arrive in the UK. What I want to take is also up in the air. John will want some furniture (probably) as it makes sense for him to move into an unfurnished flat, but exactly which items isn’t certain. The estate agent wants me to leave the white goods, but I won’t know if the new owner will actually want them until we get to the point of selling. I guess I just arrange to go without them and we can dispose of them if necessary. That isn’t especially complicated, at least.

At least I am looking forward to being on holiday next week, though it suddenly dawned on me properly yesterday that it’s not just a holiday, but is Andrew leaving home. It’s odd for him too, as he will leave and once he’s gone, the house will most likely be sold and he probably won’t ever return. All this feels very odd and still somewhat unreal at the moment.

One thing that past couple of weeks have brought home to me is how much I am going to miss the colleagues I have been working with for the past three years. I have been moving around my whole life. You’d think I would be used to it, but I guess most times I have moved, I have had family with me. This time it will be a complete break from everything and though I am going somewhere where there will be other family and friends, it is going to be hard to make that break.

Anyway, as planned, Andrew and I did go camping again this weekend. We had intended to go for two nights, but ended up doing only one, back in the same place as last week. As we drove back up, I was very much aware that I was driving through another farewell. Next time we go camping (if we do) it will be in Scotland. I will probably be here to see the start of the winter snow, but the short Arctic summer is already showing signs of coming to an end. There are going to be a whole lot of goodbyes and a lot of last times coming up. Next weekend’s blog might be delayed as there will be a lot to do, but I will try to record some of the journey so I can share it with you. Have a good week, all!