A Moving Sense of Loss

Somewhere out there, there's a study that places moving house right up there with stressful activities like taking your driving test, juggling chainsaws and watching the England national team take penalties. Mind you, somewhere out there, there's a study that'll tell you pretty much anything you want to hear about anything.

Still, no matter how carefully you pack, you'll always get to your new house and realise you're missing something you absolutely have to lay your hands on right now. All you know is that this particular Holy Grail is in one of the many, many boxes sitting in a room stacked with boxes waiting to be unpacked.

This situation attains an entirely new level of irritation when the houses you are moving between are separated by two time zones. Right now, all the possessions that sustained me through almost four months alone in Sydney are in limbo somewhere on the Nullabor Plain.
I was informed that my boxes would be loaded onto a container and sent across by train. I hadn't realised they'd meant a camel train.

So here's a (still growing) list of things I've now realised I should have taken in my hand luggage when I left Sydney.

• The piece of paper that says my new mobile phone is only four weeks old and is eligible to be fixed under warranty now that it's obstinately refusing to function.
• The remote control for my cable TV. It took ten days to get a guy to connect up the signal box, I'd hoped the widget to work it would have arrived by then.
• Week 8 of DC Comics ongoing series 52. Got Week 9 now. Week 10's out soon. Would like to read them now, please.
• Two DVDs I should have written up this week. No one's noticed they're not in my latest batch of reviews. Think I got away with it ...