Hi there, Have you seen the new movie about Bob Dylan ‘A Complete Unknown’ - it is extremely good and I hope he won’t mind if I borrow one of his more famous song titles as my tag line for this posting because, for sure, here ‘Times they are a changin’. My journal has been somewhat patchy over the last few months and this year so far I have hardly been sewing…. we are moving house and it has been a long and arduous process that has taken 18 months. The sale of our lovely Yorkshire Sunday School House has finally gone through and we are off to pastures new.

When we moved to Yorkshire, ten years ago, I wrote this post called ‘a perfect circle’ about it and you can read it here. This time, it feels as if I am stepping away from that circle entirely and we are about to draw a completely new shape, formed by a pathway as yet unknown. It is a lot to think about, with a backwards glance and a glimpse forward.

Moving home after 10 years has prompted much thought, debate and soul searching here. Leaving Yorkshire, leaving our home, leaving our life. Every step of the way, it isn’t how you thought it would be. This is largely due to the labourious process of selling now in this country and how people can let you down at the last minute and how slow and arduous the legal aspects seems to be. You need nerves of steel to navigate it sagely and these days, who has those? But it is also about the act of displacement. Choosing to displace yourself, to leave familiarity and strike out into a new life. It sounds so exciting, it is exciting, but it is also scary and unsettling (especially as you get older) and liberating and thrilling. Experiencing all these emotions in a short space of time, once the deed is done and you have 10 days or so to vacate your home, is also exhausting.

After this time of living in Halifax, I have realised that my relationship with these northern lands is a complicated one. I was born in Yorkshire and grew up about an hour or so from where we moved back to in 2014. There were no connections still in my hometown at that time and it wasn’t in any way the reason why we came to live here, but still there was always a faint whisper of past times swirling about me from the day we arrived, after nearly 13 years living abroad in Moscow, Paris and Stockholm. I remember taking the bus to town in the first few weeks before I got a car and the driver’s greeting of ‘Ta luv’, instantly transported me back to being a girl of 13 in school uniform with my blazer and pleated skirt and long uncontrollable hair.

The North and South are quite different really in England. The colours are different with the colder north and its grey stone walls, jagged hills, wild moors and industrial landscapes, contrasting with the warmer, flatter plains of the south, bathed in the warm glow of prosperity and cosmopolitan vibes. Living high up in the hills, it is a gritty wind that swirls around the valleys and steep hillsides, bringing with it shadows of the hard lives lived here in earlier times. The people are different too, they speak with an accent that is so familiar to me from my childhood, that I barely notice it and yet, I don’t speak that way. My London born, lovely Mum, kept a southern house amidst the coal mining town where I was raised. My father was an office man who went to work in a suit and a trilby hat and long wool overcoat. I had grandparents who lived on the south coast in a yellow brick bungalow, where the sun always shone and we had scones and jam for tea on floral china plates. In other words I had it all. One foot in each half, a line drawn through my heart, one side belonging to the north, the other to the south and I never even realised, moving seamlessly between the two, equally at home in either sphere, unbiased and unconcerned. My husband is from the south - it is not that way for him and he never really felt at home in Yorkshire and is more than ready to move homewards. The government talks about ‘levelling up’ and breaking down the barriers between the two halves, but the truth is, it’s never going to be. The cracks and crevices, walls and hedgerows are too ingrained in the landscape of England for it to change. The treasury’s money, if it had any, would never eradicate these divisions because the south don’t really care and the north are too proud anyway. I shall miss the higgledy stone walls, the long low cottages with wonky roofs and the turn of phrase that greets you in the corner shop. But I shall embrace the southern twang, the lighter breeze and a little less rain. It is time for a change and I am easy with it.

The physical act of packing up feels overwhelming in a large family house such as this one. It is loaded with memories. As you pack each box, you consider what it is you are handling…a book that has been sitting on the shelf unread for years, useless items that have sentimental value and a sewing room that is packed to the rafters with ‘stuff’. Perhaps the idea that when confronted with all your possessions at once, you start to realise what is it is you actually have. At times over the last couple of days I have even felt a little sick in my stomach at the sheer number of things we have and it has felt like too much. Time to declutter and clear out the cobwebs on a life lived. My husband has ALOT of books and he commented on clearing some of them out, that it felt like he had died. Like he was getting rid of part of his life…language books from the countries we have lived in, university books that have been lugged around for years and never reopened, travel guides that are now out of date and rendered useless by the internet. It is a sign that time has moved on and we all have to accept that. On the other hand, always the optimist, I feel like removing all the background clutter brings to the fore all the beautiful things we have collected in our life - lovely hardback books on art, literature and culture around the world. Once we move we will be able to see these far more clearly for having taken away the deadwood that swamps them.

It has been a job to do and my sewing room in particular has provoked many emotions. It has been a large and welcoming space for so long, my happy place and a safe refuge when the life throws those curved balls you don’t expect. I shall miss it’s ruby red walls and the freedom of creativity it has given me, probably for always. It was about five years ago, one afternoon when I was sewing that I started to listen to Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and I was captivated by not only its unorthodox style but by the setting down in words of what it means to have your own space. If you are a creative person, it is truly wonderful to have this. I know how lucky I have been to occupy this room and to have been the guardian of this lovely 200 year old home. My sewing skills have blossomed, my sense of self fulfilment with my ‘Ruby’ projects have brought me so much confidence and I have had to room to learn and expand as a needlewoman. It has brought me untold hours of joy and now I find, untold numbers of boxes of quilts, bags, embroideries, cushions and tapestries. All of them are part of my story and all of them are much treasured. Don’t get me wrong, wherever we land, there will be a new sewing room, but it will probably be smaller and it will take time to create ‘Ruby’s’ new home. For now though, I have packed just a few treasures including my Victorian sewing box and my silver shoe pincushions and a few hand sewing projects to tide me over until we find our new forever home.

Hopefully once we have started the process of buying a new place, we will head off for a couple of months of travelling whilst it all goes through and this will include an extended trip to the US to visit our youngest son, who is working out there. But all that is for the future and for now I just feel displaced. It brought to mind a book I read, and loved by Barbara Kingsolver “Unsheltered”. While our circumstances are not the same as the couple in this story, the sentiment is. No matter what you do or where you go in life, there are times when you find yourself feeling ‘unprotected’ and being currently without a permanent address is definitely one of them.

I have always been a bit of a ‘home bird’ and have had to make quite a few nests in our family story, but no matter…being ‘unsheltered’ fosters a spirit of adventure and new dreams still to come. My little wooden lady (see earlier post) from a tiny stall in a Moscow market on snow laden day, is ready for a new place in a new home, but where will it be? She is safely tucked up in my rucksack and will be the first thing to pop out on ‘moving in’ day.

This blog has been a great energiser for me over the years and I enjoy to write about my sewing adventures, but I hardly ever veer off into personal stuff, so do please excuse this one. Our kids are grown, our house is sold and the freedom we have in our hands is a little overwhelming. It is an adventure and we’ve always been good at adventures…I shall be reporting…

See you soon….

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'Times they are a changin' : we are on the move.

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