There are a few times in the course of a life that feel like a completely new beginning: setting off for University is one that springs to mind. There is that sense of endless possibility, and all those dreams you’ve held whilst growing up of the things you’ll do, and the person you’ll be, once you have the chance. Everything is new and unfamiliar, and full of learning, and mistakes, and opportunities that you never knew existed. But, on the flip side, there are also new starts that one has never wanted or looked for, and yet are stuck with anyway: I’m saddled with one of those, and my only option is to take it one step at a time.

So here I am, with a mountain of paperwork and some major problems, in a cold campsite in Kent. I am wonderfully looked after by Dave and Karen, and Jo and Andy, who introduce me to others on the site, including my next-door neighbour, Sally. She rushes out to give me a comforting hug every time she sees me pass by. I am very grateful for this, but there are still days when I can’t bear my loss, and wander off into the fields nearby and howl out my grief.

At night, in order to navigate the silence and solitude, I take my computer to bed and watch DVD’s I’ve gleaned from the local charity shops. I do all of the Twilight films, and God knows how many episodes of a 1960’s version of The Forsyth Saga. When I’m done, I find it almost impossible to switch the thing off, as my desktop picture is one of Steve and I can’t bear to turn off his face. I just gaze at him for hours, talking to him, telling him how much I love him and thanking him for everything he gave me, with the tears pouring down and soaking my neck. I know that only time will make this less, but that’s a long way in the future.

Bit by bit I contact banks, and pension companies, and Government agencies, and Benefit offices, and the DVLA, and the Inland Revenue, and the Job Centre, and in between I grieve, and grieve, and grieve. Once I’ve got Steve’s savings transferred to me, life gets a fraction easier, but now my biggest problems are how to sell Georgie, and where to live?

Selling Georgie

Problem number one is considerably helped by Dave, who gives me the number for a guy called Simon, at Mercury RV. I’m told he’s a good bloke and comes highly recommended. I contact Simon, send him pictures of Georgie, receive a reply saying he’ll come down and do a proper viewing, and then I don’t hear from him again for a long time. (Having known him for over a year now, I know he’s the sort of chap that doesn’t contact people much, but is totally reliable anyway. But back then it gave me major concerns.)

And then there’s other things: the tax, insurance, and MOT are due to run out on my car, and have already run out on Georgie: the reason we were due to drive home to the UK was to get this sorted in the first place. Nibbles, my Smart car, has come to the end of her life, so I need to get her scrapped and an alternative vehicle made road-worthy as soon as possible.

Luckily for me, we left a small Fiat Panda sitting on my friend’s driveway while we were away. Steve bought it to use while he did that contract in Bristol last year, and the plan was for us to use it this year, whilst Georgie was being MOT’d, and Nibbles was off-loaded. Then it would become my car for our next trip away. Trouble is, we have named her Stinky, and she really lives up to her name. I don’t know what died in her, and I genuinely have no idea how Steve managed to happily buy her without noticing the honking awfulness, but there we are. The summer is coming, Febreze exists, and windows can be open, so it’s all good.

Finding a flat

Problem number two is a bit more challenging. I can’t get onto a housing waiting list because I don’t have any particular affiliation to any of the local areas. OK, yes, I was born in Kent, but we moved away fifty-one years ago, so that really doesn’t count. A nice chap called Mike, at a housing office in Dartford, tells me that I can legally apply for over-55’s housing anywhere in the UK. I feel quite buoyed up by this, until time and experience teaches me that being legally able to apply is not quite the same thing as the housing offices being legally bound to say yes. Ergo, they all say no. When I try to look for somewhere in the private rental market I am told that I need six months rent, up front, as the deposit. So that’s not happening.

I try to think of places that I do have a tenuous link to, and apply to those Councils, only to receive the same answers. I’m getting a little desperate – as I’ve only a couple of weeks worth of gas left in the tanks, and then I won’t have a working cooker or fridge – when I finally hit lucky. I’m browsing Right Move for the town of Wokingham (tenuous link = this is where my brother lives), when I come across a flat in some Almshouses, run by a local Charity. Light bulb moment – if it’s run by a group of trustees then I’ll have actual people to talk to, rather than an automated system that keeps rejecting me out of hand. Yay.

From the time I submit my application I pester them as nicely and as mercilessly as it’s possible to do. I explain my circumstances and how well I fit the criteria. I stress the nature of my need to have something settled soon. I am the politest version of myself that I know how to be, (and most of you would never recognise the woman that I am for these last few weeks). And, to my utmost and everlasting gratitude, they say yes, and that I can move in the following week. I cannot begin to describe the relief. Especially as my gas promptly runs out and I’m left rationing the emergency stuff at the bottom of a bottle from Spain.

Moving

It’s now a race against time to arrange for Simon to view and pick up Georgie, and to pack up ready to move. It takes me three while just days to clean and polish the outside of my ten metre RV, because of my CFS. I reckon I carry about 60 buckets of water each day. And there are walls to repair, and painting still to complete. I work each day until I’m too exhausted to move.

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My brother has agreed to hire a van and drive it to the new flat, but he wants to know what size transit I need. I pile all my belongings onto the lawn and measure the space it takes up, adding on the number of boxes I know I still need to pack. I proudly tell my brother EXACTLY what size vehicle I need, and he refuses to believe me and books a bigger van.

When the day comes, my brother helps move me into flat no.20. I’ve been given a temporary one, in lieu of my circumstances, as they’re still putting a bathroom into the one I’ve been allocated. I own a mattress, two camping chairs and a table, and rather a lot of tools I’ll never use. It’s a strange starter pack for a new life, but it’ll have to do.

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The next day I drive back to the campsite to meet Simon, who is coming to pick up Georgie. As I watch her being driven away, out of my life for ever, I’m suddenly hit by my second wave of bereavement. Goodbye old girl, I say, we loved having you as our home, we never wanted to be anywhere else from the day we first saw you. I’m going to miss you so much. And then, in readiness for opening the next chapter in my life, I cry all the way to Wokingham.

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Next time – Special budget home decoration issue!

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