Roads to Joy

So we are unpacking at a steady rate. When you’re packing up to move, things start out well, and then, in my recent experience anyway, things deteriorate into a frenzy of desperation: gots to clear the place; put everything in a box for the movers to shift!

The joy arrives with the unpacking. In a previous post, musing on the contemporary curated exhibition at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh: Knitwear from Chanel to Westwood, I remembered the pattern our mother had used to knit me a warm zipped cardigan with a western theme. I knew that sweater treasure was somewhere, and sure enough, it turned up as we were accommodating all our clothes into a large new wardrobe. I’m wondering now if it might fit our youngest grandson. How amazing to travel down this memory lane.

Our mother travelled herself down a memory lane as she copied the original painting by Tom Roberts, of activity in a northern sugar bush, from a Season’s Greetings postcard. It’s a lovely memento to have, hanging now on my wall in the tiny study, as I gaze over the Galloway hills. Another treasure retrieved from the packing boxes.

Fortunately, the joys of unpacking are unlikely to be exhausted any time soon! Which is a rather more cheerful way of looking at the situation than the alternative.