All change!

I have just returned from my last late-night organ practice session as Motherchurch organ scholar. Tomorrow I am finished and must return my key. It is also my last service as organist at St Isidore's. In fact, a week tomorrow I leave Lancaster for good. I finish work on Thursday, and shall then be unemployed. I leave the country on 1st May.

I do have a plan. It is still tenuous, but I can't wait around forever for everything to fix itself. I have applied for an organ building job which has not yet come up (it still has a person in it, albeit a person who proposes to hand in his resignation in the next few months), and shall find out whether or not I am to be offered this position at some point after the person currently in post resigns. That is likely to be in July or August. In the meantime, I am off to Taize for a few months. I hope to find time to relax and get used to having mental space, so that when I return I am no longer such an ineffective person.

Obviously, I am in the midst of yet another house move. Some friends have very kindly agreed to take on key pieces of furniture, such as my chest of drawers and fake piano, and the rest goes to my parents' house. They are overjoyed. It gives them a purpose in life, and they relish having far too many things in the upper rooms of their house. My brother adores not being able to cross his room due to the amount of stuff in it, and only wishes that he still lived there, instead of just returning for holidays. The last two car-loads of stuff (for I only have two journeys there left) will be the icing on the cake. I know that my small bed-settee (smaller than the one I already have there) will be welcomed with open arms.

Once this has been accomplished, though, I should hopefully be nearing the end of my moving career. Of course, this organ job will come with the man of my dreams (how could it not?), who will help me to build my incredibly large house with straw walls and at least one organ, plus a large and well-equipped workshop. It will only take a few house moves (and a lot of hard work) before I am in this house, from where there will be no need to move for quite a few years. Or perhaps until the children put me in a retirement home. He can live there, too, and we will have lots of children, all of whom can be trusted not to hurt themselves when around tools (is that not the main thing one looks for in a child?), and who are good at choosing retirement homes.

Ha! If it works out like that I'll be amazed. Also pleased. Except for the retirement home thing.

Right now, though, I feel a little sad and overwhelmed. I don't like moving house, and I don't like to leave places. This house move is going quite well so far because I have been working on it for a few weeks, and transporting bulky items a few at a time, but the last load is always hard. The last church services tomorrow will be hard (I really don't want to leave either church, crappy organ scholar though I have been), as will the leaving do at work (they won't tell me when that is, but I can narrow it down to Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday during the day. It should include wine, as the Department has an accidental stock of bubbly).

Ah well. What would be productive now would be sleep. Having slept for far too many hours today I am not all that sleepy, but I will not thank myself in the morning if I stay up much longer.