15 days shy of an anniversary of the day we got our keys, the huzband and I are spending this day clearing out the last few bits of stuff from our house. It is amazing how much crap you accumulate, especially me, because I am sometimes a sentimental eejit who hoards all sorts of stuff to “remember” certain events, or if someone particular gave me something, I have difficulty letting it go. We got our keys on my mother’s birthday and on our first evening, when we came to sweep some dust off our floors, we ate microwave meals sitting in the corner on beach chairs. Tonight, we will eat takeaway rather that microwave meals. A ceremony to mark the end of an era. Leaving as we entered. Saying goodbye to our first home purchase together. Part of me wishes we could say goodbye to its fat mortgage, if the property market was in any other state, we would probably sell up, but alas, it will have us shackled for another while yet. We have good memories here and some bad ones too, but mostly good ones. We are leaving it in a better state than we found it. It has flooring for one thing, and some window blinds and curtains. Bye bye first marital home. We don’t think we’ll be back to live here.
March started innocently enough this year and then it snowballed into a month from hell. A month where what could go wrong, did and has gone wrong. After two weeks away from our empty house, I returned to find a defrosted freezer, a warped floor, a whole rotten trout (there was other rotten stuff too, but the trout really stood out) and a smell like nothing you would like to imagine. I learned the only way to get rid of the smell of rotten trout is to soak everything from the fridge-freezer in a bath of bleach overnight. I learned that just when you think you have regained some control, something else will go wrong, like the silencer in your car will suddenly throw in the towel, causing you to drive around sounding like a boy racer. I want to hide when I am driving my car, not that I can, as I need to look at where I am going. Moving country is not turning out to be very easy for me. It was easy for the huzband, but the this country has me in its tenticle like embrace. It doesn’t want to let me go I don’t think. I am back where I grew up, living with my father while my huzband and all our furniture (mine and the huzband’s) sits in an apartment in Vienna, waiting for me to arrive to start life there.
On wednesday, driving from Cork to Dublin, I filled my car with petrol that cost 116.9 cent a litre. Today, driving to work, I noticed the petrol had jumped to 127.9 cent a litre, thanks mostly to the 8cent per litre petrol increase that came in the budget. I’m seriously starting to wonder is it time to leave this bloody country, where our government are not prepared to do anything to cut back spending in government. They have increased VAT, petrol, road tax, wine, and our taxes have also been increased. In return, we get very little, some extra mortgage interest and a slight increase in the tax band. I did my tax calculations and I will be worse off because of this budget, simply on the basis of the tax levy. I don’t really want to think about how much the extra half a percent will cost me annually in VAT.
