A rolling stone sheds some more moss

Closing an era. Moving on. Turning the page. All those clichés. Danielle, and I have just done them all. 

Again.

Turning the page is particularly apposite. My grandmother once told me that I had occupied three pages in her address book, I'd moved so often. And that was while I was still a student, before I even got launched on my removal-littered career.

A few days ago, Danielle counted fourteen places we'd lived in since we've been married. As she's just bought us a new flat in Valencia, in Spain, we're ready for the fifteenth. Which will be fun, since I've not seen the place and I'm looking forward to discovering it.

But before we get to number 15, we've had to clear up number 10. That was our flat in Kehl, just into Germany on the east bank of the Rhine, opposite Strasbourg in France's most eastern province, Alsace.

The Kehl Passerelle between Germany and France
No blood runs beneath it today

When I describe Alsace as being in France I should add "today". The country Alsace belongs to is a matter of history and not just geography. Danielle's grandfather was born German and her mother spent four years of her childhood under German rule. Today, Kehl has a soaring footbridge across the Rhine, so we can stroll across from one country to another in leisure and at ease, without even showing a document. It's a monument to the resolution that never again should blood be wasted over that border, as it has so often down the centuries.

Cellars and attics are great but they're dangerously tempting. They become repositories for huge quantities of things that we find it hard to part with but which we never actually use or even look at, preferring just to know that we still own them though they do nothing for us. Our flat in Kehl contained twelve years' worth of accumulated possessions, and at least the same amount again in the cellar - boxes and boxes dumped there and forgotten about until we had to deal with them as we left the place.

It took four days of intense work. The first day was spent packing things for Spain, making some hard choices on the way: we decided to take less than a third of our possessions. On day two, once the removals van had left with the stuff for Valencia, we had to find people we could give things to, and prepare the rest for dumping. On the third day, three men turned up with a dumper lorry and dumped a huge pile of our belongings in it, throwing them in without respect or care, breaking up chairs and tables, transforming them from objects to some of which we were attached, into simple junk.

Then there were the books. There were 3000; we kept fewer than 300. The entrance hall was once lined with well-stocked bookshelves. Gradually the books had to go. Then the bookshelves went too. It was a long drawn-out parting ritual that brought home at last to me that we were truly leaving.

The hall well-lined with books; shelves emptying as boxes fill;
the bare hallway at the end

Fortunately, though, we didn't have to throw any books into the dumper. A wonderful woman came around to see us not just once but five times, bringing empty boxes for the books and cheerfully carting full ones downstairs and into her car, more quickly and apparently effortlessly than I could, despite her seventy years. They'll be sold for a small sum a kilo, but they'll go to someone who wants them, and whatever money they generate will be used for charitable purposes.

Day four of the trip was when we wrapped things up. A few more things could be given away. As much as we could get into our car went into it, for the trip back to England with us. And then came the really heart-rending moments: the decision that this or that precious possession had to go to the tip or charity. My PhD notes. Danielle's long-treasured Christmas-tree decorations, practically family heirlooms, went to a charity. The latter was particularly sad: we could probably have fitted the decorations into the car after all, but now we've parted with them.

That's what closing a chapter means: a lot of partings and almost inevitably at least one leading to regrets. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that if we were able to live without those things for so many years, we probably didn't really need them that badly. Like most rationalisations, that's persuasive though hardly a consolation for a sentimental hurt.

Finally, we climbed into the heavily-loaded car and headed for home, having pulled up our roots in Germany.

Not that Kehl really feels all that German any more. Even when we moved there, we'd hear a lot of French in the streets. One of the benefits of the euro was that prices were entirely comparable on each side of the border, and a number of Strasbourg residents worked out that there were a lot of things that could be bought more cheaply in Germany. Most shops had at least one French-speaking employee. Indeed, I even heard one shopkeeper apologise to a client for having only German speakers. It struck me as a delicious irony that the German owner of a shop in Germany had to apologise for conducting his business in German. A powerful illustration, if any were needed, of the principle that it's the customer who counts.

On this visit, however, things had gone far further. The Strasbourg tram now runs all the way to Kehl. One now hears more French than German on the main street. Instead of being short of French staff, there are now shops in Kehl with only French employees, where there is no native German speaker. Kehl is rapidly turning into a French town.

It was a French possession once before, in the eighteenth century. But that was down to military occupation. This time it was the natural extension of a conurbation. A far more civilised way of achieving the same end.

It seems Kehl is setting out on a new era of its existence just as we end the era of our residence there. We've parted from our favourite flat, from many good friends and, least important of all but nonetheless a wrench, from many things we thought mattered to us.

We may well be back. To see the friends, mainly. To visit Strasbourg. To see how Kehl's getting on.

But never again as inhabitants.