Abdicating decision-making can be such a good decision

I’ve long since given up – or at any rate delegated to a significantly more competent authority – power of decision over where I live. 

After 35 years of marriage, it’s become clear which matters are much better left to my wife, and choosing addresses is one where her superiority is manifest and entirely recognised by me.

Maybe, in the fullness of time, we'll identify some areas in which I excel in turn.

The latest address selected by Danielle is a small flat in Valencia, in southern Spain. It takes the place of the apartment in Kehl, in the far west of Germany, which we recently vacated. Kehl has many great virtues – the city of Strasbourg just beyond its doorstep, the Vosges mountains in France and the Black Forest in Germany, the river Rhine, the Swiss city of Basel an easy drive away – but Valencia, as well as its charm as a city, also has the sea and a quality particularly dear to me right now (after an apparently interminable winter), of a mild and pleasant climate.

I say particularly dear right now because, before leaving for Valencia, I spent two hours in a sleet storm stuck on the tarmac at Luton aiport waiting for de-icing. That’s in spite of our being just a week away from the reintroduction of summer time. Whatever the calendar may say, England continues grey, cold and wet. The idea of something that actually feels like spring was immensely attractive.

As a general rule, when we’re moving to a new home, we go through a little pantomime where I visit the place before the deal is finalised. I try to gauge Danielle’s feelings on the choice, so that I can prove my unerring judgement by shaking my head and suggesting “not sure whether this is right for us” about ones she doesn’t like, or expressing enthusiasm for the ones she does. This time we dispensed with this admittedly slightly vacuous ritual, and she just went ahead and took the flat before I’d even seen it.

That made the trip out doubly exciting: not just getting away from winter but getting to see the place of which I was now the proud joint-owner without having more than a vague idea of what it looked like.

The event entirely fulfilled my expectations. OK, the city wasn’t that hot – only 14C, which is just nudging the bottom end of what one might call spring-like but, hey, that was fourteen degrees more than in England when I left.

High celings in Valencia
Danielle in the foreground with Sheena
In the background: Ikea man assembling a bed

As for the new flat – well, it has ceilings that feel as high as a small church’s, mini-balconies at both ends, and amusingly tiled floors. What’s more, Danielle, my son Nicky and daughter-out-law (who I hope will soon become a daughter-in-law) Sheena, saw to it before I even got there, that those fine people at Ikea would equip us with beds in time for our first night in the place. That was vital, since some of the furniture we rescued from our old home in Kehl is due to arrive here, but not until May. Those tiled floors may be amusing, but I suspect they’d be no fun to sleep on.

Tiles on our bedroom floor
Fun to look at. Not to sleep on

A great city, a huge improvement in weather, and an attractive flat. Everything combined to confirm the quality of the decision I’d made.

That, of course, is the decision to leave all decisions about the places we live in to Danielle and only turn up once they’ve been made.

Nicky enjoying the mini-balcony at the back

Vintage 1982

One of the advantages of clearing out a home, as I described a couple of weeks ago, is that you find lots of things you’d forgotten about. Many of them deserve nothing better than being forgotten, and there’s nothing to do but throw them away. Others, however, it’s a pleasure to rediscover.

The flat we were leaving was on the Franco-German border and we were going to be travelling back through France. Since we were running out of wine at home, this was a welcome opportunity to buy some more. Good wine at sensible prices.

However, down in our ex-cellar we discovered not just a few bottles of wine, but several dozen. That rather eliminated the need to buy any on the way back to England. There were, in fact, rather more bottles than we were able to get into the car with the other belongings we chose to rescue, so we gave a number away – though the smallest number possible.

These were the leftovers of a time when I used to buy bottles of wine when they were young and cheap and lay them down for a few years till they became far better. Fine wines at cheap prices. However, few English houses have cellars, so that’s rather gone by the board since we returned to the country. But it was wonderful to find that some bottles had survived. Even though, in some cases, this wasn’t a matter of saving a fine wine but rather of reawakening an old memory.

Our oldest wine was a Brouilly from 1982. 35 years old. Older than my sons.

Well, we certainly aged that one...

Twice, in our wine-collecting days, Danielle and I went to the wine fair in Hagenthal, not far from her home village in Alsace, Eastern France. Ah, those were different days. Not necessarily better, just different. The police let it be known that they would not be carrying out alcohol tests on drivers near the fair for as long as it lasted, so tasting posed no danger – no danger of arrest that is, though plenty of danger of injury to oneself or others.

The first time was in around 1984, which was when we bought the Brouilly. I knew little enough about such wines at that time and chose the ones I bought merely on the basis of taste. This one seemed good and I assumed it would become better with a little aging.

For second visit to the fair, we were accompanied by our sons. The younger, Nicky, must have been about four at the time. He stuck to me like glue and insisted on trying a sip of every wine I tasted, leaving him in a curious state by the time the evening ended.

Different times, as I said. But not necessarily better.

At least, it seems that the experience did no lasting damage to him. Unless one counts his invariable tendency to challenge my judgement on any matter we discuss. Which, considering that I fed him wine when he was four, is perhaps not entirely out of place.

And the wine itself? Well, a Brouilly is a Beaujolais. Some can be kept quite a while, but the Brouilly only five to ten years. We tasted a bottle of the 1982 when we got home. And then tipped the rest down the drain, which I’m certain helped clear it quite effectively.

Not a great wine, as I said, but an eloquent reminder of days gone by.

Moving to assert fundamental rights

One member of the household was far from certain about our move yesterday. He picked up the signals quickly and they worried him. He had no intention of being left behind, even if it meant he had to be brought across in a box with our general flotsam, as he made clear both at night:

You're not leaving me behind. Nighttime

and during the day:

You're not leaving me behind. Daytime

It must have been a relief when he discovered it was always our plan to bring him with us, and since yesterday he’s been having fun settling in to his new place. He’s been exploring the possibilities both at the back:

Exploring the garden, with his best friend

And at the front:

Checking out the front of the house

He should never have worried. After all, he was always going to be a main beneficiary of the move, given that we chose the house for one of its key features:

The key to freedom. For me as well as Misty

Yes. From now on Misty can get in and out whenever he wants. He doesn’t have to bite my feet any more to get me to come down and let him him out, or mew piteously to get me to come down and let him in. The way I think of it, we've just bought a cat flap so expensive it came with a house attached.

Worth it for Misty’s sake. Worth it for mine. So it’s wonderful that he’s enjoying his new-found freedom. And that I had a full night's uninterrupted rest.

Round Green saga

That’s it. Another house move.

We’re now in an area of Luton called Round Green. In socio-ethnographic terms (and there aren’t many terms to beat ‘socio-ethnographic’) we’ve moved from middle class Indian to working class British. I shall miss the 5-series BMW with the number plate ‘5 51NGH’ but some of the local pubs may make up for it.

A local pub, with a misleading name: it's actually brown and rectangular

The move itself was as painful as usual. We’re still surrounded by boxes to empty, pictures to hang, bits and pieces to sort. A real pain just six months after the last time.

So ‘why did you move?’ I hear you ask. And well you might.

Our landlady at the last place was full of charm, good sense and honest principle. She made it clear that she expected us to be long-term tenants. And yet before long she was having some nasty spats with Danielle, which was odd since in general I’m the one who falls out with people.

For instance, I find it difficult to hide the feeling that the person I’m dealing with is being a complete moron. I’ve got the scars to prove it, above all in the form of three sackings – all dressed up as redundancies, of course, but I’ve never been made redundant by a boss who sensed I had a high opinion of the job he was doing.

Not that I've had that opinion of many bosses, come to think of it.

Danielle’s much more emollient. She doesn't fall out with people. And yet – our landlady simply couldn’t get on with her. Things quickly degenerated to the point that she asked us to move out at the first break point in our lease, after six months.

The Round Green place is bigger and warmer than the last one, and it actually costs less. Its greatest advantage is that it’s on a quiet residential street rather than the main road to Bedford. On the downside, at the last place we could cross the road to parkland whereas here the nearest extensive bit of green land is a few minutes drive away.

But we had no choice, so we gritted our teeth and made the move, wondering all the time why we’d been forced into it. Until yesterday, that is. When we discovered a planning application from our former landlady to extend the place we’d left and convert it into two flats, the latest step in a project she’s been working on for a couple of years or more.

It was quite an eye-opener. Behind the early charm and willingness to be helpful, behind the next phase of increasingly bitter rows, behind the final stage of pushing us out, was a long-term hidden agenda that completely contradicted her spoken assurances.

It’s just as well I realise that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Otherwise I might be inclined to indulge in a little cynicism about my fellow man. Or fellow woman in this instance.