This morning was spent on more packing up. At lunchtime, with the help of Paul at number 34 we loaded up the car and visited the Martin Cafe for a fry-up before setting off to Minstead to unload.
Now, during Jackie’s many years spent working as a carer in Merton she learned the safest techniques for lifting clients. This was, of course, in the days when non-nursing staff were permitted to ruin their backs by lifting inert or, worse, struggling elderly or handicapped people in or out of bed. No longer being willing either to watch me struggling with boxes full of books and equally heavy items or to take her half across the lawn either at Morden or Castle Malwood, she decided to put her mind to labour saving. So, in the midst of the packingfest she would take time out to sit on the sofa and think.
Then she came up with a brilliant idea.
She would make a sling from a duvet cover. Just as those clients years ago had been hoisted out of bed, our boxes could be hoisted in and out of the car and carted across the grasses at no cost to our elderly backs.
The chosen item of bedding had been our daughter’s. When Becky came up to live in Lindum House in Newark in the mid 1990s I bought her the cover in harmony with the colour scheme of the room which was to be hers for the next three years. It has served us well.
After decanting more belongings into Castle Malwood Lodge, we repaired to The Firs where Elizabeth was in the process of producing a lamb chop meal to be followed by a Firs Mess. Hoegaarden anno 1445 was also consumed by Jackie whilst my sister and I drank Hardy’s Stamp of Australia shiraz, cabernet sauvignon 2011.