The Great Rules Of Relocation
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 24, 1999
The first recorded victim of home removalists was Trog, the Jurassic man, who shifted his family to a new cave then found his scalping hatchet was missing.
``It will be in one of the boxes," Mrs Trog assured him. Of course, it wasn't. The First Law of Removals dictates that, in every domestic relocation, at least one significant possession vaporises in transit.
``It will be in one of the boxes" is the vain mantra of removalism. Years after my Aunty Betty's move to a retirement village in 1990, we were still hunting for her special arthritis-friendly can-opener. ``It will be in one of the boxes," assured uncle. It was never found.
The First Law of Removals is puzzling in that it appears to counter Einstein's theory that matter cannot be destroyed, only converted. Who would bother converting Aunty Betty's special arthritis-friendly can-opener, I pondered as I fished through the removalist boxes, and to what would it be converted?
It is unclear who formulates these laws of life but they are as infuriating as they are inviolable. As with the First Law of Motoring (thou shalt receive a scratch or dint in the gleaming paintwork of your new car within one calendar month of purchase, no matter how you try to protect it), there is no use fighting the inevitable.
It is also pointless trying to beat the system. One misguided fool of my acquaintance, previously burnt by the First Law of Removals, tried packing a decoy box with stuff he would otherwise have taken to the opportunity shop. Cunningly, he wrote ``A1 Priority Contents" on the outside, figuring this would be the box that would disappear.
Wrong. His antique inkwell vanished, a loss made nonetheless painful when the beaming removalists turned up at the front door, proudly carrying his box full of A1 rubbish: ``We brought this over inside the driver's cabin to make sure it was OK."
Which brings us to the Second Law of Removals: like the earth dug from a hole, the goods removed never again fit back into the same space. When you have unpacked all your furniture, utensils, clothes, books and other domestic paraphernalia, then distributed them around the new home, there is a whole heap of stuff still left over in the garage.
``Where did this all come from?" you marvel. ``I have never seen this watering can in my life. Did we get the right truck?"
Now and then you do find objects around the house that seem to have fallen out of the heavens. For years we have had a silver tape measure, with the name F. Watson and ancient phone number BL 4352 engraved upon it. To the best of our knowledge this man had never set foot in any of our houses.
I don't know how we came to possess the tape measure nor can I imagine the means by which it arrived. However I can take a guess at the scene those many years ago in the Watson household when it disappeared.
Watson: ``Dammit. Has anyone seen my silver tape measure?"
Mrs Watson: ``Probably in one of the boxes, dear."
© 1999 The Sunday Age
