j4 | Empty chairs at empty tables

hoiho moved out of Hermitage this morning. He's gone back to Scotland until he can find a job in Cambridge.

Packing is a tricky business. It's not just a question of haphazardly shoving things into boxes; if you do that, they tend to fall out again at inopportune moments, and they can often get damaged. With fragile things, you have to pack them especially carefully so they don't break while you're moving them around. You have to be calm and organised, and consider what fits best where, and there are always externally imposed constraints of time and place and money which have to be worked around or worked within, and sometimes it seems like it's an impossible task.

On the positive side, however, it's also an excellent filtering process. You have to decide what matters to you, what you want to keep, what there's really room for in your life. There's no point moving something halfway across the country if you're only going to discard it once you get there.

I only packed one thing today. It was small, and it beat like the wings of a bird in a cage, but I knew it was worth keeping; so I wrapped it up carefully, so that it wouldn't get broken, and I let

hoiho take it with him. I trust him to look after it. I know he'll bring it back to me as soon as he can.