Needed: Cardboard boxes and valium

I am spending the weekend packing boxes, because folks, I’m moving flat. I am leaving the posh Georgian West End of Edinburgh for the slightly more ‘colourful’ Leith. (Location of Trainspotting for the ill informed.) The flat is lovely – in the up and coming part I’ll have you know.

And if perchance I do need drugs, they'll be easy to come by.

It is a cliché that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do, second only to divorce. I have no direct experience of divorce, but indirect experience is bad enough, and I would certainly not choose to go through it. I do, however, choose to move house from time to time. I admit that there is stress along the way.

So far in this house move episode, I have smashed a picture, sliced my finger on the broken glass and caused a cardboard cut nice and deep on the crease where my thumb is attached to my hand. I now have only one opposable thumb.

As Celine Dion once sang, ‘It’s all coming back to me now.’ When, 2 years ago I moved into this flat, I made a solemn vow that I would be leaving it in a box. But no, seems it’s me loading up the boxes once again.

2 years ago I moved from Durham to Edinburgh. When the removal man vomited in the afternoon, I wondered if there shouldn’t be a Government Health Warning on moving house. Throughout that long, exhausting day I’m convinced my blood pressure hit danger levels on a number of occasions.

Although it could have been worse, a friend recently moved house and the day didn’t start terribly well when the removal lorry arrived at her home and reversed clean into her car. Whoops.

When I moved, an Edinburgh parking warden (read evil Nazi ticket distributor) stalked around the van desperate for me to leave it even momentarily unattended.

Whilst I was guarding the van from our fluorescently -cladded friends, the removal men were busy tearing the leather of my flatmate's one thousand pound sofa, scratching my dressers and vomiting in the stairwell.

I knew I shouldn’t have booked through gumtree.

This move hasn’t started well with my string of injuries, but I’m optimistic for an easier move this time over.

Although I am thinking of setting up a removal firm that provides a counselling service to help repair the shattered nerves of homeowners. We’ll also leave a welcome pack containing spare keys, plasters, bandages, scotch and valium.

Interested? I’ll be taking bookings... as soon as I get through my own move of course.