Occlusion is a medical term used to describe the blockage or closing of a blood vessel or hollow organ. It is used in dentistry and also in meterology when a cold front meets a warm front and forces air between them up from the earth’s surface.The word comes from the Latin occlus, meaning shut up. My main experience of moving house has been a sort of blockage, a mental one, as we have worked to move from occlusion to deal with inevitable confusion, and hopefully, to some sort of happy conclusion.
We ought to be used to it, for in our married life, we have moved eight times, so it should be in our DNA by now. But we haven’t been an aged and ageing couple before. We haven’t carried so much of our family history before. This is the first time we have moved from a three bedroomed house to a two bedroomed flat. Friends and family have been sharing their doubts about whether it was wise to move from little Bath to mighty Leeds. And always before there has usually been a welcoming church to extend friendship to us. So, a new experience.
We are more or less organised in the apartment. The removal people – who were excellent – have now collected the more than forty cardboard boxes which temporally housed our belongings, now in drawers and cupboards where they belong. All the technical things like TV, Hi Fi, the phone, are on the way to becoming friends rather than adversaries, but we shall be glad when the electrician who has been advising us comes to sort out one or two things.
And we need a plumber.
We are a bus ride from the centre of Leeds and we have begun to explore the U.K’s third largest and famously green city, with its varied population of three quarters of a million.
There is much to learn and we look forward to taking advantage of the history and present facilities of a great northern city.
The situation of the flat is one of the special delights of living here, for we have an amazing outlook onto Roundhay Park. Birds and squirrels are our immediate neignhbours. We enjoy walking in the park and that’s a pleasurable as well as valuable way of keeping fit.
The mental blockage is easing and we are beginning to recover ourselves!
Bryan
