We’re moving house and I can see why this is said to be amongst the most stressful of life’s events. Topped only by marriage and bereavement I believe. The huge Orcadian removal lorry gets stuck in our narrow Edinburgh street. When all else fails I organise the gathered onlookers to lift a car out of the way (thank goodness it doesn’t have an alarm) to give the lorry the extra space it needs. With the lorry successfully out, we carefully replace the car in its original space, no harm done.

The boys request that we leave Edinburgh via the Forth Road Bridge. This is a brilliant idea. As we climb high over the Forth I have a strong sense of leaving one life behind me and heading North to a new beginning. The boys yell  “Bye-bye Edinburgh” and “Briiiiiiiiiiiddge”.

So we are travelling up the A9 once again, this time in a 1978 Series III Landrover. This is the first vehicle I have ever felt excited about. As with the house in Orkney, the landy wasn’t exactly for sale when I decided to try and buy it. It was parked on our walking route to school so twice a day we had the chance to admire it. After a few months we were saying “there’s our landy” and eventually Miles suggested that we put a wee note on the windscreen asking if it could be ours, please. That worked.

The back is packed from floor to ceiling with plant pots, camping gear, a hoover, Lego, clothes, wellies, four footballs, a small Rowan tree, large containers of diesel oil and water and several box loads of things I forgot to send in the removal lorry. Plus the essential family travel survival kit (containing plasters, juice, junk food, story tapes, cards, cuddly toys and ready mixed G&T). In the rear view mirror I can see a fluffy elephant. The side view mirrors have been shaken well off course – landrovers are not designed for smooth travel. I rejoice at the clear road with no caravans or lorries up ahead until Miles counts the number of vehicles behind us. Oops. With a top cruising speed of 40mph I guess we are holding a few people up.

Through my own lack of planning, we have a month in hand before we can move in to our new house. We want to be in Orkney to get to know folk before school starts so I think that I have booked a holiday cottage to span this time. However we have a much better welcome in store than I could have anticipated as the holiday cottage owners invite us to stay with them instead. What better introduction to the island. The boys are whisked off to football, beach trips, parties and school summer activities so that by the time they start school they know most of their classmates. I meet lots of lovely people, take a crash course in understanding the strong Orcadian dialect (I still find myself guessing and trying to lip-read sometimes) and learn some of the low-down on island life. Our house warming present from these wonderfully welcoming neighbours is a sack of barley, seven chickens, fifty turf sods and a wall. Just what I always wanted.

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Our furniture arrives at our new home in several loads, whenever the local haulier can bring it across on the ferry. This is brilliant because I’m not overwhelmed with boxes and also because it feels a bit like Christmas, wondering what might arrive next. The only drawback is that life’s essentials (the corkscrew for instance) remain perversely absent until the very last delivery.

Friends from the Mainland come over to help with the flitting and arrive with their motorbike laden with tools. Within 48 hours they have dismantled the kitchen units, lugged the carpets out to cover the weed-choked vegetable garden, built a loft bed for Miles (I would have scratched my head over the instructions for a month), plumbed in the washing machine and clipped many yards of fuchsia hedge. On their last afternoon they actually manage a quick whiz around the island on their bike.

The final delivery is by far the most exciting. My brother and his family arrive after two days of travel with their horse, Chuck, who is to live here with us. Despite his name I am assured that he is a very good natured and well-behaved horse. He kicks up his heels with delight and rolls in the long grass of my back field.

Now I have more visitors to put to work. Tasks completed over the following four days include fixing the hen house roof and installing nesting boxes and roosting bars, clearing out the byres, filling pot holes in the track, de-weeding the yard to expose beautiful flagstones, fixing up a clothes pulley and painting the hall. Meanwhile the boys make dens and secret passages through the overgrown garden. Once again it is not until their last afternoon that I allow my family some time off to look around the island. There is no rest for visitors here.

School starts. The boys know so many people by now that they are excited rather than nervous about their first day. Miles cycles down to the road and leaves his bike resting on the fence in company with five others while he hops on to the school bus. On school days there are kids’ bikes left at roadsides all over the island, providing visual testimony to the freedom of life here. Nobody would dream of having to padlock them. Similarly I have neither taken the keys out of our Landrover nor locked the house door since we arrived. Thus one of the significant sources of stress in modern day life has been removed.

Dale, who at five years old is definitely the loudest person in our house, becomes silent and pensive in school. In the city school this change of character went unnoticed, but here everyone knows everyone else both in and out of school. By the end of the first week Dale is so surrounded by familiar faces and friends that he cannot resist joining in.

I won’t go into detail about what else we have encountered at our new school, but I can tell you that nit combs are excellent for getting paint out of your hair.

©Julia Welstead