Real life | 27 April 2017

With so many last-straw moments to choose from in my house-moving experience, it is a close call to pick the very, very last. But I think the absolute last straw happened like this.

I was sitting in my house surrounded by boxes, pretty much waiting for the removals lorry to turn up. With exchange only hours away, and completion two working days after that, my lawyer had phoned me a few hours earlier to make sure I had taken out buildings insurance on the new property. Yes, I told him. I had just put it on a credit card, a year’s worth paid up front, effective from that day.

I was now busy making my phone calls to British Gas, Thames Water, Sky and so on, to cut off my accounts and restart services in the new property.

Incidentally, this was just the seventh circle of hell I had imagined it to be.