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Anne Enright is about to move house.. she's tried to throw out the rubbish, but well, it's just not that easy to let go...

The first time I moved home, it wasn’t exactly at midnight, but it was under a very dark cloud, and I walked out the door with four carrier bags, and caught a bus. The man I caught the bus with… well it’s a long story, but fifteen years later we are moving again, and this time, I’m carrying the baby, he’s carrying the nappy bag, and trundling along behind us, carrying all our possessions, will be a truck. In fifteen years I have gone from four carrier bags to a container lorry. Where did it all go wrong?

We are having the removals men in. We are being removed. I’m sure they’ll be very nice. I’m sure they won’t look at a chipped bowl or a ripped cardigan or the three year old packet of vitamin pills, and say ‘What are you bringing that for, missus?’ The tin of water chestnuts I bought in 1997, the books I will never read, the cleanser that brings me out in a rash, will all be wrapped and packed, at great expense, and whisked into my new life.

Thanks lads.

So my new home will be equally full of nutmeg that I will never grate, and broken sunglasses that I will never mend and pictures that never will make it to the framers. All this stuff. Where did it come from? Biros, for example. I don’t buy biros. I don’t even buy roll tip pens. I have forty biros sitting in a plantpot. And what about that - I’ve never grown a plant. I’ve killed several. So what the hell was I doing buying a fancy plantpot! For the remains? A plant coffin?

Sorry. In the bin, out with the lot of it. It is time to get rid of the person that I wanted to be, but wasn’t. It is time to say that no, you will never, ever, be that thin again. So chuck those jeans from 1986. You have shed your entire skin twice since then, they were worn by someone else. The same for the unfeasable high heels, and the mistaken CDs and all the clapped out jackets that never made it to the dry cleaners, one last time.

Now for the paper. Now this really kills me. Ten years of car insurance, health insurance, credit card bills, and tax, yes you can throw these out. You will not be arrested, you will not have to produce them in court. Keep the photographs. It is a sin to throw out a photograph. The unanswered letters. Uh oh. I’m having a little difficulty with the unanswered letters, "Are You a Long Lost Relative?" from a nursing home in South Africa. Well yes, actually, or so it turns out. I can’t throw this out, I have to answer it, even though it was three years ago, even though she is probably dead by now. Hang on, hang on, we can’t move yet, I have to go through my post, my ten year old post. I have to return things that I have borrowed, and mend things that are broken. I have to do my taxes and go through those receipts. I have to clean the top of the cupboards so the new people won’t think I’m a slob. I would also like to paint that windowsill, just quickly, as you are carrying the crates downstairs.

I think I’m a bit upset. I was always good at leaving - that glorious, empty feeling - leaving was one of my favourite things to do. But I have this baby, she’s just on the brink of crawling, and all her life she has looked at that broken alarm clock beside the bed and wanted, really, really wanted to get to it and grab it and stuff it in her mouth for a good old chew. All this rubbish is wonderful to her. Maybe I should bring some of it after all, just a few things - for her dressing-up box, perhaps. She really does love that alarm clock. That clock is her highest ambition. It is her ideal.

Wrap it carefully lads. My life. The yellowing paperbacks, the dress I wore that night, the unfinished novel from 1984. Mind my bottom drawer. Bring all the shoe polish, because yes, one day I will, I really will polish a pair of shoes, and don’t drop that empty champagne bottle, that was popped on the happiest day of my life, or on one of them, I forget which. Never mind. Put it all in your truck - my tatterdemalion past, it looks like I’m taking it with me after all.

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