Today is a momentous day for us: exactly one year ago, we got the long, long awaited phone call from our solicitor to say that our purchase of this flat had been completed. It's a natural moment to reflect, and to take stock of where things are.
A year ago, we thought that by now the renovation would be long finished and we would be enjoying our beautiful new home. We never imagined that a year later, we would still be living on a construction site! (If we had known - would we still have pushed ahead with the purchase?! Well, we can't re-write history, we can only speculate...)
So on the one hand, it would be easy to look at everything that has gone wrong, and lament some bad luck and the circumstances we find ourselves in owing to things we had no control over. But on the other hand, when I think about how far we have come, setbacks notwithstanding... it's hard to believe. Even having lived through it, it's hard to comprehend. Looking back at where we began last year, with demolition, or even at what we were doing six months ago, is sort of mind-boggling - much more so now, in retrospect, than at that time, because at the time we were just struggling and racing to get through it - no time for reflection then!
I'm disappointed that Andre is in New York right now, because The Anniversary feels like an occasion that we should mark with a drink! But as it happens, the occasion is being marked in another way.
Having survived the final incredibly intense days to finish the roof work, on Wednesday, the day after Andre left, I was finally able to make a long-anticipated call of my own: to the scaffolding company, to tell them to take the scaffold down!
As it happens, the crew arrived this very morning, of all days, to begin striking the scaffold down. It feels like a hugely satisfying way to mark one year - even if it's not the way we had imagined The Anniversary would be when we bought the place.
