Preparation for a sabbatical would seem simple enough. Find a place that will host you; find somewhere to live; find someone to rent your place when we are away.
Of course, once you get going, the devil’s in the detail. LIRMM were great. Stefano organised us as visiting academics, put us in contact with some people that led to us getting a third floor flat right in the historic centre of Montpellier, and he organised for us to keep our van at LIRMM. (Montpellier centre is a wonderfully traffic free zone).
Getting someone to stay at our place was a bit more stressful. The house is in a fine state (we had major works last year) but we have a cat – or to be more accurate, a cat has the house. When we planned the sabbatical we had not really expected Cat to still be around – he was a well mature adult when we moved into his house 11 years ago. He must be around 18 years old now, and although he is getting quite arthritic, he shows no sign of leaving us yet – especially since we installed his under floor heating and sunroom. So whoever takes the house also takes Cat. And there is the matter of our cleaner, Julia. When you have a good cleaner you don’t want to lose them – I’d rather pay her while I’m away and know the house is looked after well.
Finding someone to accept these conditions, and our rather unusual home was not so easy. We had hoped to let the house to a visiting academic on a six month sabbatical in Southampton. But the university accommodation service were next to useless. As we got to Christmas we got nervous, and following a personal recommendation from a friend we approached Safelets in Southampton. They were excellent, and got everything sorted in no time, and after a couple of weeks a couple of Finns walked through the door, smiled and said “this is the house” at the same time as we said “these are the people”. We signed on the spot, and had them round to dinner. I hope they are very happy (and careful!) with our house. Actually they are visiting academics, and this could all have been done by the university accommodation service if they had shown the slightest motivation!
I have not yet mentioned the matter of the broken foot. Last winter I had a serious accident falling off my bike (wrong kind of leaves) and broke my leg and my ankle and did untold damage. Last summer I gave myself a big programme of exercise and physiotherapy in order to get fit again (the prognosis was to recover 80% of the facility – I was keen to do better – and thought maybe I had got to 90% recovery?). But one day as I was cleaning out the camper ready for its trip to France I stepped out and turned my ankle in what for most people would be a minor issue. But I heard a snap – and thought “there goes another ligament”. After much cursing and swearing and application of ice and arnica I was persuaded to go to the hospital for a check up. I had broken my meta-tarsal. It would appear that my muscles have not recovered enough elasticity – so when I turned the ankle they yanked the chunk of bone they were attached to straight off ☹.
I managed to persuade the people in casualty not to put me in a Back-Slab and to let me wear my trusted Beckham Boot (Aircast) – but when I went to see the specialist two weeks later they persuaded me to go into a cast (otherwise it would possibly not mend at all). The trouble is that at this moment it was three weeks until we were due to leave for France and they wanted me in a cast for 4 more weeks. They agreed to take the cast of a week early. But in the meantime I had the job of packing our house into boxes on my own while wearing a plaster cast.
A few words on why I was packing on my own. The main reason was that Su had the examinations from a class of 150 students to mark before we could go. The other reason was that Su is psychologically incapable of packing; I think it reminds her of a childhood of constantly packing to move somewhere else (an army family). So many thanks to Jake and Tom who did enough of the heavy work to enable me to leave the house in a good state. Funnily enough, when it came to getting the garden in a fit state Su was quite capable, and managed to find lots of time to do this. We filled a skip with stuff mostly left over from the builders last year.
There were so many other things to do. The camper needed a new fridge, a service, its water tank cleaning, new tyres, etc. (and all this time I couldn’t drive as I had a plaster cast). All those little jobs that need doing in the house now actually have to be done. And people at work have to believe that I am actually not going to keep turning up to a couple of meetings every day!. And the wine club needs sorting, and the house need insuring, and the gas needs testing and an energy audit must be done on the house and I need to make sure that I have a double supply of my prescription medicine before I leave and I need to get someone to mend the wall and put the fence back up (thanks Jerry!) and damn – I have a PhD to read and report on, an EU application in preparation, a consultancy to finish, a paper deadline for a journal submission all to do this week we are due to leave our house.
On Monday 21st Feb the hospital took my cast off and pronounced me fit to drive. On Tuesday Su packed. On Wednesday Su went off with her bike to a meeting in London, leaving me and Julia to clean the house (actually still packing the kitchen into boxes) while a rather taught lipped woman attempted to make an inventory of the contents.
I left Soton at on Wed 23rd Feb 1630 (van mileage 51120) and headed into the rain and mist and M25 rush-hour to Dover. At this stage I had not eaten anything all day and had drunk one coffee for early breakfast. I made it to Dover and met a wet and cold Su at 1930. We caught the 2030 ferry, and by time we had adjusted to CET and re-fuelled at Auchun in Calais, it was midnight.
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