By the time this finds its way online a wonderful calm should have descended upon my world.

It cannot come soon enough.

For weeks and months now (actually, it has seemed like years), youngest daughter, partner and two young fledglings have been in the throes of buying somewhere of their own.

That in itself was something I had not thought I'd ever see happen, courtesy of Gordon's Great Depression.

But it has happened, they've done the deal and enslaved themselves to 25 years of hard mortgage labour.

It's been the manner of moving, though, which has entrapped the rest of us.

Me, especially.

"Can we borrow your hedge-trimmer?" was the first shot fired in what would become a daily salvo of demands associated with their house purchase.

I still haven't got it back and can only hope it's not lurking lost and unloved in the old place.

This was followed by increasing nightly visits to their home, where the car was loaded up with box after box of toys, kitchen stuff, more toys, more kitchen stuff, and even more toys.

Eventually, at the end of this week, it culminated in them actually, physically, staying their first night in new abode.

Even then I was called upon to move just a couple more boxes containing, incredibly, even more kitchen stuff.

Anyway, I hope they are happy there. I haven't envied them one bit, from all the tensions over the purchase to the stress of packing up all their goods and chattels.

I've only ever done it once. Even then it wasn't so much of a moving day, more like a house purchase with me sleeping on a mattress, so few were my domestic possessions at the time. I had seen it, wanted it and bought it without thinking how I would furnish it.

After a month or so my wife came to keep me company there, though we still only possessed this poor excuse for a bed, some secondhand curtains, and an all-singing, all-dancing, state-of-the-art electric cooker bought on credit. Any meals it produced were eaten sitting on the floor as we possessed no dining table or chairs in those early days, either.

We have been there ever since.

I know it may appear ridiculous that we still live in the same old (and I do mean old) cottage and haven't ever seriously contemplated moving.

But we feel comfortable with it all and, yes, given my daughter's experiences of late, even a little smug.

For we have never had to package up our lives into large cardboard boxes.

As a consequence, of course, it spills out of every nook and cranny.

Nor have we had to sit in judgment on what items we should chuck away and which ones make it into the removals van, either.

Oh no, anything like that just gravitates to the loft.

The consequence is we're both inextricably linked to our little place. We know its bumps and creaks, its little foibles like the door which, mysteriously, jams for a week or so every few months. We can walk around it in total darkness and not bump into anything, such is our familiarity.

There's a real reassurance about being able to do that, though please don't get the idea it's something we do nightly.

Anyway, reports reaching me – as I write – suggest that the younger branch of the family has successfully uprooted and transplanted itself in another part of Bristol. All I'm waiting for now is an invite to the house-warming. And my hedge-trimmer.