Wizzers Doesn't Live Here Anymore

It seems but the flicker of a eyelid ago that Mrs The Millbrooker and I helped Jah Cousteau in his move from Newquay. And here we were doing much the same parental service in Southampton for The Wizzers of Soz.


As the post title suggests - Wizzers no longer abides at Hill Lane in the city of Soz. In fact, for the next week she's effectively homeless until she (and a bunch of other degenerates) take on the lease of another shared house ready for the coming academic year.


Unlike our trip to the relatively nearby Newquay, this adventure began with a four hour crawl along the scenic routes through Dorset and, once in Southampton itself, food was the number one priority. Wizzers was due to sponsor lunch but her chosen venue had a private party booking so we ended up at The Giddy Bridge, a Wetherspoon's pub, where they do the all pervasive Wetherspoon's menu in Wetherspooon's style.


I actually quite like what Wetherspoon's does; it's relatively inexpensive, the ale is always well kept and you know what you're getting.


Here's Mrs The Millbrooker in the midst of choosing her smoked haddock and mozzarella fishcakes.

And here are yours truly and The Wizzers of Soz after the food had arrived.

Wizzers' old-boy Nigel arrived just as we polished off our puddings and then it was off to work, dismantling and packing at Wizzers' soon-to-be-erstwhile abode. 


Note the classic look student accommodation (although moderately tidier than her bro's former pad in Newquay). Also note the unusual addition for those of an impoverished student persuasion of decent quality furniture; The Wizzers of Soz has invested in some rather tasteful flat-pack stuff...

...which now needed to be taken apart. This was deemed to be Nigel's department of expertise.

My job was to try and load everything into or onto a small pink thing.

With the jobs nearly done after a couple of hours slog, it only remained to replace the original bedroom furniture that Wizzers had replaced with her own. So it was rescued from the garden shed and plopped back into its allotted spot.

And then, after a failed attempt to find a quiet cuppa in a nearby establishment overrun by celebrating England football supporters (the team had just qualified for the 2nd round of a football world cup that I'm told is taking place at the moment),...

...it was time to hit the road and trundle past one of the longest brick walls in all of England; that of the Drax Estate surrounding Charborough House. A brief piece of research leads me to learn that it has something over 2,000,000 bricks in it.

The wall is punctuated by the famed Stag Gate - the stag has five legs because in its original state when viewed from the house it looked as if it had only three. So another was added to correct this monstrous error of perspective which so offended the landed gentry (who, in this instance, made a vast pile from slave trading in the seventeenth century - citation BBC Dorset).

The estate is still privately owned by the improbably quadruple-barrelled Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax family and is currently occupied by Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (b1958) who is the Tory (oh, quelle surprise) MP for the area. The great unwashed are permitted into the grounds a couple of times a year, so I've read.


Right, enough of my ramblings - it's time to relieve the little pink car of its burden of belongings from The Wizzers of Soz.