Eva Bradley: Boxing on after fresh banana skin slip

The banana box is one of life's great unsung heroes. Made and filled in distant lands, it is commissioned with the singular task of transporting tropical fruit from the equator to our local greengrocer.
But while the life cycle of the bog-standard box may come to a conclusion at this point, the banana box is just beginning its journey and as I prepare to move house for the 12th time in eight years, I have had reason to reflect on all the good, great and God-awful moments I have shared with banana boxes.
At each shift, my feelings toward the banana box oscillate. At the times in life when they have facilitated a forward step and signified the start of an exciting journey geographically and personally, I have delighted in packing my life in them and emptying it out at the next destination.
Now, as I open the first lid on yet another batch of boxes, it is because I am closing the lid on a failed part of my past - the beach house I bought with joy and hope only a year ago is now filled with sad memories and unfulfilled hopes and dreams.
The banana boxes are stacked tall at the door, ready for bearing the weight of all my worldly goods as they are returned to the home I bought on my own four years ago after yet another unscheduled snag in the lifeline.
It is some comfort that while the addresses and those living at them are in a state of constant flux, the boxes remain the same. Twelve shifts have seen me experience every imaginable state of domestic bliss. From apartments to farms, lifestyle do-ups, villas colonial and deco, coastal and urban. Even the odd boat in dry dock and on the high seas. With foundations and without, it seems I have been there, lived in that, and to be honest I've just about had enough.
A few moves back I picked out a removal company called Angels from the yellow pages, chiefly because the name seemed just what I needed at such a stressful time, and I'm using them again because I love the contradiction between my own idea of what an angel is and the muscle-bound reality which is a cross between Jonah Lomu and Homer Simpson.
This time the shift is backwards in some ways, because it is a return from whence I came, but this comes with the advantage of knowing exactly where I want everything and putting it back there without compromise.
So as I tape up the first banana box of the rest of my life, it is with a mix of regret, relief and anticipation. In a few days, the box will be unloaded in my new-but-old home.
Who knows what future shifts await and whether they will be propelled by happiness or despair, but one thing is certain ... the banana box will be there, same as ever, getting me and my material life safely from one harbour to the next and, in this case, back again.