What are you supposed to do when you need to move flat during a pandemic?

After the chaos of finding a new apartment, Holly Baxter must endure moving house during a New York lockdown – and to make matters worse the two previous tenants in her new home aren’t keen on leaving

Moving flat in New York is a grind at the best of times (Getty)

Quarantine in New York grinds on – today my fiance and I walked round the room six times to try and get 250 steps in – and it has its moments. Yesterday, I got emotional about the beauty of a blossom tree planted in the garden of the apartment block next to ours. Is this evidence that I have returned to living life in the slow lane and come to appreciate the beauty of the world around me during lockdown, or evidence that I am rapidly losing my mind? It’s impossible to know right now, though I presume the answer will eventually become obvious.

The one thing we still have to go ahead with, isolation or no, is our apartment move. We spent weeks bidding for flats on the over-saturated New York market a month ago and managed to secure a small studio in an enviable part of Brooklyn. On 1 April, come rain or shine (or, indeed, global pandemic), we have to pack our stuff into boxes and leave our current place for pastures new.

Our realtor loudly informed the two men that we were the new tenants; the men loudly replied in Mandarin, which none of us are particularly proficient in