Friday dawned bright, clear, sunny and warm. So much for the forecast! Thank god! There is nothing guaranteed to ruin cream carpets more than 4 blokes tramping through the house when it’s pouring with rain. A rental van pulled up around 08:45 with our team of guys in it. The ISO container was scheduled to arrive at 09:30, and bang on target it did. The removal guys had had to get the man from the cottage on the corner to move his fleet of cars and, whilst he did that the lorry had to pull in on the main road. We were totally creating traffic chaos!! It only got worse when the driver had to do a 3 point turn and reverse it into the Close. Did I mention that this was a 40ft container?? FORTY FOOT!!! I knew we’d brought a fair amount of stuff back with us, but I didn’t think it was anything near enough to warrant a 40ft container! I was beginning contemplate getting the bricks and mortar out and building a quick extension to put everything in! Thankfully, when they cut the bolt and opened it up it was nearly empty. Our worldly goods made a smallish pile at the far end of the container. There was enough space for a car or LOADS more shoes in there. Damn – I could have bought so much more….
Stephen disappeared to work and left me and the guys to it. They were a great bunch – very professional and they got the hang of where things were to go pretty instantly (i.e. only had to tell them once that Xmas decs went to the garage). We agreed that they would unpack the living room, master bedroom, and kitchen and rebuild the futon (as the US packers had broken it down to its component parts). The rest of the stuff was going into the appropriate rooms for me to deal with later as I wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to fit it all in or where it was going to go…
We hit two snags…One was when they couldn’t find the bolts for the futon. There was not the standard “bits box” which has all the screws and “bits” clearly labeled and in one place… they found them in a box, but there was a lot of moaning and cries of “we wouldn’t do it this way”! The potentially bigger problem came a short while after when they couldn’t find the bolts to put our bed together! They couldn’t find them – they had been though every box that was labeled Bedroom and nothing. I was having a real “oh fooooooook” moment! We’d lost the screws that hold the base slats onto the frame on the way out (they didn’t make it into the bits box!)…but the bolts that hold the frame together were a more serious matter! We’d just about given up hope when one of the guys had the brilliant idea of checking the mattress which was still wrapped up and BINGO! Bolts! Cue even more complaining about the lack of a bits box or even any marking on the mattress wrapping to indicate they were in there!
I unpacked the kitchen boxes whilst they got on with everything else. It was astounding how much paper was used to wrap things…and how much better it fitted in the box when it was wrapped around something! I swear I could barely get it all back into the empty box when I’d taken out all the dishes and glasses etc. They assured me they recycle the paper…I dread to think how many innocent trees gave up their lives in order to keep my plates in one piece! Oh, and my kitchen roll made it in one piece…carefully wrapped!
The driver turned out to be a bit of an artistic soul and was in raptures when he brought the tray of mugs in and saw the abstract I have in the kitchen. We chatted away for ages about his work and different techniques we’d used (I shared my polyfilla secret and he shared that he sometimes uses spray bottles to apply watercolour). An interesting guy!
The guys finished up around 12:45 and at around 1pm Stephen showed back up again, swanned around for ½ hour and headed back to work to “let me get on with it”. I was totally raging when he didn’t show up again until about 6pm! I had worked like a Trojan all afternoon unpacking boxes and putting things away/moving things around and I was totally knackered and really narky… I had hoped he’d make an effort to get home early and give me a hand, but I think he decided to hide until it was safe!!
My mood was not improved by BT. You remember the saga of trying to sort out me taking back over the line and my number? Well I got a letter saying that I’d have a temporary number, but I’d be informed of my permanent number when they made the switch on the 1st May. Needless to say I didn’t get a call, and hadn’t realized they’d switched it until Stephen got home and said he’d been trying to call. I phoned BT to ask them to give me my old number (this was the 3rd or 4th time I’d explained this to them). I was told it wasn’t a problem – but they couldn’t do it until Tuesday. “If you’d called us 2 days ago it would have been done today”. AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH! If it had said that in the F’ing letter I would have! As it was I’d told 3 or 4 different people that I wanted to keep the number and they’d told me it would be okay. And I HATE their automated menu. I went through their “If you want to check your order” menu and at the end, instead of having an option of “if you still want to speak to someone about your order press…” it just said “here’s what you have ordered. Please hang up”. The phone nearly went through the window at that point. Plus, as they’ve changed our number our broadband has stopped working…. Easy fix (we thought!) – just phone Tiscali and ask them to change the account to the new number for a few days….wrong! It takes them 7-10 days to change the account over, so we didn’t bother. And we’re probably going to be internet-less for another week whilst we try and tie the number to the broadband again. AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
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