Leaving and Arriving

The removal firm we decided to use was a pretty reputable, mid range one and we contacted them quite a while before we had a removal date as we thought it would be wise to plan ahead because of all Keith's 'stuff'. If you are not aware of the amount of 'stuff' we are talking about, have a look at  his YouTube channel and you may get some idea. Suffice it to say that the contents of a workshop, his van and half a garden shed were not going to be easy to move, so the agreement with the removal company was that they would come the day before the move to pack up his workshop, store it overnight and come back the next day to load up the house contents.

 However, it soon became clear, as Keith started to pack up some of the stuff, that further solutions would be needed. Men were dispatched several days before the move to collect what had now been offloaded into the conservatory and that was taken away to be stored.

Two days before the move, the rest of Keith's stuff was taken, leaving only the house contents. Nearly home and dry, we thought.

"We'll be here at eight o'clock on the dot on Wednesday," said one of the men, leaving us in no doubt that an early start was planned for that day and we had better be ready. This van load was to be kept overnight in the removal company's facilities and driven up on the Thursday, which was our official moving day.

Wednesday morning dawned, last minute things were packed away and as much last minute cleaning done as possible.

Eight o' clock came and went, as did 8.30. When Keith and I rang, we were given different excuses: the men had 'checked in', the receptionist said, she had 'definitely seen them', followed later by,

 'There's a puncture on the van. They're just waiting to get it fixed."

To cut a long and boring story short, the crew (three men now instead of two) finally arrived at 10.30 and we worked out, using our Sherlock Holmes skills, that they had probably been doing another small job on the side before coming to us.

"We might be old but we're not stupid!" roared Keith, having told them and not being contradicted, that we just didn't buy the story of the puncture. 

The foreman, who had decided to play it hale and hearty and 'what's all the fuss about?' visibly blenched and stepped back as he realised he needed to add a little contrition into the mix. 

There followed fervent promises to pull out all the stops and get on the road by 1pm, which did actually happen but, as Keith said, a stressful day, bringing to an end nearly twenty years of living in that house, was made all the more stressful by the events of that morning.

However, the van departed and so did we. We stayed in a hotel that night (kindly arranged for us by Kathy and Claire) and got the keys for our new abode just as the removal van arrived, to be followed the following day by Keith's stuff. 

Keith now has an 'office' adjacent to the kitchen and a garage. Filling them both, as you can imagine, has not been difficult but filling them with the right things in the right places is still a work in progress.

Time for updates!

Yes, I know. I came back and then disappeared again. Annoying, but hear me out ...

If you have been wondering whether Keith and I had suddenly been dropped down a hole or vanished from the face of the earth, you wouldn't be far off the mark, especially if you consider those possibilities in internet terms. Before our move, Keith had done lots of investigations and discovered a few useful bits of information:

•  BT could not provide a broadband service in our new area any where near comparable to our existing one.
• Therefore, instead of charging us for the remainder of our contract (£700) as they had initially threatened to do if we changed provider, they were forced to concede defeat and allow us to leave our contract with reasonably good grace.
• This meant we could change to Virgin for broadband and TV (we had already left Sky TV) and get a very reasonable deal.
• Our new house was already set up for Virgin, although the previous owner hadn't used it.

Virgin said we would need an engineer to get us set up as the equipment already there was not up to date, so we ordered the TV box, modem etc plus an engineer to get us up and running.

As the big day approached, Keith was constantly getting encouraging texts for Virgin, including three offers of £150 to let the engineer come earlier than the arranged date, which he regretfully had to decline as the house would not yet be ours.

Moving day arrived (with its own problems, for a later post) and the following day, July 1st we were expecting our package of goodies plus engineer ...

The equipment arrived, plus more encouraging texts about the engineer, who sadly didn't.

After much to-ing and fro-ing of phone calls, it finally transpired that no engineer was available until four days later, so internet-wise, we were indeed down a black hole, made all the worse by the fact that there was no landline and the mobile phone signal, which we had been led to believe on their website was good, was pretty well none existent. Apparently the local mast had gone down and attempts to access it for repair were scuppered as the farmer on whose land it was, refused to let anyone near it, so the company were having to take him to court. Yes I know, you couldn't make it up.

All of this, however, made it abundantly and infuriatingly clear how much we depend on the internet and mobile phone network these days. If we had had a decent mobile signal, we could at least have done some of what we needed to do with a temporary dongle. 

Anyway, as you may by now have guessed, we are here, safely delivered and tomorrow the story will continue - hopefully! (This photo shows the view from the front garden of our house).