We are here
Well hello fans. For followers of my blog I can only apologise that I have not up-dated for so long. This is for two reasons.
1. We have moved to our new house and have been too busy.
2. We have had to change everything concerning our internet as we are no longer with NTL and have had to change ISP and, yes another AND we have had to go Wireless with a router so had to wait for our Guru to visit from Southampton.
For those thinking of moving, these are our top ten pains-in-the-bum concerning moves. Not in order of importance particularly, just as I think of them.
No. 1 and top of the pops is….Boxes..
How many cardboard boxes does it take to fill a bungalow, completely, so there is hardly room to turn around? We must have had 60 of various shapes and sizes. Why did we take so much and THEN throw some away afterwards. See below.
2. Estate Agents. Communication…don’t talk to me about communication. I must say that they sold our house and for this we are eternally grateful, but charging VAT is taking the P**** ! They seemed to be afraid of us talking to our buyers in case we put them off, and therefore there were a few misunderstandings.
3. Solicitors. I have to say straight off that our Solicitor, Stuart Bechares of MLN was excellent, once we got him going. But the aim of a Solicitor seems to be to get you to change your mind about the house. What did we have: Rising Damp from the surveyor (absolute rubbish, most respectable surveyors say there is no such thing), the local church may charge is Megabucks if their walls fall down (cost us £120 that one) and, oh yes, Radon (Radon is a decay product of Radium which collect in cellars, if we had one I might lose a little sleep), and an electricity cable running under the house which turned out to be running up the road with a spur to the house.
4. RCD trip switches. Our electricity tripped off about five times a day until we traced it to the fridge. We have had the fridge for ten years with hardly any problems. Our friendly electricity man charged us £125 (plus VAT of course) to tell us that our system was v. good but we needed a new board (£700) because we did not have an independent earth point (even though the system is earthed to water and gas pipes). Also it cost us a new fridge.
5. Redirected Mail
I have always hated Junk Mail, but how the hell you tell them you have moved is a megamystery. I have sent about 20 e-mails to cutomerservice@junkomail.com and I bet to no effect. And it is not even Holiday Brochure time yet.
6. Banks (see 5, they are even worse than Junk Mail companies to contact). If you have got too much hair and can’t afford a haircut, try contacting Alliance and Leicester. After we had finally got them to change the address, thet sent a confirmation letter to our old address (well, for security so not too bad) but then had the temerity to print on the back of the envelope “are your details correct? let us know if anything changes”. We have extended our Royal Mail redirection for another 3 months.
7. What to change, what not to change? Well you want to have a new house, not another version of the old one. But you got used to that bloody ugly cling film dispenser and the knife holder and the pictures and the coat stand and …..NO NO NO! This is a new house.
8. Should have been no. 2 really. What the Hell did we pack THAT for. So we unpack the last box and realise that despite taking 10 trips down to the waste disposal site, we still have about 5 trips to go.
9. Losing things. Now I think that our packing was pretty organised (Ann did most of it), but despite this we still managed to lose a whole lot of stuff which is now in a different place. I always kept those discs in the second drawer down, but we haven’t got a second drawer down any more, so where on eart did I put them? I bought some lovely postcards in Seville of Spanish posters from the 1930 EXPO exhibition. Last Saturday we gave up looking for them and bought some postcards of beach-huts in small frames to go on the wall. Well guess what I found this evening when looking for my Argos card? I wouldn’t mind but it was in the second drawer down of my nest of drawers in the bedroom.
10 The junk the old owners leave. So OK I did the same. They thought it may have come in useful but that is another two trips down the dump. (I wonder if our buyers have got rid of that concrete statue we left yet?
So here we are, and it feels like Home already. A month in but we are so looking forward to summer. We have met a couple of the neighbours and they seem just like us. There are no white vans parked outside and we can leave the garage door open wthout checking every 5 mins.
Next blog, I will attach some photos, including one of the snow.