Move Number 2

We at last moved house over the weekend and happily said good bye to our one-month flat. 

Unfortunately, swine flu has created havoc in my body for the duration of the weekend’s move.  I am fine so long as I sit upright, am warm and don’t move.  If I move at all, am cold or lie down I bark like a seal.  These barking spells can go on for some time, and usually cause my entire body to convulse, somewhat like the zombies in 28 Days Later.  Unfortunately, given it is a typical British summer, it’s not warm and moving house doesn’t give one a great many opportunities to sit upright and not move.  I rather suspect, therefore, that our new neighbours think we have smuggled a pet seal into the flat. 

We did not employ Vinnie again to help with the move, and thankfully had two removalists neither of whom were scared of heavy lifting.  Along with G, they got a fair bit of exercise and earned their fee.  I was therefore able to avoid the heavy lifting this time, and instead did the cleaning/packing/unpacking jobs while the boys did the hard work.

By the end of the Saturday we had all of our belongings in the new flat. 

The English property system is different to that in Australia in so many ways.  None of these ways is good. Importantly, the principle that the seller sells the property along with its fixtures does not seem to apply here.  We discovered that the shelves that had been affixed to the walls had been removed, as had coat-hooks and, most importantly, curtain rods and the curtains.  Nonetheless, we did not let any of this affect us, and managed to cobble together some makeshift blinds for the bedroom using old packing boxes.  By that point, the neighbours probably thought that in addition to smuggling a seal into the flat, we were subletting one room to some hobos. 

Moving from living in fully furnished rental properties into our own empty flat has meant that we have had rather quickly to acquire some furniture.  We bought the seller’s bed and wardrobe.  They are ugly, but perfectly serviceable and, most importantly, meant we had a bed for the Saturday night.

Exhausted after the move, we went to bed early on the Saturday night. At about midnight, G woke with a start, waking me.  There was an overwhelming smell of cigarettes throughout the flat.  G told me that immediately on waking, and for a few groggy seconds thereafter, he thought someone had broken into the flat and was smoking in the sitting room. He quickly realised this was an odd thing for a burglar to choose to do, and so decided that this was probably not the source of the smell.  G then wandered around, looking in the flat and sniffing every air vent to try and work out where the smell came from.  I was far too tired to get out of bed at that point, and went back to sleep.  I gather Geoff went back to sleep too.  At 4 am, however, I woke startled, again smelling the cigarette smell throughout the flat, and this time found I it too overwhelming to ignore.  I of course woke G, and we turned the lights on and crept about the flat, again sniffing under and outside the front door, and every air vent.  Given we have no curtains, I suspect any chavs awake and living in the housing block across the way would have been entertained for some time by the spectacle of two semi-naked adults creeping about the place, sniffing things while one of them barked uncontrollably.

Despite our best efforts at sniffing out the source of the smell, G and I could not tell where the smell was coming from.  I decided it must be a smoking ghost haunting our new flat.  G thought there must be some scientific explanation for it, but could not determine what that explanation could be.

I should mention, at this point, that G and I possibly hate the act of cigarette smoking more than anyone else on this planet. I remember when I was a teenager, and there was a brief period when cigarette smoking was seen as cool and rebellious, trying cigarettes a few times when offered them by friends.  I couldn’t see the appeal, but my loud criticisms to my friends that the idea of lighting something smelly and inhaling its fumes seemed altogether rather ridiculous was met with outcries that I was betraying the cause of teen rebellion.  It was therefore with some delight that I discovered the history of moral bankruptcy of cigarette companies, and was able to sanctimoniously tell friends that by smoking they were “feeding the man” and that it was, in fact, they who were betraying the cause of teen rebellion.  To be frank, as many of my smoking friends know, this self-righteous and sanctimonious speech of mine still rears its head, usually when I’ve had a few too many glasses of wine.  It is combined now with tales of just how long it takes cigarette butts to decompose.  It is, perhaps, not surprising that I don’t have too many friends who smoke anymore.  

In the context of this cigarette hatred that both G and I feel, having a flat that inexplicably smelt of cigarette smoke at odd hours of the evening was perhaps the most terrible thing that could happen.   However, the next day there was a further turn of events that managed to distract us, temporarily, from this catastrophe.

The delivery men arrived with our brand new sofa. A lovely, three-seater, chocolate brown linen-covered sofa from Dwell. A bargain, bought at a half price sale.  After the hectic move and sleepless night, we were both very excited at the prospect of spending a few hours collapsed on it watching episodes of The West Wing.  Without this sofa, there was only the hard wooden floor on which to sit to watch TV.  Unfortunately, the sofa did not fit through the narrow stairway to our flat.  My shouts of “just kick it through, push it why don’t you” to the delivery men did not help matters as they explained to me that, quite simply, the sofa was bigger than the space in the stairway and there was no possible way, according to the laws of physics, that the sofa would make it through.  We waved goodbye to our sofa, and sat on our hard wooden floor.

The upside of sitting on the floor was that we suddenly realised where the cigarette smell was coming from, as a gust of foul cigarette-smelling air came though our chimney.  It seems that my ghost theories were, in fact, not correct and that what has been happening is that our neighbours' cigarette smoke is wafting into their chimney, through ours and into our flat.

We promptly blocked off the chimney with some tape and cardboard and have solved one problem.  Now the hunt is on to find a sofa. Preferably one that can be delivered straight away. In the meantime, I will be writing this blog as I sit on my cold, hard wooden floor.

Lessons learnt - move number 1

G and I have finally made the move to the one-month flat. We have come to an important realisation through the process of moving; namely, when out of desperation you find a house, removalist and carpet/curtain cleaner all on the one night and all from Gumtree.com, you should not relax and (as I admit I did) congratulate yourself on your organisational abilities. It seems that there was a reason the flat, removalist and cleaner were available at the last minute and had not been hired by anyone else.

It turns out that Vinnie, our removalist (£25 per hour, £10 of that, he said, as he would do all the "heavy lifting") has an aversion to heavy lifting. Indeed, it dawned on us quite quickly that Vinnie was remarkably good at disappearing and that, in fact, the only people doing the heavy lifting were us. I got rather sick of trying to track down Vinnie and eventually gave up when, after one of his rather long absences, I found him hiding behind his van eating some takeaway food from the shop up the road. His only response to my incredulous looks and hand gestures was to offer me a chip.

G and I ended up carting all of our very heavy boxes of belongings up a seemingly endless flight of stairs to the one-month flat. By the end we were exhausted, covered in sweat and panting. Vinnie was out the front, with not a bead of sweat on him, relaxing and having a cigarette.

We then discovered that our carpet/curtain cleaner, despite assuring me he could clean all the carpets and curtains, in fact did not clean curtains. Ever. The residents of Camden were therefore entertained by the spectacle of me carrying in my arms an enormous pile of curtains, the pile towering over me, as I ran up the road to the dry cleaners on the high street. I rather suspect that from the front, it would have looked like a bundle of curtains had sprouted legs and was going for a jog up the high street.

During the move, and as we heaved all the boxes up the stairs into the one-month flat, I confess we didn't look too closely at the flat. We were preoccupied with trying to get all of our boxes in there (and with trying to find Vinnie). It was only after the move that it dawned on us just how bad our one-month flat is. G described it as looking like a "junkie den". For example, we were greeted with two "presents" left in the toilet, that simply would not go away for 48 hours, despite us flushing the toilet numerous times. I am also going to have to avoid any client meetings for the next month, as we have discovered the shower is almost worse than useless, and living out of boxes means that in the morning my choice of clothing is a lucky dip, as I dig into the depths of my clothing box and wear whatever comes out. I suspect that, as I wear through my clean clothing, my work colleagues are going to be witness to some rather unusual outfits.

After an exhausting move, and after spending the weekend in a disgusting flat, we made a desperate telephone call to our solicitor, asking what the hold up was on exchanging contracts and settling on our new flat. We were told that he was only waiting on a document from the local authority. In response to my question "how long until you get that?" he answered "how long is a piece of string". I was not altogether reassured by that response. So, we are waiting, anxiously, and hoping the new purchase settles sooner rather than later, in order that we can escape our junkie's den. As we wait, we are embroiled in a dispute with the ex-landlord, who is inventing items he says we broke/lost in order that he may claim part of our bond.

So, as you can see, we are really living it up in London. At least if and when we move into our new flat, we will really appreciate it!

We today decided that, in an effort to have proper showers and avoid nervous breakdowns, we need a holiday and have booked a last minute trip to Barcelona for the weekend. Hopefully, the next time you hear from me I'll be feeling tanned, relaxed and well watered with Sangria!