We got to our new house in Catford at 2pm. The removal men had already been there half an hour. I called our solicitors. Voice mail as usual. But when I phoned the Catford estate agent, he told me he had made contact with the Unprofessionals, and they said that, money having been received for our Ramsgate house, they had now despatched the dosh to buy our new home. But later it turned out they had lied. The money was not sent till much later. No matter how hard I tried to persuade him otherwise, the agent said he could not release the keys until the seller’s solicitor had received the money. So we just had to grind our teeth, and wait. Eventually at 4.30pm the keys were in our hands.
The removal men decided to try to make up some of the lost time, and set to work at a cracking pace (literally). They did not heed the proverb “More haste, less speed”. And as they tore about the house, they knocked a lump of plaster off the ceiling above the stairs, shaved a sliver off an antique desk, scraped the beautiful wooden floors and damaged two handles on a bureau.
Shortly after they drove off, the parish priest knocked on the door. He’d come to bless the house. He was Irish, friendly and very funny – hope he didn’t mind my asking if he did stand-up comedy in his spare time ! But the blessing was in earnest, and involved prayers, holy water and a visit to every room in the house. Father John had to rush off to another appointment so he missed out on a glass of champagne. But our new next-door neighbour, who had attended the house blessing, helped us to quaff the bottle. And what a bottle it was ! Louis Chaurey, Marks and Spencer’s finest (luckily at a discounted price !) Delicious. And just what we needed.
We were knee deep in boxes, but we are gradually getting things sorted out. And although we left a lot of furniture behind in Ramsgate, we still have too much – anyone want a solid wood kitchen table with 4 chairs or a nice coffee table from India ?! Our new house, you see, is much smaller than the Ramsgate one. But it is very attractive, and we already love both it and the very quiet tree-lined street it’s in. More like the country than London.
The house has got loads of original features including a splendid front door with stained glass, marble fireplaces and exposed pine floors. But less care has been lavished on the garden. At its centre is a rusty old children’s scaffolding. Our solicitor said he would ensure this was removed before exchange of contracts. I suppose he must have slipped up. So unusual.
On Thursday came an Orwellian experience with Sky , the media giant, who supply us with tv, phone and broadband services. The satellite dish for the tv was duly installed. But when the phone, which was supposed to have been installed on Wednesday, was still not operative on Thursday, I was forced to make a reluctant plunge into that modern torture chamber known as the call centre. Hours were spent being buffeted from one multi-choice menu to the next. Occasionally a human-sounding voice could be heard, and would divert me to another wrong department. On one occasion I even ended up in the wrong country – the Republic of Ireland ! Eventually I found this helpful bloke called Amir. But even he could not penetrate the minefield left by the Moving Home Department. Our order could not be processed because of a failure of communication between computers. Mere mortals could not sort out this gigantic cock-up. We would have to submit another order, which could take two weeks to process (and who knows how many pounds worth of mobile phone calls). “To be honest,” said this Sky employee, “You’d be better placing your order with BT. It’ll be much quicker”. But just as I was cancelling Sky, the bell rang and there was the engineer to fix the phone. Just like a French farce. “Cancel the cancellation”, I told Amir.
As for our Broadband, the engineer said as there had already been broadband service on the line, it should be possible to get it up and running immediately. Bravely I rang Sky again, and they said that an engineer would phone me back in the next hour or two to sort it out. Needless to say that didn’t happen, so I went to Currys and bought a mobile broadband USB stick. Slower than Sky broadband, but a lot better than dial-up.
Ah, the joys of moving house !
Written on Friday 4th September 2009
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