The long-awaited (maybe) update: 25th September
The depravity. The laziness. The trauma. Here, then, is the story of how we moved lock, stock and commemorative tea set from one end of Cambridge to the other. The epic, as promised.
Being of a practical turn of mind, I took the Friday off work in order to finish packing our stuff. Well, I say packing: we spent the first bit of the day over at the new house, waiting for our fridge, washing machine and vacuum cleaner to be delivered. At about 9am, we got a phone call confirming that the delivery would be in half an hour's time. At 10am, we got another phone call. "Yeah mate, we're having a bit of trouble finding it..." - not a good start - "...we're outside number 39 at the moment". Since our new place is number 5, this came as a slight shock. Upon enquiring as to where the hell they were trying to deliver our whiteware to, we discovered that they'd decided to deliver the stuff to our billing address. More accurately, the lady in the shop had managed to mix up the "Ship To:" and "Bill To:" addresses on the invoice. Well, damn, we figured; this has already put us back by about an hour or so. We told them the correct address, and they told us where we could stick it. That's right: they don't allow changes of delivery address on the day. While this is a fairly admirable security policy, they wouldn't even deliver the damn stuff to the billing address - which they had on record. Feh. The main depot rang up, and offered to deliver it on Monday. Two days after we move in. Including our fridge and the vacuum cleaner we were going to use to clean the flat prior to moving in. Hmm. Twenty minutes of yelling and some fast talking later, they agree to get the local shop to drop off the vacuum cleaner that morning, and to drop the big stuff off at the local shop on Saturday, who would then courier it out to us. Okeydokey. Seething slightly, we start cleaning the wet areas of the house.
This may sound like a trivial bit of make-work, but the house was an absolute pigsty. No joke. I'd be embarrassed to leave a student flat like this. In fact, I've moved into student flats in better order. Dirt everywhere, hadn't been vacuumed, piles of rubbish at the side of the house - not good.
We set to and got mucked in. About 12, the vacuum arrived & I started deploying it in the living room. About 1, the previous owner turned up to pick up the last bits of her gear... we'd wondered what the fully loaded station wagon was doing sitting outside the house. A quick chat with her revealed that the place was a tip because she'd been let down by her moving men and had thus had to move an entire household several hundred miles by herself. Her movers had apparently double-booked themselves on the principle that they could let one of the dates slide a bit if necessary. This works OK unless one of the people in question is getting married and going on honeymoon the day after they plan to move - as the previous owner had intended to. Hmm. While not impressed with her amazing forward planning, our faith in the British service industries was now pretty much at rock-bottom. The arrival of our futon on time did not noticeably help.
So far, so good. We finished cleaning the house by about 3, then went back to the flat to finish packing. A veil will be drawn over the next few hours; let's just say that at 9pm, we went to meet some mates in a pub. At 9:45 (one imperial pint later) we had to leave, as we were so utterly buggered that we were in danger of faceplanting in a pool of beer.
Saturday - the day of doom - we got up at an unholy hour (7am). My mate Chris From Work turned up at about 9. Chris is a fairly large lad (6'3" in socks), and is an all around good bloke. Workmates volunteering completely unprompted to help you move stuff is a good thing. It looked like being a scorcher of a day, so we were all in shorts and t-shirts. Chris' t-shirt was particularly impressive: black with 'Anarchy' on the front in 4" high blood-red lettering. Hmm. So we hopped a taxi and headed off to the van rental place to pick up the van. During the journey, the taxi driver tells us that there's a major animal rights protest planned for central Cambridge that lunchtime. Police (including mounted riot police) are being bussed in from the Thames Valley. Hmm. At the van rental place, we are assigned a battered transit painted bright green and yellow. We're one stripe away from driving a mobile Rastafarian flag. With a huge driver wearing an 'Anarchy' t-shirt. And passengers with visible tattoos. On the one day for quite a while that the police are guaranteed to be a little more sensitive than normal to minor driving infractions. "Yes, officer, all this stuff in the back is definitely mine. No, I can't prove it. Why are you taking out handcuffs?" This could be more interesting than we'd expected.
Off to Longstanton, a quaint little village ten miles out of Cambridge. Here we picked up a lounge suite demobbed from my team leader at work (the illustrious Sharron). Pausing only to admire the brick facade (nice place - clearly management pays off) and to manhandle the rather 80s-esque sofa into the back of the van, we head back to Cambridge. The house looked noticeably better than the day before; clearly there's something to this hoovering malarky. The couch is unloaded, we head back to the old flat and start shifting boxes. A couple of mates show up, and a flurry of activity ensues. The actual move itself wasn't too bad: 3 van loads, 2 1/2 hours, a hell of a lot of sweat, and we're there. Then, barring a couple of bits of cleaning, we were home & dry. Didn't even get stopped by the police. Even the fridge and washing machine showed up eventually.
A period of relative calm ensued. After spending a few days figuring out roughly where to put things, we realised that we don’t actually own any shelving ourselves. Or wardrobes. Or chests of drawers. Or, generally, anywhere to store any books or clothes. Not Good. Much time was spent wandering around the place finding these things - we managed to order a set of bedroom furniture, only to find that it couldn't be delivered for three weeks. Ah, Britain.
UpMyStreet has proved untrustworthy: since moving, we've become noticeably _more_ interested in DIY. As in, since moving, we've:
- Repainted the front bedroom - from bright purple walls and yellow ceiling to "Natural Wicker" walls and white ceiling. "Natural Wicker" sounds like a wanky colour name. It is. It is, however, noticeably less wanky than most of the other colour names on offer. My personal favorite: Dulux (UK, at least) currently have three flagship 'groovy, with-it, contemporary' paint ranges: Asian, African, and Urban. Asian is mainly quiet pastels, African is fairly bright earthy colours, and Urban is a selection of greys and light blues. Urban contains such stylish colours as "Manhattan Loft (TM)", "Inner City (TM)", and.... "Dot Com (TM)". No, I'm not joking.
- Sanded, then varnished the floor in the front bedroom. From 'off-brown with Realistic Paint Splashes!' to a rather nice shade of polished medium brown. Oooh.
- Put together a fair whack of flat pack furniture. We don't own coat hangers, mind you.
- Put up a set of curtains. This was more painful than it sounds.
It's quite fun. Floor sanders are Big Fun. For ten minutes. Then it's like a recalcitrant lawnmower that you can only push forwards, which sends up sparks whenever it hits a nail. Ah well. Renting it wasn't half a laugh - I took a day off work to do it. In the middle of the petrol crisis. Without a car. Woo hoo! Fortunately, I was able to get a taxi to move the damn thing, though I won't say that I wasn't nervous.
The neighbours have proved... interesting. On one side we've got an old couple who spend much time working on their garden. Immaculately tended geraniums in front of the house, etc. On the other: single parent with multiple children. We haven't quite worked out how many multiple children yet, but the best guess is three. It's complicated 'cos they all have mates who run in and out all the time, so at any given moment it's a confused mass of children of various ages. She seemed nice enough at first, but our second weekend in the house gave us pause for thought.
At about 5:30pm Friday, as she was coming home, Heather got hailed by our neighbour, Della. Della then asked to borrow money off Heather. Not in the recommended "Can I blag a fiver till Wednesday?" manner; rather, in the "Can I borrow an undisclosed amount of cash off you with little or no intent of repayment?" manner. Heather not unreasonably pointed out that she's a student and isn't exactly rolling in it. All fine, if a little dodgy trying to blag cash off a comparative stranger. Come 1pm Saturday, we get a knock on the door. It's one of Della's kids, wanting to borrow the tin opener, as theirs had 'broke'. Righto; not a problem, let's lend 'em the tin opener. 15 minutes later it comes back. 20 minutes after that a different kid - who appears to be no relation whatsoever to Della (unless hair-colour genetics are doing some very strange things indeed these days) - pops over to borrow a cup of washing-up liquid. Hmm. OK, whatever. Throughout the rest of the day a succession of small children, many of whom we suspect to be unrelated to Della, pop over at 20-45 minute intervals to ask us to open a jar for them, to borrow the tin opener again, and to ask for washing powder, oxo cubes, and washing powder again. Total number of visits: seven. Towards the end of the day we start politely telling the kids that we're out of whatever they're asking for. Average age of child: six to eight. This is not the age range in which one can really tell the neighbourhood kids to bugger off.
That was weekend #2. We've not seen 'em since, apart from one rather loud party (I don't mind Eminem, but that volume that late is a little harsh on the brain). In a way, it's kind of a pity: I was looking forward to pretending to be an evangelical Christian in order to scare them off.
Slackness 10/9/2000
Sorry about the lack of updates - since having moved house, we've lost telnet access from home. Roll on a decent flat fee ISP (or us signing up to ADSL from someone - or, fundamentally, being a little less slack and getting wired from home), it could be a few days until we get this sorted out. But rest assured that once we do, these pages will be updated again. Basically, if there's no new content by the end of September, mail us and tell us to get ourselves sorted out.
It's not that we've not written it - the saga of our move, the story of the majestic green and yellow van, us nearly being beaten around the kidneys by the fuzz, our new house, our new neighbours, and just how many times you need to borrow washing powder: it has been written up. But we don't have it with us at the moment. ;)
Done and dusted. 17/8/2000
We completed on the house yesterday. It's in a bit of a state, but we're going to front up tomorrow and clean the merry hell out of it, prior to moving in (with tha mad wicked van-driving styles of Chris From Work) on Saturday. Should be a good laugh. We're currently at the 'my word how much stuff did we own again?' stage of the move. Packing all your stuff yourself gets really fun really fast at this point in life. But we're more or less on track to have the move nicely finished on Sunday - our six month anniversary, coincidentally.
The house itself is looking good. We discovered that there's a plum tree in the garden that's in the middle of fruiting - lovely greengage plums. Good stuff. We'd forgotten quite how terrifying the colour scheme on the front bedroom is (dark purple walls, forest green carpet, banana yellow ceiling and trim), and there's guff everywhere, but apart from that the house is in pretty good nick. We're already investigating how one goes about stripping and polyurethaning a pine floor. ;)
We'll have some photos of the house up as soon as we can. In the meanwhile, we're going to continue packing (blah), clean the house up, and have a quiet pint. Oh, and ObEnglishCulture detail: we had a drink at our new local last night, and it's not too bad. They pull a good pint of Stella, the menu looks alright, and the locals seem friendly - and good contacts if we want to get to know the local tattooist.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: rock the house, yeah.
Sorted. 7/8/2000
It's been a good couple of days. In the last week:
- We've exchanged contracts on the house. We complete on the 16th of August; our new address is available on request. Move in that weekend; all offers of help lifting things gratefully accepted. Don't be shy, now.
- We went to see The Art of Star Wars at the Barbican in London. Rock steady. Oh, the pleasure. Original costumes. Darth Vader and Boba Fett, in the nearest thing to the flesh. Big fun.
- We acquired a microwave. Irradiation, ho.
- They've started selling our favorite mindless caffiene drink, V, in the UK. OK, so we have to trek out to Tescos to get the stuff, but once more we can suck deeply at the green pleasure of ludicrously caffienated sugar-water (that isn't Red Bull).
Of course, with such sybaritic pleasures on the one hand, a price must be paid. Heather pranged her bike (it'll require a bit of work), and now has an impressive collection of bruises. And Jack's RSI is getting worse (work stress is not helping). Still, on balance, we're doing good at the mo. All is well in toontown.
It'll all come together... 30/7/2000
...sooner or later.
Emphasis, so far, being on 'later'. Damn.
Righto. So: we were aiming to complete yesterday (Friday), as the seller is getting married this weekend and then going on a fortnight's honeymoon. This timeframe caused a fair bit of running around and screaming while we tried to get everything together in a short period of time. Our solicitors are located outside Cambridge - another one of those 'it seemed like a good idea when the Snake Oil Salesman explained it to us' things - so it takes a day or two to post things back and forth. This didn't help. But we manage to get everything in place, the money's cleared, I've paid the deposit (don't ask), we've got our end sorted. This is Wednesday, by this point.
So we're set to make the seller's deadline. And then we get the call: she isn't. Her moving firm has fallen through, and she can't get out by Friday. Which means that she can't move until after the wedding.
Ah well. So after busting a gut to get everything in order, we've got an enforced three week delay. OK, I'll admit that this is disappointing: I was hoping to be in the new house right now. But, you know, it could be worse. The delay means that we've got a few weeks breathe time. Time to get things sorted out. Throw out old copies of The Big Issue. Buy a fridge. Stuff like that.
However, we still don't have a final date for the purchase of the property. For those of you unfamiliar with English property law, there are two important steps in finalising the sale of a property. The first is exchange of contracts. This is where both parties sign the agreement of sale, deposits get paid, and the sale is legally binding. Neither party can change their mind about the sale or the price (which can happen right up until that point - hence gazumping). When the contracts are exchanged, the date for completion is agreed. Completion is the second biggie: that's when the sale actually occurs. Buyer gets the keys, seller has until 2pm to be out.
Unfortunately, in one of those fun little things that make dealing with the legal profession such a byword for careless rapture the world over, the seller's solicitor was incommunicado for most of Thursday/Friday. So we haven't exchanged. This means that the sale still isn't legally binding, and we still don't know when it'll actually go through. We're trying for August 16th, which is apparantly the date the seller thinks she can make. With a bit of luck, we should be able to get the exchange done on Monday, at which point we'll have a bit more solid details to work with. Fingers crossed, really.
...got it. 20/7/2000
Finally, the mortgage offer is here. Righto. So here we go, let's get the rest of the damn thing worked out. It's all a bit complicated, and involves our solicitors actually waking up and doing some work at some point, but we're confident that we should be in in good time. There's a bottle of whisky riding on us being into the new house by the end of the first week of August, so we've got high hopes there.
So the next step: whiteware! Apart from the aforementioned furniture woes, we realised that we also don't own a fridge, washing machine, or iron. A lack of washing machine and/or iron makes life a bit difficult (though not impossible: the culture of the laundrette is still alive & kicking in the uk). Life without chilled milk, however, is a right bugger. I'm a traditional lad, me: tea with lemon is not to be complated. Certainly not at 7am, I'll say that for free. So a fridge must be acquired forthwith. Ah well.
More on the house, 13/7/00:Fingers crossed, we should have the house in the next three or so weeks. The sellers are starting to get antsy - they want to be out of there. Problem is, we still don't have the mortgage letter. The news from the big kids at the mortgage lenders is that they like the place, they think it's worth the money we're paying for it, and they're typing the damn letter up As We Speak, Sir. Righto.
So assuming that that all goes well, we should be in a position to close the deal in the next fortnight, and (with a bit of luck) take possession pretty soon after. Now all we have to do is deal with the notice period on the flat. Mind you, college is usually pretty mellow about these sort of things, so I'm not unduly worried. It's coming up with the stamp tax (suddden hint: any house over UKP60,000 incurs a 1% tax upon sale: the pain) that's going to really hurt.
And then we get to deal with the fun thing of acquiring furniture. Woo hoo! Problem is, flats in the UK tend to be furnished. So we only actually own non-utile furniture: chests, coffee tables, etc. No bed, for instance. No wardrobe. No bookshelves. I measured our current shelf usage a while back: 12 metres of books and CDs. New house: 3 metres of shelving. This could get interesting. Looks like we'll be suggesting a quick trip off to Ikea pretty soon after we move in, then....
Buying a house: ...apart from some issues with the mortgage, that is.
So we're buying a house. We've found a nice place in north Cambridge (ex-council house: not too pretty on the outside, but built damn tough and pretty comfy inside. Think of those Lada ads where they made a big deal of the fact that the car's build of solid steel.), we've had our offer accepted, we've got a solicitor, and all is generally going pretty well.
Then we try to get a mortgage. Ha ha ha ha! Our happy local mortgage advisor - after convincing us that an endowment mortgage was the only way to go (which everyone and their kitchen sink later assured us was complete crap) - got us a good rate with Cheltenham & Gloucester. Cool. Except, of course, that C&G aren't interested in lending to non-British citizens who don't yet have permanent residence in the UK. Even if it's a joint application with their spouse, who is a UK citizen. Oh well, never mind; Abbey National. Ah, but Abbey National aren't willing to lend quite enough cash - well, says happy Mr Mortgage Advisor, you can go for a cashback mortgage. OK, so you'll be tied into a seven year term (!), but you'll be able to buy the house. Righto, thinks us. We apply, all is well, they're about to financially gut us like newly-caught salmon, we pay £500 in application and valuation fees, and then they ask us for proof of my permanent residence status.
Pardon? The reason we went to Abbey National in the first place was the C&G weren't willing to lend to people without PR; surely we'd made this clear? We may have made it clear enough to the mortgage broker, but it turns out that something had gone slightly awry in the communication to Abbey National. Their polite yet firm position is that unless we get confirmation that I have PR - which I don't - they won't lend to us. Righto.
So we womble off and do what we should have done in the first place: ditch the snake-oil salesman and ask our mates what they're doing. A quick chat with another expat mate later (props to Tsar!), and we're chatting to An Unnamed Internet Offshoot Of A Respected High Street Bank. Question one: hi, I'm a godless atheist with multiple tattoos who was born in the People's Republic of China; do you lend hard cash to Johnny Foreigner? Lo, they do; and our application is currently percolating through their mechanism. Further bulletins as events warrant.
BTW, according to UpMyStreet upon moving to the new house, we'll be sitting firmly in the Acorn Type 33 demographic. We thus firmly intend to become less interested than average in DIY, hate exotic holidays (Butlins ho!), start reading tabloid newspapers, won't be bothered about recycling and will become suckers for advertising. Mind you, we already go hard for the brown sauce and draught lager, so we may not have to do as much retroconversion of our personalities as you might have thought.
How we moved, and what happened to us when we got there.