So our things finally arrived yesterday. Only by the time the two handymen we'd hired and the freight container turned up, our lift had been out of order for three days and it didn't look like it was going to be fixed anytime soon. The two handymen, increasingly annoyed by our trouble understanding what they were saying (sorry, I don't know that particular Punjabi dialect), couldn't help us bring the stuff up to the flat if there were no lifts available. They were genuinely angry when they left. We didn't think we'd be able to carry all our heavy stuff up the stairs to the tenth floor, so we had to tell the driver to come back some other day. Unfortunately, the shipping company needed our container to be emptied by four o'clock, so we eventually had no choice but to start unloading it. The driver, a very nice man called Mark, decided to help us, and with that extra pair of hands we managed to move about half the stuff into the ground floor of our building. We had rung another removals company (the first one didn't want to speak to us any more) which had promised us two handymen to help lift the things, but no one would of course bring it up ten flights of stairs. It was a tremendous help, especially when the lift engineer suddenly turned up and they said they would carry the stuff up to our flat if the lift was fixed in another hour's time. It was, and by half five we had all of our belongings with us in the flat. I discovered I'd been without most of my things for three and a half weeks and went searching for my duvet and pillow (my beloved bed had already been put in place). We were thoroughly surprised that the lift was working all through our move, and my flatmate said "I'm glad I only had to walk up stairs twice today". I told her "wait and see; by the time we're finished, the lift is stuck again." After a shower and something to eat we went to the pub. The lift was stuck.

Three hours later we went to a local pizza place (for some reason all the restaurants around here serve halal food, hmm...) and bought a pizza (quelle shock!). As we went up the stairs we quickly realised there was no way in hell we would have been able to carry even a toaster up to the flat, so we were really happy that the lift had worked for a few hours.

The rest of the evening was spent planning for our IKEA visit today (must have shelves) as well as my rummaging around my boxes looking for my PlayStation games and memory cards. No luck there.

Then again, we haven't had any luck at all since the move three weeks ago. The only thing that worked with no fuss whatsoever was the Freeview decoder we bought. We just plugged it in and it worked (and gave us a few more channels to watch). The fridge didn't work from day one. "It worked fine when we tested it," the lettings agent said. As if. The bloody thing wasn't plugged in, you daft sod, and we had to have two men over to remove the fridge in order to plug it in again. Then I took a bath and noticed that there was a leak from the tub, after I was done, so there was a wet patch on the carpet for days. My loo is leaking, too, but I can't be bothered. The lettings agents probably hate us, the phone company don't contact us, the electricity company never replies, we can't open a bank account without their help and we can't get a mobile number without them either. It's been three very long weeks. But at least we've got our things now. Only...where to put it all?

Current track: Nothing.

Labels: humour, personal, TV