Nebulous Mooch

After much sorrow and heartache, we’ve finally moved into a flat. We lived with no furniture for about a week and struggled to get internet service. Now things are finally coming together–like our bed. We put that together this afternoon.

Our boxes arrived from the States a day after we moved into our place. We rented a van to pick them up on Friday. Our van rental coincided with an Ikea sale on the following day. We thought this sale was the perfect opportunity to save money on furniture. Since we had the truck until 9 am on Saturday and the sale started at 6 am, we thought we’d have plenty of time to purchase the sofa and bed we wanted and return the truck. We’d get sale prices and save on delivery costs. It was a great plan. I mean, who’d want to go furniture shopping at 6 am on a Saturday? Apparently, everyone who lives in London would.

When we arrived at 6 on the dot, the parking lot was full and people were running through the parking lot to get into the store. Who knew that cheap furniture you have to assemble yourself was so popular?

My first time at Ikea, I was tired, dehydrated and hated everything there. I swore I’d never go bad. So much changed after a week of fruitless furniture shopping. Ikea started looking better and better. But, it still wasn’t good run through the parking lot on a cold April morning good.

The store was a mad house. I waited in line for almost an hour to purchase our bed only to find out that we had to pick it up from another location and the wait there was three hours. We had to get it delivered anyway.

The best part of the trip was watching my husband nervously navigate the crowded Ikea parking lot in the very large van we had rented.

I won’t get too excited until we have the keys in our hands, but we got a place to live. So we did a little dance and made up a little song. The lyrics included the words Bushy Mill Lane (the street we’ll live on) and everything we could think of that rhymes with lane. Rather my husband was singing rhyming lyrics, I was too excited to realize that lyrics are supposed to rhyme.

On Friday we found out that we had to move out of the place we where staying, got an expensive parking ticket and found out that most places won’t allow us to rent from them because we have no UK records. Isn’t that swell.

We spent some maniac moments driving around London with my laptop out trying to get wireless internet from somewhere so we could find a place to stay that night. We happened to pass a library–with no wireless internet service–and I ran in to use the internet. The computer access in the library is limited so when I finally found a cheap room and was booking it online the computer was literally counting down the seconds before it would shut my internet window. I was able to book the room and write down the information for the hotel just in time.

My husband dropped us off at the hotel and drove two hours in rush hour traffic to the place where we were staying to pick up our bags–our car is too small to fit all of us and our luggage. He made it back to the hotel with the luggage just in time to leave again and go to his gig.

That was our Friday. Now that I’ve written this I’m not even sure it was Friday. Maybe it was Thursday. Anyway, that was one of the days last week.

We’ve been doing a lot of apartment hunting. We’re staying with friends right now and want to get out of their place as quickly as possible. So we spend our days getting lost on the complicated streets of London and showing up late for appointments with estate agents.

Today we saw the best apartment that we’ve seen and the worst. The best was small but had a very nice kitchen. All the apartments are small. But who wants to hear about the best apartment when the story of the worst one is much more interesting.

Richard, the landlord was twenty minutes late to the appointment. This wasn’t his fault but I still thought it was worth mentioning. The apartment was on Penge Road. Penge just doesn’t have a good sound to it. When Richard finally did arrive to the appointment he forgot the keys to the flat. He let us into the building, but we had to wait on the landing of the stairs for him to come back with the keys. It was worth the wait.

The flat had just been “fixed up” so there was dust and dirt everywhere. He was bragging about the renovations when my husband noticed some rust on the refrigerator door and decided to open it to investigate. Inside the refrigerator lurched the foulest odor he says he’s ever smelled in his life.

“Everything is brand spanking new,” Richard said, motioning to the ten year old radiator on the wall.

Some of the other great features of this newly renovated flat were the dirty toilet, view of a pile of trash in the back garden and paper thin walls. Needless to say we’re still looking.

We stood in baggage claim for a good half hour watching the same bags go round and round before giving up. We were among the last people off the plane, but we thought that maybe our luggage just hadn’t been put out yet. We were wrong.

At first the lost luggage was a okay. We had to take the train and the tube (I’m so English now) from the airport and didn’t know how we would manage with three large suitcases, a bass, a tenor sax, two laptops and a bookbag. I didn’t realize how difficult the journey would be. Once we got to our friends’ house, I told my husband that he was crazy for thinking that we could do it with all that stuff.

Today only one suitcase was delivered. Of course, that suitcase belonged to my husband. That’s the kind of luck I have. The airline still has no idea where the other bags are. I keep telling myself they’ll show up. I also kept telling myself it isn’t really snowing here and I’m not really freezing.

Now that we’re trying to sell a bunch of stuff on Craig’s List before the move, we get a lot of phone calls from strangers. A large portion of these strangers don’t seem to understand how to converse on the phone with someone they don’t know. Here an example of what happens:

The telephone rings and I answer it, only because I have to. I like to let my husband deal with numbers on the caller ID that I don’t recognize. “Hello,” I say.

“Hey, what’s up?” says the male caller on the other end of the phone.

How am I supposed to respond to this? I don’t know who this person is. I usually say, “Nothing. What’s up with you?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He usually repeats the word nothing. This means that there’s a whole lot of nothing going on, I guess. Then there is silent for a few seconds. During this time I continue to wonder who the heck this person is and try to figure out a way to get off the phone. Finally he’ll continue, “I’m calling about your ad on Craig’s List.”

Who are these people and who taught them how to use the telephone? Whoever did didn’t do a very good job.

On Monday a leathery man in fuzzy winter slippers came over to buy the speakers my husband advertised. This is Florida. Why does he have fuzzy winter slippers and why would he wear them out? He talked on and on about The Who and finally bought the speakers.

The parade of Craig’s List characters continues.

Moving requires many things. Among those things are organizational skills, good judgment, brawn, and boxes. All but one of these things are abundant in our household. Since it’s common knowledge that I’m overflowing with organizational skills and good judgement, and my husband is stronger than he looks, you’ve probably guessed that we are in need of boxes.

For a normal move to the next city, I’d be fine with using liquor store boxes, but since we’re shipping stuff overseas I think that we need boxes that don’t have the top flaps cut off. First we looked on Craig’s List for someone giving away moving boxes in the area. When that didn’t work, we decided we’d have to buy some boxes. Buying boxes seems ridiculous to me. Which is funny because I’m perfectly fine with buying gift boxes.

We went to a local packing store to inquire about the price of boxes. I can’t believe how much they cost. I stood at the counter staring blankly at the laminated price sheet. It had a list of box dimensions and prices. I couldn’t believe it. The most expensive box on the list was fourteen dollars! You shouldn’t have to pay more than a dollar for a box. It’s a box for goodness sake!

The portly man behind the counter patiently waited for us to make up our minds. “If you buy multiple boxes, I’ll discount you seventy five cents per box bought,” he said.

“Okay. Could we have a copy of the price list?” my husband asked.

The man photocopied the laminated sheet and handed my husband the copy along with a business card that read Leader of the pack.

We eventually bought boxes from another place. Now our apartment smells like cardboard–expensive cardboard.

So the other day I went to the biometrics appointment for my UK visa. First of all, who came up with this name biometrics. It sounds so Sci-Fi and silly. It’s just a fancy way of saying that they’re going to take your photo and fingerprints. Now that I’m officially in the “system” what will “they” do with that information. (Don’t you love my use of quotation marks?)

When I first walked into the Biometrics Center everything was roped off and I had to wait in a line at the door to speak to the security guard. We weren’t allowed to bring cell phones or cameras into the building. I don’t know why this would be. Are they afraid you’d take a picture of one of the cracked plastic chairs in the large drab room that looked like any other drab government waiting room. It could have been the DMV, if the people in the DMV were required to dress like Target workers. Everyone in the Biometrics Center had on red polo shirts and khaki pants.

When I filled out my online application there was a problem with my name. The computer kept combining my maiden name and current name into one crazy long name. When I tried to correct it it would always revert back to the original mistake. Finally I decided to forget it because I thought that anyone with common sense could look at the application and clearly see what the mistake was. Why did I think that the people in the Biometric Center would have common sense?

When I showed the security guard my passport and appointment form he shook his head at me and said the name didn’t match. I explained the problem to him and showed him my old passport with my maiden name on it. After much explaining he sent me to stand in another line.

The woman behind the counter there scrutinized my passport and appointment form, turning the pages in my passport book like she’d find an answer to the problem somewhere in there. “I have to talk to the supervisor,” she finally said. She disappeared into an office behind the counter. After a few minutes she came back and handed my passport and appointment form back to me along with a slip of paper with a number on it. I guess the supervisor gave her the go ahead to let me get photographed and fingerprinted.

Before I could sit down my number was called and a technician took my forms and furrowed his brow at them. “Your name is wrong. I have to talk to the supervisor,” he said. He disappeared into the office behind the counter. When he came out a few minutes later he started trying to enter my name into the computer and he kept saying that my name was too long to enter into the computer. Then the screen with black and he had to switch computers. It didn’t take long for him to fingerprint and photograph me. “I have to get the supervisor to check my work,” he said. He disappeared into the back office again and came out a moment later with the supervisor.

Apparently, if you’re the supervisor you are not required to dress like a Target employee but maybe you should be. The supervisor wore an over sized gray polo shirt and super tight black jeans, kind of 1985 style. She was the same complexion as me but her hair was dyed a harsh brassy blonde. She wore large heart shaped earrings and a heart necklace and several heart rings.

This is who everyone in this place is deferring to instead of using there own common sense? I thought. I mean really, if she doesn’t know that that’s a really bad hair color and that you shouldn’t outline your lips in dark brown and fill in the middle with frosty pink lipstick, how does she know what to do about my messed up name on my appointment form.

She clicked through the computer screens quickly her acrylic nails tapping on the keys. “Okay,” she said. Then she disappeared back into her office.

I love getting rid of stuff. Now that our moving date is closer we’re getting rid of all kinds of stuff. It’s crazy how many things we have that we don’t use and don’t plan on using in the foreseeable future.

It’s fun to take things to the trash–strange things that you don’t want that most other people wouldn’t want either. Here are some things we’ve taken to the trash so far: a humidifier that never worked very well but made a ton of noise, a very rusty child’s bicycle, a razor scooter (someone probably wanted that). We don’t throw these things into the dumpster. We leave them leaning against it just in case someone else who collects junk wants ours.

Selling things on Craig’s list is even better than throwing them away. Who would have thought that someone wants our old junk? And we get to meet some interesting people. They all want to stay and talk to us for about an hour. The guy who bought my massage table farted incredibly loudly and didn’t acknowledge that anything happened at all. Then he stayed and talked to us about his love for Acoustic Alchemy for a little over an hour. The guy who bought my husband’s synthesizer stayed and talked to my husband for about an hour, did some research on our internet, and shared a story about his bout with Bell’s Palsy. And let’s not forget Mrs. Cole. She bought our stove and talked and talked in the most interesting manner to me.

People are so strange. I wonder who we’ll meet next.