Hoarders Paradise

This has been somewhat of a rolly coaster. Makes me a bit frazzled to even think about it. It has been 5 months since I have seen my "stuff" do I really need it? 

The truck arrived it had 2 containers on it, 1st nervous break down.  Good news I only had to fit one of them in the house. He maneuvered around, put one container out in street and then proceeded to bring other one via pruning the trees rather severely and dropped my container less than 5 feet from the back gate. Point to remember.

I am thinking great we can get started and have all day light, (gets dark at 4) to finish, Then he proceeded to get back in truck and go to sleep. These English have a different person to do every job. I think that is how they keep their unemployment so low. This happened around 9:00am.  

The movers showed up at 12, they looked and talked like tellie tubies without the bright colors, all dressed in dark blue. Could not understand a word they said. I just keep agreeing and saying upstairs. We all got along just fine. Boxes, furniture , more boxes came pouring into the house. The container at this point definitely bigger than house. More and more, the inside of the house looked like a hoarders paradise, boxes everywhere.

I had been a little worried  about a particular piece of furniture, it had not yet come off the truck. I had been warning them about the fact that they had not moved the one piece of furniture that I was afraid of. They kept moving things in dresser, hard but managed it up the stairs, buffet big but got into the living room, long boy dresser, up the stairs just had to take out drawers first. They came to me and said, all done, everything is out of the lorry. I looked at them with this funny stare, "are you sure" I asked them as I made my way to the lorry. Sure enough empty. Missing one rather large china hutch. They asked well how big is it, I said, "rather large, 8 feet by 5 feet," really can not miss it. They said, "lucky it did not come, it would not of fit in the house anyway." Love these guys! I had to laugh because if I didn't I would just cry.

It got pretty late and dark and only half the boxes unpacked. I told them they could leave, I was exhausted, but they kept plugging away. Built my last book shelf in the dark in the conservatory, missed a few pieces, it was pretty wobbly, but kirk now had to only ad pieces when we found them, not built whole thing. They were grumbling about light. I got a lamp out to plug it in and yea, went up like flames, something to do with the voltage, not good. So on they built in the dark.  Come to find out all we needed to do was change the light bulb to a UK light bulb and wa la it works, thanks to the brilliance of the Paul's  at work we do not have to trash all the lamps.  So now anyone want a mess of US light bulbs! 

Unpacking continued and we found the door bell to the old house. Now sure how that got packed, not sure if they still need it. 

We slowly over the next couple of weeks, unpacked, filed claim forms for minor damages and one large missing China hutch. In the mean time the shipping filed extra charges, £1,000, for demurrage, (learned a new word, do not like new word) terminal handling and long distance to house.  About the same cost of shipping lost china cabinet if they ever find it to UK.  I was livid. I will not go into it here but the long and short of it was they were all dismissed, being they did it over holiday, and it was only 30 feet from truck to house. As seen on picture below. Outrageous! Tellie tubbies did not have the last laugh. Wait.. should hold back on that, no china cabinet yet. 

Bus

Yes more on the bus. New bus driver, they all have a little different way of approaching a stop. This one did not put flashers on when I waved, so now what do I do, wave again, risk a wave off and no stop. Stand in front of bus and get hit. Likely option. So I decided to wave like a flag man at the train station, the windmill approach, failing arms and slight step to street. Bus stops, phew, I get on bus and driver says, "are you okay". Great now I really have a reputation as a crazy, idiot, stupid American that can not count.  Can not win.  I have decided to change outfits, instead of dark blue wool coat, I going to the beige mink with pink umbrella maybe this will work better in the dark. I will let you know how it works out. 

Word for the day

V it - a- min - you have to say all three syllables.   

Conn, I con't do it. UK english,   the colloquial Gale- ese (I emit goin do it)