So the move is finally over. It’s fair to say that there have been a few teething troubles. I went into the garage yesterday armed with many bin bags, to tackle the freezer. I was pretty sure its contents, having been left a-mouldering for the best part of a fortnight, would be quite capable of jumping into the bin bags themselves. They might need some persuasion, though. I had an old broom handle at the ready just in case.
In the event, when I plucked up the courage to open the freezer door, everything was cool and dark within and I realised the freezer had been left plugged in. Phew, no rancid meatballs. Thank you, removal men! There is still no sign of the wet washing, though, which was taken out of the machine and put ….. somewhere. I have visions that it has now developed a cerebral cortex of sorts and is teaching the other boxes how to sing and dance Madonna’s Like a Virgin, a la Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason. Obviously they stop when I come in.
One of the downsides of the move is that the school is now further away. How far depends entirely on the whim of South East London’s traffic, as unruly and unpredictable a beast as my wild washing. Sometimes it takes ten minutes – though never with the girls in the car – and sometimes it takes 45. Last Friday, I decided to try a new route via Catford, only to find that there was an armed robbery in progress and the whole of the area was locked down by police with guns and slavering dogs. How silly. If the robbers had just asked me, I would have told them not to waste their time – there really isn’t much worth stealing in Catford, and emphatically nothing worth going to jail for. Anyway it took us an hour and a half to get home.
As a result, I’ve now bought us some teach yourself French and Spanish CDs to play if the jams get bad. That way the girls can complain about them (and me) instead of the traffic, if things get snarled up.
Otherwise, we have the slight problem of living in a house without a kitchen. Due to a series of oversights, slip-ups and contretempses, the kitchen, which was supposed to be finished before we arrived, is now actually coming in May. That’s May. MAY! Until then, we have a microwave, and now a tiny little oven with rings on top, as used by the Young Ones in the 1980s. And all this is in the sitting room. There are large holes in the kitchen floor, revealing the foundations under the house (the Victorians, who have such a reputation as master builders, turn out to have just shoved any old crap under their houses, btw). There are large holes in the walls. There are large holes almost everywhere. If it was all painted yellow, and we were mice, we might feel at home as it would look like a large lump of Swiss cheese. As it is, I’m just counting the days until May. MAY!