Finally Moved House

Sun, 25 November, 2007 – 10:03 pm

After the long running saga, we've finally moved house! It's been a long week and an even longer weekend, and we've still got a lot to do, but at least the roof over our heads is now the new house. I've moved house a lot of times (30+ in all now) however I've never had this much stress. It's been a while since I had so much stuff to move, so I guess that hasn't helped, however we've also had a few issues with arranging various things.

On monday we got the keys for the new house. We headed straight up to see what would need doing and we also had a couple of boxes already with us. Unfortunately since viewing the house, the landlord and his wife had decided to decorate, leaving a lot of mess in the bathroom. So we set to working cleaning the bathroom as well as the kitchen, which was already planned regardless of cleanliness. It wasn't what I'd hoped for, you usually expect to rent a house out in a clean state to begin with. Anyway, we unpacked the boxes we had and then went off to a friend's for the evening.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we didn't actually return to the new place. Dave suffered with a bad back all last week (perfect timing unfortunately!) and I had so much work to get done that I decided we'd just spend the week working and packing, getting ready for the weekend. We then spent Friday moving more boxes up to the house, met the landlord in the evening briefly, and then on Saturday we had a van to do a couple of trips with the bulk of the stuff.

On Monday we found a BT line (British Telecom, main provider of telephone lines in the UK) so assumed we could get that reconnected and keep our ADSL, just moved over to the new line. However a quick call to BT later and we were told it would cost £125 to reconnect the line, we would also have the cost of enabling ADSL which is £50, so £175 in total. This compared to free set up with NTL/Virgin Media, 2MB broadband, telephone and the basic cable TV package for £20 a month. No comparison really! So we had the equipment couriered out to us on Wednesday and we set it all up on Friday.

Annoyingly the house currently has prepay meters for both Electricity and Gas. This means that we need to ensure there is always money on the meter else it'll just cut out. So you have the choice of having to put a lot of money on the meter or risk running out of credit in the evening when the shops are closed. Plus not many shops let you buy credit which is also frustrating (not to mention it's a more expensive system). We've already asked the supplier to change the meters, I hope it's done soon.

Another rant this week (it's been a long week!) is over the Royal Mail. In this country, if you move home you can pay to have any mail going to your old address to be redirected to your new address. Handy, especially with Christmas coming. However 'for your security' you naturally have to prove who you are and that you live at the old address. Well, despite having a car registered there, car insurance and house insurance, because I cannot provide a utility bill (electricity, gas, water or telephone) as they're all in Dave's name, and my bank details are at my business address, I therefore cannot get my mail redirected. So for my security my mail will continue to go to the old address and could be opened by anyone (being against the law doesn't tend to deter people if they don't care). Okay, so it's for security, I can understand that. What I can't understand is that once the redirection is set up, a letter is sent to the old address stating that redirection has been set up for those who have requested it and of course, if this is incorrect please contact them. So, erm, why can I not have my redirection as their final security check is the cherry on the cake anyway?!

Still, rants aside, I'm glad to have finally got out the other house. It's so quiet and peaceful here for a start off. Plus we're a short walk (up a hill) from an Observatory that, once you're up there, gives you panoramic views over the area and hopefully a few good sunsets too (providing the clouds go away!). It's also so nice to know where the car is (2m from the front door) instead of wondering if it's still where you left it, whether it's been hit, broken into or had a wheel or two stolen!

So we're settling in slowly. Still got loads of boxes to unpack, the bed to put back together, and a few bits still to get from the old house, but we're getting there.

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