We all remember when the Queen described 1992
as annus horribilis; the majority
agreeing the year could hardly have gotten any worse for her family.
When it comes to house moves, the one I went
through a couple of weeks ago is seriously up there on the horribilis scale.
It didn’t help that this move – finally into
an apartment on which I secured a long term lease – was the fifth move I’d made
in ten months. Moving house is known for
being disruptive, unsettling and time-consuming, but forces seem to have been
primed to make the ultimate move the one to break my patience.
To begin with, the reference and credit
checks (which the private owner used an agency to conduct) were more invasive
and frustratingly slow and tedious than the paperwork I did when buying a house
in Australia. The emails, phone calls and requests for more
private information beggared belief. And
of course when they asked a question they demanded an immediate reply or
threatened to cancel the process (for which I was paying handsomely). When I had questions, however, they ignored
me for days on end. So, before a lease
was signed or a single belonging packed, the experience was nothing short of
torturous.
On several occasions I complained to my
closest confidant: “Come on, this much hassle can’t be normal, it’s a bad
omen. Painfully, life has taught me you
can’t force a square peg into a round hole… I think I should give it up. There’ll be other apartments.” To which she advised: “but Mullins, then
you’ll be back to square one and wasting another month flat hunting. You need to get settled and this kind of
frustration with bureaucracy is just how it is in the UK”. There was truth in that, my friend was
genuinely thinking of my welfare, so I persevered; albeit sometimes against my
instincts.
Nevertheless the following Monday morning I
emailed the owner to say “if the checks which have been carried out to date are
insufficient then I can no longer consider the property as an option. You have
known from the outset that I work as a freelancer and if the proof I’ve
provided re affordability isn’t satisfactory then it can’t be helped”. She quickly replied “Everything is fine. We can meet to sign the Lease on Wednesday
evening, before which please pay £2,500 into my account for the deposit and
first month’s rent.” She gave me the
account details. I transferred the
money.
For the next day and a half the owner then
repeatedly told me the money had not arrived.
The bank repeatedly confirmed the money had been sent. Wednesday evening, half an hour before the
scheduled appointment to sign the Lease, the owner prevented me banging my head
on the wall by saying: “Oh, I seem to have given you the wrong account number…
sorry.” After several more phone calls
to the bank the money is recovered. But
no, they can’t do the transfer again, to the correct account, as it’s after
hours. The Lease can’t be signed… as I’m
not prepared to sign it without being given the keys, as agreed, at the same
time. Again my friend steps up to plug a
hole, and as she’s set up for online banking (something I haven’t gotten around
to doing in the UK)
she transfers the deposit for me!
The meeting takes place, the Lease is signed,
the chit-chat is forced but friendly enough, and we part with an agreement I
will turn around this move in the ridiculous time-frame of less than
forty-eight hours.
I’m astounded I’ve allowed the owner to bully
me into moving on a date which suits her far more than it suits me, however
such is the difficulty of finding a decent apartment in London in an area as
popular as Wandsworth that I’ve fallen for her threats that “if you don’t take
it, I have someone else wanting it”.
Only after signing do I discover the reason for the unreasonable hurry
is that she is about to go overseas for several weeks. Nevertheless I am starting rehearsals for a
new musical that coming Sunday, so moving house that Friday… or not then for a
month… are my only options. I accept the
pressure and resolve I’ll be relieved when it’s all done and dusted.
I had a much needed couple of wines that
night in a bar with two friends, on route to Australia
after some skiing in Europe. I hadn’t been drinking alcohol due to a virus
which kept recurring throughout January; each time, it seemed, that I got too
cold or sat too close to someone coughing.
Given how many bugs go around in the thick of a European winter, and not
being used to the cold as a born and bred Pommie, my immunity had taken a
beating. Yet my health had significantly
improved in the last week so it felt good to relax and celebrate with friends;
my new direction set, for better or worse.
Thursday was spent packing at a rate of
knots. I surprised even myself with the no fuss
organisation and efficiency. (Clearly I’d
learnt something from multiple house moves.)
By late afternoon I headed out
from Clapham Junction on the train to St Margarets, to pick up a friend’s
car. I returned in quiet traffic and was
so ‘on a roll’ I decided to do two carloads of bags and boxes that
evening.
When I fell into an armchair to watch the
late news my arms were aching. Daily boot
camp had enhanced my upper body fitness recently, but the twenty odd stairs at
the new apartment were a killer. I knew
it was time to stop for the day, and sipping chamomile tea I felt relieved the
job was half done.
Friday morning I jumped up early, completed
boot camp, and finished packing the other half of the house. I lugged everything down the stairs and piled
it into the corridor near the external door.
As I was about to fetch the car where it was parked in a quiet street
opposite, my great friend called to say she was sending her husband down to
help me. Talk about timing. And with that assistance and a man’s eye for packing
cars, we loaded and delivered one round, and then packed the car with the last
load. I was so pleased with the progress,
helped by having only a few small pieces of furniture, that I asked him to wait
by the car while I went upstairs to get a bag of groceries from the
freezer. That proved fatal. For when I returned minutes later with frozen
peas etc under my arm, we watched in dismay as a police car pulled up. Thirty seconds sooner and we’d have been
away. But it turned out I was a metre over
the boundary of where my car would have been legally parked, and the policeman
in attendance was not only a stickler but rather rude about Australians. Given I wasn’t blocking traffic, had
genuinely thought I was responsibly parked, not to mention in the process of
moving on, I hoped for some lenience. No
such luck. He handed me a £130 ticket
and an annoyingly patronising lecture about “red zones” and “learning the UK road rules
before driving in this country”. Ugh,
what a pain.
We soon delivered that load anyway and when I
returned to the old flat to complete the cleaning, I was very conscious of
parking carefully. I parked in the same
quiet street as the night before, and walked up and down inspecting the
signs. I fed the meter and put a ticket
on my windscreen for just over an hour, by which time I expected to be ready to
return the car to Twickenham. Cleaning
done, and just a few small bags in my possession, I crossed the street and
approached the car with five minutes to spare.
“Hmm, I don’t remember it being this far up the street’, I thought. Back and forward I wandered. Recalling my steps between the meter and the
car, I shook my head in disbelief.
Eventually there was no other conclusion to be drawn other than “the
bloody car’s been stolen”!
In Neighbours parlance, this reaction would be described as “Julie is
gobsmacked”. And I was! But what to do? Up and down the street I wander like a lost
waif. What is the registration of the
car? No idea. And no-one to ask as the friend who left me
her car keys is in India!
Hell.
I call the police. No
registration, they can’t help me. I
return to the ‘scene of the crime’ and start asking strangers stupid questions. My heart rate has already reached optimum as
I contemplate the difficulty of recovering a stolen car without any details of
ownership. OMG I am up shit creek
without a paddle. (Sorry, but insufficient
resilience for elegance here.) When I
return to the street a neighbour leans out an upstairs window and asks: “are
you looking for a silver car?” "Yes!" I reply hopefully. “They towed it away about twenty minutes
after you left it”. “Who the hell is
‘they’….. and why?????” I manage to stutter.
“That one spot in the street is a disabled parking place”, she tells me apologetically. One spot. In the middle of a long street with different
rules – the like of which I am completely unfamiliar with. The signage to tell me as much is simply some
faded white chalk on the ground, beneath where it seems my wheels had found
themselves. Even if I’d been accustomed
to looking on the ground for signage, it’s unlikely this particular day I would
have seen it when there were several garbage trucks in the street, and I had to
reverse forward and back several times to let them pass before parking. Yet I never park in disabled parking
spots. I have an uncle and close friend
in a wheelchair. I wouldn’t dream of
it. But being so careful, how had I
missed it?
Clearly the old adage “the pathway to hell is
paved with good intentions” stands true.
As I walked back to the old, clean and empty flat to cry, the kindly
neighbour yelled out “sorry, the guy who lives there must have phoned the
tow-truck company the minute you parked”.
Yeah, I bet he did, I thought; no doubt for a nice back-hander. Suddenly I feel like knocking on his front
door to give him a piece of my mind about practising the tolerance he demands
from others – for it was clear by the meter ticket my infringement was a
genuine mistake of only an hour’s duration - but I didn’t want to add other
charges to my increasing bout of criminality.
I speak again to the police. They give me the name of a company who locates
‘towed vehicles’. They can’t help me as
I have no registration number, and even if I did I’m told I can’t reclaim a car
if I’m not the owner. The car will have
to stay at the pound for £200 a day.
Could it get any worse?
After another exhausted cry, this time more like
sobs… I recall the name of the place where my friend bought her new car. I phone them and thirty minutes later a saint
of a woman has searched the database and found my friend’s car. Armed with the registration number I can now
go back to the car pound and negotiate.
Well, if it isn’t annoying enough that’s it’s now almost dark, wet and
freezing, the car pound is not in Fulham as I’d been told it might be… but
rather, Croydon! Why in hell would you
take cars from Wandsworth to Croydon – it’s not like the car was parked on a
busy street causing traffic havoc. Talk about over-governance. But of course, no time to complain, I am
feeling sick with responsibility for my friend’s car; significantly worse than
if it were my own.
Multiple conversations later, escalating through
various managers, I find someone with a little empathy and lateral thinking. He
agrees if I can produce proof of address, a current driving license, proof of
insurance (which hopefully is inside the
infamous car), and the car keys, that he will release the car to me that night
for £255 pounds. If I leave it longer
it’ll be £455 (the £55 component, the ticket for parking in the disabled place,
as if the trauma of being towed weren’t enough!).
It is now six hours since I ‘lost’ the
car. I am utterly exhausted. I can not face public transport. So I take a mini-cab for another £30 –
another investment in the charade for which I could have hired two men and a
truck to complete my house move with FAR less stress!
I arrive at the pound and the guy who’s
promised to bend the rules for me has gone home. Seconds before collapsing on the floor in
hysterics, I plead “but surely he told someone here about our
discussion…. please ask your colleagues”.
A very cool, laid-back guy is shaken up by the sight of a lady on the
edge, so he disappears for a while and comes back with someone who smiles at me
and says “yes, he passed on the information and it’s our intention to make the
release of the car as easy as possible for you”. Thank you God. Thank you God. Thankyou God, I say under my breath. Though wondering why He’s had most of the day
off.
I get the car. I drive it through the ominous gates and they
slam behind me. I park and call a friend.
I simply do not have the energy or emotional stability to find my way
across London
in mid-Friday evening traffic and rain.
He googles from the office and directs me to a large Sainsbury’s where
he wisely advises me to sit and have a coffee and something to eat before
attempting to navigate my way back. I do
this. And I’m a little revived.
Eventually at 9pm I pull up outside my new
apartment. Again I walk up and down the
street checking signs with the suspicion of Woody Allen. I can’t understand what I’m reading. I’m too tired. The wording is ambiguous. I decide it’s too dangerous to
return the car to Twickenham, as I’m likely to kill myself or someone else on
route. My girlfriend confirms this
decision over the phone and I resolve to leave the car whether or not I get
another ticket.
I make my way up the stairs of my new ‘home’,
though it hardly feels like it, desperate to relax. With shaking hands I open the door, ooh it’s
freezing. I rush to the thermostat and
turn it up. I go into the bathroom and
turn on the hot water to run a bath. No
heating. No hot water.
Seriously true. This is why they say fact is stranger than
fiction.
I am beside myself. Pushed beyond all reasonable limits.
I get into bed, cry and fall deeply
asleep. The next day I go out and buy
blankets. I return the car without
incident and for a reward eat a big chocolate brownie and cappuccino. At least I have returned the car safely. I have an unfortunate story to tell my friend
who owns the car, but at least I haven’t abused her trust (I hope).
I return to the flat. It’s still freezing. I start rehearsal on Sunday with another cold
and little voice. But I can only hope I’ve
turned the corner and things are going to get better.
That’s the thing about anything horribilis… that’s the thing about life… you simply have to turn the page.
But… do you think if I asked Adam Hills
to knock on that guy’s door to share a few thoughts it’d be considered less
discriminatory?
