A mere month ago (whoops, sorry) I completed a crucial step of settling in: I moved into my new home-to-be-for-the-next-two-years. I couldn't wait, this seemed the real start of it all.
My parents had decided to come over, bring me a car, and celebrate my housewarming with me. Or maybe they had decided to have a nice Scottish Easter weekend. Unfortunately for them, 'Scottish' turned out to be best interpreted as 'Cleaning a Scottish house which has previously been cleaned in some hitherto unknown Scottish way which we would define 'optical' ". Luckily for me, my parents are less familiar with optical cleaning than I am, so by the time they left, my house had seen more disinfectant than they had seen of Scotland. It had also seen more carloads of Sainsbury goods added to its inventory.
But that wasn't all. I lived a two-week return to the 50's: one channel, no internet, and no flights (many thanks to Eyafjakowhatshisname). Fortunately, getting internet was easier than getting a mobile phone: I didn't need a credit check, I didn't need to pay a deposit, I didn't need to live in the UK for three years, I didn't need to scream at the clerk that this was a bloody mental country for preventing people who make money to buy stuff (ok I didn't need to do that anywhere, but I sure felt like it).... I didn't even need to wait while the guy arranged the installation appointment ('Go ahead and shop, I'll text you when it's done!').
But I was still living out of my suitcase. I had combined every item in my minute wardrobe (the famous 45 kg in 4 bags) in every possible imaginable way I could think of, so a cry of frustration escaped my mouth when my office mate called me at home saying the guys who were bringing my boxes called and said I wasn't home. Minor glitch, the unmistakable noise of a 15m truck trying to park in a small and winding uphill street relieved me from moments of terror concerning boxes returning to the Netherlands only to perish in a dusty deposit.
Unexpectedly, the boxes turned out to blend in well with the furniture, and for various reasons ( a. nicer things to do, b. a sudden spell of amoeba-like physical wellbeing) they continued doing so for some weeks, though slowly but surely the house regained ground.
For the final bit, though, I had to convince the land-young-man that the bastard son of a dressoir and a closet that stood in the bedroom was as ugly as he said it was, and, more importantly, didn't contain enough storage space for the likes of me (i.e., women). The land-young-man brought a dressoir and a big drawer for under the bed, received an obviously delicious pasta in reward, and with some advanced puzzling-skills (involving turning a library into a closet) the end of the boxes was nigh.
Unexpectedly, the boxes turned out to blend in well with the furniture, and for various reasons ( a. nicer things to do, b. a sudden spell of amoeba-like physical wellbeing) they continued doing so for some weeks, though slowly but surely the house regained ground.
For the final bit, though, I had to convince the land-young-man that the bastard son of a dressoir and a closet that stood in the bedroom was as ugly as he said it was, and, more importantly, didn't contain enough storage space for the likes of me (i.e., women). The land-young-man brought a dressoir and a big drawer for under the bed, received an obviously delicious pasta in reward, and with some advanced puzzling-skills (involving turning a library into a closet) the end of the boxes was nigh.
Some before & afters (that is, the house I lived in before moving and the one I live in after moving):
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