Hard to believe it’s been a month already, but indeed Thursday this week marked a month that Dawnise and I have been in the UK.
Aside from a couple days in Spain to attend a wedding (an epic busses-didn’t-return-to-the-villa ’till 5am wedding), we’ve been pretty focused on getting life put together.
We signed the lease on our flat, got keys at the start of the week, and our goods were delivered by the movers on Thursday. Since getting keys we’ve been flogging our newly-issued UK Amex pretty hard buying what we need to setup the flat to be habitable.
As an aside, props to Amex – no credit history in country? long standing relationship with Amex? Great – here’s a card with a sensible credit limit.
We’ve got the critical services established (power, gas, water, internet – yes I put internet in the same list as water and power) and have spent a couple days at the flat accepting deliveries, returning to our temporary accommodation at night to confused and slightly PTSD looks from the cats (where WERE YOU?).
We’ve got room for guests – a guest room and sleeper sofas. We’ve used some of the “partially furnished” furnishings to setup the guest room – sans mattress so far (there was a mattress, trust us, you’re glad we didn’t keep it). The master bedroom, at the moment, is a bed and a collection of shoes (before you jump to the stereotypical conclusion – they’re about half my shoes).
When we get back to our temporary flat tonight we’ll review the list of pre-move-in necessities and figure out when we shove the cats into a box and catch a taxi across town to introduce them to our “other flat.”
In less copacetic news, I managed to come down with a cold and then (literally) ran across our new neighbourhood (note the spelling, I’m working on learning capital-E English) when it turned out I had a faulty set of flat keys and needed to admit a cleaner to the new flat. And if that wasn’t enough, the lift at the new flat was misbehaving the day of our goods delivery, so I ended up helping the movers more than expected. I generally feel like crap. I took a lovely couple hour nap on a sofa in the new flat this afternoon, and I’m hoping I have a day or two to kick this cold. Tomorrow involves more spending money so we can get a new washer and an actual tumble dryer – ‘cause fuck keep calm and carry on, I want a dryer.
Dawnise has done an admirable job keeping us feed and shifting our stuff to the new flat one travel backpack at a time, and she’s even managed to spend a bit of time exploring her new city.
We’re both looking forward to having more than the clothes and shoes we packed on the flight – you don’t realize how nice a different pair of shoes feels until you’ve worn the same two pairs for a month. Or maybe it’s just us.
Hope all are well, and until next time…
…Dan & Dawnise