Wednesday January 6th 2010

You know how things always come in threes. Well, on Friday of last week, we noticed that the awning covering the deck was broken On Monday, the washing machine packed up which wasn't very helpful as I had masses of last minute washing to do. Then today the packers lent boxes against the garage door and when the cleaner came in to pick up some stuff, opened the garage door and it broke. Great I thought - that is the third thing so there won't be any more, and even better the garage door had simply come off its runners and between them, they were able to put it back on.



So there I was later on, minding my own business when the panic alarm went off. Now we have had a large red button by the side of the front door and I have always warned the children not to touch it. I actually thought it was disconnected as we had never paid to activate the burglar alarm. Now it turns out, the alarm was active all along and when one of the packers hit it with a box, all hell broke loose. I have never had a code to disarm the system. I thought about ringing the previous owners to see if they could remember their alarm number but after 4 and a half years thought they probably couldn't. We managed to take the cover off the alarm but no obvious battery or anything to disconnect. So Chris, the lead packer, who was the one to hit the button in the first place, pulled the fuse. Bliss - silence really is golden.



And for the good news, two bits. The first is that the removal co-ordinator thinks that the airfreight will be able to be sent sooner than we originally thought. Not sure why but clearly we don't have the same problem with visas that we do for the sea freight. The second and even better bit of news is that the packers should be finished a day early. Now that really is something. Here's the thing about international moves. Every piece of furniture has to be wrapped in paper - thick wads of paper to protect it in the container. Each piece of crockery and china is wrapped, again. in wads of paper. Boxes are lined with paper and glass is given a specially made wooden crate. It is really not the same as moving 5 miles up the road. So these guys have been fantastic and I give them credit for doing everything so quickly. Of course I take some of the credit for being organised but I think in all of the moves that we have done, we have never done it in 4 days.



Now let's just hope that we can move the painter, cleaners and carpet cleaners up by a day. Now that really will be something.