|
Location: Blogs Simon and Melody's Blog |
 |
| Posted by: supersi |
Wednesday, March 07, 2007 |
The dust has settled from our move, and we awoke this morning south of the river. The historic docks of West India Quay and the towers of Canary Wharf are behind us, and Greenwich is our new home. Glad it’s over, too. Of the four moves (yes, four) we’ve endured over the past year and a half, this was definitely the most stressful.
Of course, having Canadian-sized furniture doesn’t help. For the past three weeks I’d been going back and forth with property management to get approval for use of a furniture crane. Taking our couch out the patio doors and five floors down to street-level is the only way to have it removed, due to the size of the tiny elevators and narrow hallways in the building. I paid the property management office a visit on the morning of the move to let them know that things would soon be underway. “Hi. The moving truck and furniture crane will be arriving in an hour. Here are the registration numbers of the vehicles.” “Oh, but you don’t have approval yet.” “SAY WHAT???”
I’d provided all the documentation, and more, that they’d asked for. Site photographs, operator certifications, risk assessments, insurance documentation, DNA samples from all the movers, a litre of blood, and a letter of reference from QEII. No worries. But as I stood there, mouth open in the management office, I was faced with the reality that we may not get this couch out after all. Do I try to sell the couch to our landlord? Saw it up into cubes and glue it back together later? Hire a bunch of Polish guys to lower it down by rope under cover of darkness? This couch has travelled across the ocean with us. No man gets left behind!
After a couple of nail biting hours, the manager finally reached his boss somewhere in the bowels of their head office, and got approval. Funny though… a small crane attached to an apartment building with a big black couch coming down the outside is not a site you see every day, and it did cause a few people to stop and stare. As I left the building I caught a sentence fragment of a conversation the building concierge was having with a passer-by: “… wide, wide houses; wide, wide streets …”. I’m sure we can guess the rest of that conversation. No doubt some sort of explanation as to the oversized couch’s country of origin. “Yeah, you know we have this couple from Canada on the fifth floor…”
So finally, with the couch out of the flat, and everything in the lorry, we breathed a sigh of relief and I headed off to work. The five month pregnant lady was to supervise the rest of the move.
Well from there things went from narrowly-averted disaster to worse. Apparently our friendly team of movers branded our house as being the house – on second thought, I won’t tell you where they said our house was from. Expletives streamed constantly from their lips as they carried heavy boxes and furniture up the narrow staircases. No doubt they would’ve been much happier if we’d not actually asked them to move anything. This close to the Prime Meridian, these guys really put the “Mean” into GMT.
At one point, the head mover walked up to Mel and said, “Your futon isn’t going to go up the stairs.” He said it as an accusation, as if it was all her fault. What was she supposed to do? Apologize on behalf of the futon?? They then brought our couches to the front door, and without even trying, declared that they wouldn’t fit. Mel was texting me at work with real-time updates, and when she next said that the bed wouldn’t go up the stairs, I really felt sick to my stomach. I had visions of couches, wardrobes and mattresses sitting on our front yard and spilling over into the neighbour’s. The whole street would be lined with oversized, abandoned furniture. Soon the neighbourhood would be protesting with pitchforks and rotten produce outside our house.
Then Mel’s engineer ingenuity kicked in. “I bet those couches would fit if we took out the stuffing from the attached pillows!” Sure enough, they squeezed through! I would have liked to see the expression on the movers’ faces. Repeat after me: “Why didn’t *I* think of that?!” And of course, later that night we had the futon apart and up the stairs in 10 minutes, and slept soundly on it. I’m sure we’d have slept even more soundly on our bed, but, um, that’s still in the living room. It ain’t over till it’s over though… I’ve got some rope, it’s only two floors up, and I know a dodgy bunch of Polish guys… ;-)
(Thanks for your prayers) |
|
| Permalink |
Trackback |
Comments (6)
Add Comment
|
Re: The “M” in GMT |
By supersi on
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 |
| I've posted some photos of Greenwich here. |
|
|
Re: The “M” in GMT |
By kathleen on
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 |
"Oh, to be in England....." It looks beautiful. Enjoy.
Why is the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, when it was built in Scotland?? |
|
|
Re: The “M” in GMT |
By supersi on
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 |
| Well, over the past thousand years the British *have* developed a reputation for stealing items and artifacts from other countries. Don't believe me? Just visit the British Museum! |
|
|
Re: The “M” in GMT |
By supersi on
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 |
| For all those who have been asking, today we did actually get our bed out of the living room and upstairs to where it belongs. It was done by the landlord's handyman and a couple of helpers. Unbelievable that four "professional" movers couldn't figure it out, and our handyman had no problems. Well we are just glad to be off the futon! |
|
|
Re: The “M” in GMT |
By Doug & Elaine Buckley (Melissa's Aunt and Uncle) on
Thursday, March 15, 2007 |
| Thoroughly enjoyed your "Moving Story". We are looking forward to your next adventure!!! |
|
|
Re: The “M” in GMT |
By Jason on
Thursday, March 15, 2007 |
| Too bad you didn't have Curt 'the couch man' Marshal there, he is an expert in all things couch related, including moving. Unfortunately he was around when George's green sofa tried to squeaze into my new dump. Now George has his beloved sofa back, poor Amy... |
|
|
|