Friday 1 February 2008

A Holiday in Hell

Apologies to readers (both of them) for recent absence from bloggery. The last three weeks have been utter hell, with more of the same to come. Moving house is purgatory at the best of times, and these weren’t the best. It started with pretty near the worst week of my life. Doesn’t quite make it to Number One – the seven days in August 2000 between being told I had cancer of the oesophagus and being told I hadn’t will take quite a bit of knocking off that perch – but it’s right up there. This was to be the week of the great house move, and for once I thought I’d got it organised quite neatly. Secure the new house from Monday 7th, arrange to move out of the old one on Thursday 10th, giving us three clear days to shift our stuff; arrange for our furniture to be delivered from Germany on the 16th; in the meantime, as we would be without a bed in the interim, bought one to be delivered on Friday 11th, having arranged accommodation with a friend for the night of the 10th. The whole thing required a few thousand squid, so I applied for funds to be transferred through my German bankers on 18th December. All bases covered, you might think.

Except that the money wasn’t there. No doubt the various bankers involved had “borrowed” it for a few days, to put it on the horses or something, and no doubt they’d all taken a couple of weeks off over Christmas like everyone else, but anyway it wasn’t there when I needed it. The estate agents for the new place were as nice as pie, but totally inflexible: no money, no keys, not even allowed to transport stuff to the house to await full occupation. (I suppose they’d have got sacked if anyone up the corporate hierarchy had found out they’d broken procedure.) Anyway, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on the phone from 9 till 5, trying to find out where this damn money was, while the Iron Buddha did as much packing as she could. Trouble was, the domestic atmosphere deteriorated markedly during this period.

I can’t really blame her; we were facing actual homelessness, and the area in which a major cock-up had occurred was undoubtedly one for which I had the responsibility. It wasn’t really my fault, except that I should have made allowances for any degree of bankers’ incompetence and done the transfer about a month earlier, but I have no excuses: at an atavistic level, a man who can’t even put a roof over his woman’s head is a failure by any standard. All this burst out in a fearsome row on the Tuesday evening, where my shortcomings were read out to me in no uncertain terms. This resulted in my storming out of the house in despair, getting into the car, and heading for Scotland. I have not found it possible to maintain my alcohol reduction programme during this level of stress, and perhaps we had better draw a veil over my blood alcohol level when I hit the M6 around midnight.

However, no harm befell me or any other road user, thank God; and halfway to the border wiser counsels prevailed, and I decided to retrace my steps and return to Lancaster. Around Carnforth I was doing no more than 80 when my clutch blew out and I could do no more than to glide over to the hard shoulder and slow gently to a halt. And that, as far as my Saab 93 went, was that. It was 1.30 a.m. The full-scale storm of earlier in the evening had burnt itself out, rather like my clutch, and it had stopped raining, but the wind was about Gale Force 8. This being the middle of the night on January 9th in North Lancashire, I presumably need not play Eeyore and point out that it was neither Hot, Close or Stuffy. Just-between-ourselves-and-don’t-tell-anybody, it was Cold.

I should, everyone told me, have picked up one of the roadside phones and sought help. But I had no number for the RAC with me, and, besides, I have long since lost faith in the possibility that any public telephone will actually work. There was also the points a) that my brain was no longer in working order after the bombardments set out above and b) that I had no wish to be discovered in the neighbourhood of my car by anyone who might be furnished with a breathalyser. Anyway, I walked four miles, and had almost reached Lancaster when the Highways Agency, who had already spotted my defunct car and put two and two together, picked me up. They wouldn’t actually take me home, but gave me a lift to a hotel where a cab could be obtained, and promised to bring my car to my address in the morning. Couldn’t have been nicer.

On the Wednesday, having got to bed at five, I got up to discover that I still had no access to any money, and that the Highways Agency had not brought my car as they had promised. So the previous days’ slog of trying to chase up banks who couldn’t care less was at least varied by the task of trying to find out what the hell had become of the car. (I should at this point credit the Iron Buddha for bringing me a penitent cup of morning tea and swearing never to go for me like that again; unfortunately, I am writing this in retrospect and in the knowledge that the oath lasted two and a half days.)

By the time I had located the car it was 5.30 p.m. They had taken it to a recovery place instead, enabling them to charge a fortune for me to get it back. I rang the RAC. They said they could go and pick it up, but according to their rules I had to be there when they did so. Ah, I said, thinking of my transportless state, well, can you pick me up and give me a lift there? No, according to the rules they couldn’t. Well, the buses in this sort of area would have stopped running by then, and failing fifty quid’s worth of taxi, there was no way I could do it. I told them to commit an anatomical impossibility and went to the pub. Next day, Thursday, I could see myself having to empty the flat and become homeless by 9.30 a.m., and find shelter for a gobby wife and about fifty-three plastic bags, while simultaneously sorting the damned car out.

My “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” moment came on my early awakening next morning when I saw it was lashing down with rain. What better conditions to complete a major logistic operation with no car? Fortunately the wife had done well in organising a man with a van, and I had done well in organising a massively supportive brother-in-law, so both we and our stuff had a place to stay. As on every day this week, I had remained sober so long as there was stuff to be done, but once that was no longer possible, had got massively rat-arsed. I had just started doing this when word came through that my money had arrived. Sadly, it was quarter to six and the estate agents were closed, but at least the end was putatively in sight.
Spent the rest of the evening in one of the best pubs I’ve found in Lancaster, full of disappointed and articulate middle-aged men so I felt right at home, before going on to the brother-in-law’s and a good night’s sleep.

Next morning the horrors continued. We went to the estate agents to do the financial biz, when I remembered we were having a bed delivered that day, the only one we had until the rest of the furniture was delivered from Germany in five days time. The buggers wouldn’t of course let us into the house till the finances were all in place, which would be around lunchtime, so I rang the bed company to find out what time the bed would be delivered. Any time between now (around 10) and 1 p.m. , they told me. I got my arse in a taxi and went to the house, sans keys, getting a where-the-hell-are-you call on my mobile en route from the bed company. Just a moment, I told them, and arrived just in time to take delivery of a bed in bits, which had to be stood against the outer wall. Fortunately, within the hour, I got the nod from the estate agents that the money had come through, and they brought the key round. So we were in, only mildly disconcerted by the fact that an alarm instantly went off which nobody had told us about. As we had as yet nothing but a bed, we decided, on invitation, to stay another night at the brother-in-law’s.

So far so good. Unfortunately the stress had proved too much for the Iron Buddha and she unleashed the row from hell, with all dirty linen waved all over the room. After an uncomfortable night on the sofa, I really thought this was the end. Besides, I had mislaid my medication in the horror, and woke up feeling like I had about six hours to live unless I found it, a feeling which may even have been soundly based. Driving back with all our crap to the new place from my brother-in-law’s, I had to pull in to let a wailing fire-engine pass. “Bet that’s our house burning down,” I said to the IB.

But it was all sorted in the end, leaving me feeling as if I’d survived the siege of Stalingrad. (I’ve always believed in reading a really harrowing book during really harrowing times, to remind me that, however bad it gets, it could always be worse. I read Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror” while waiting for my cancer tests seven years ago. During this move I completed Antony Beevor’s two books on Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin.)

And hanging over me the whole time was the upcoming court case against the Queen Bitch, which I hadn’t had time to pay a minute’s active attention to – and even once the move was completed, how the f**k am I supposed to find the relevant financial papers in all this mess?

4 comments:

Ken said...

Try reminding Y that if it wasn't for you she would still be knee deep in water in some fucking paddy field. And what the hell is her brother doing in the UK?

I am sorry about P. All your friends used to love her a bit, and are distressed by all this.

Tamburlaine the Great said...

Thanks, mate. Yes it's all been hell on wheels, and most distressing for all of us, especially the kids - did you meet them at Nick's wedding by the way? They were both there, and elder one nearly started a fight (with a cockroach who'd shopped me to MI5).

It isn't her brother - it's her sister's fiancé, so not technically a brother-in-law, but more or less.

You can't tell Chinese women that sort of thing - they always assume that they did you a favour and could easily have married Rupert Murdoch instead.

Ken said...

I turned up at the pub afterwards because I did not have anything half decent to wear at a wedding.

I chatted to your younger son and advised him to apply to Worcester College. He replied that they probably wouldn't take him, so I said that if they will have you they will have anyone. Quick as a flash he replied: "Buttering me up, I can tell".

Your elder I only spoke to briefly and I know nothing about his argument. I got involved in one with a papist yu-yu man named Tom or Tim.

Bruce was there, as was Saul. It was good to see them both after so many years.

Tamburlaine the Great said...

Really delighted to hear that younger boy managed to get off a snappy response. This is a kid who couldn't speak till he was 6, and is being represented to the court by his mother as being a total basket case who can't wipe his own arse. He is a bit un-streetwise, which is why I want him up here where I can be there as back-up if needed, but he can handle himself pretty well now.

Incidentally, I've just written to P., offering an out-of-court settlement, and i hope it works.