Laryngitis and cheap furniture
Finally, finally, we’re within touching distance of being settled in DestructoVille! Getting registered with a new doctor was a bit of an ordeal – and yes, I’m ill again, otherwise it wouldn’t seem so urgent, but apparently I have laryngitis and should refrain from talking as much as humanly possible – but, well, that story doesn’t seem worth recounting, really. And it’s come to something when several mile-long walks in the wrong direction up a hill only to be told that the doctor won’t see you anyway – but only AFTER you’ve registered, just to make things that little bit more inconvenient – doesn’t strike me as a story particularly worth telling. Anyway, I digress.
What remains of the house move is to buy some new furniture. DestructoBoy! and I already had to invest in a new bed (mmm, pocket-sprung goodness!) and a new sofa when we moved into the new flat, but it seems that the combining of all our earthly possessions will also require several new storage units. Thing is, DestructoBoy! and I don’t have a good history when it comes to buying storage units…
The last time we went to IKEA, we were in search of a DVD storage cabinet. I’m not sure whether it’s just us and our terminally bad luck, but storage units designed specifically for DVDs just don’t seem to exist – bookcases are too deep, but CD towers are too narrow. We can’t be the only people in the world with sizeable DVD collections, so what’s the deal here?
In desperation, we bought some CD towers from IKEA, but upon getting them home realised that they were almost comically small; woefully inadequate for housing our looming piles of DVDs. It shouldn’t have been a problem, since the boxes were unopened and we had the receipt, so we turned around and drove back to IKEA, arriving with a mere half hour left until the store closed. That should have been a red flag, really, but the returns area seemed reasonably quiet, so we took a numbered ticket and waited our turn.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally, our number was called, and we rolled our trolley up to the service desk, were greeted by a smiling customer service rep…
And an alarm sounded, asking for everyone to evacuate the store.
I’m not kidding – that is the exact instant that the alarm sounded. Right as our number was finally called, as we were just about to return our ridiculous tiny shelves, the whole building had to be evacuated. The IKEA employee advised us to just wait for a moment in case the alarm was switched off, but it wasn’t, and it soon became clear that people were going to panic in their haste to get to the exit, so we joined the throng, and left the store.
And then got in the car and drove home. Never let it be said that we don’t know when we’re beaten. Perhaps understandably, we’re nervous about setting out to buy new storage units now…
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Completing the trilogy
This morning, my hairdryer exploded.
I’m starting to think DestructoGirl! + electrical appliance = disaster.
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Tags: electricals, things breaking down
You spin me right round, baby
If you asked me to name one piece of electrical or electronic equipment I couldn’t live without, chances are that the humble washing machine wouldn’t be the first thing I’d think of. I’d probably rather keep my laptop, or my mobile phone. But that’s because I’ve never tried to do a whole load of washing by hand before.
I wish there was a more dramatic story here, but there really isn’t. DestructoBoy! and I moved into our shiny new flat last weekend, amid all sorts of chaos (most of which was only the culmination of two months’ worth of chaos), and set about settling in. We’d brought a load of dirty laundry with us from the old flat – washing we’d just not got around to doing – and moving seems to have generated even more. A towering stack of dusty linen here, a pile of dirty socks there… mostly, stuff we’d been ignoring in favour of more urgent unpacking (or just more interesting unpacking – like, say, the Xbox). But this Saturday, I decided it was time to tackle the washing, not least because we were starting to run out of clean underwear.
I’ve always found washing machines a bit of a trial, because they each seem to use a completely different range of arcane symbols. The new kitchen features a set of switches for all the appliances – cooker, hob, microwave, dishwasher, fridge, etc – in one corner of the room and it took me rather longer than it should have to realise that they were actually mislabelled. (”I’ve switched on the washing machine, but it’s not coming on.” “Well, have you tried this switch?” “No, because that says dishwasher.” “Right, but… now the washing machine’s on.”) Eventually, after a lot of faffing about, I managed to set a load of dark cotton washing on an economy cycle at 30% with an hour’s tumble drying afterwards. The lights went on, the water started to pour in, the drum turned around… and then stopped.
And stayed stopped.
After about ten minutes, I switched it off and on again, and it started up again… and then stopped. Then I noticed that the dial had turned itself around – from “4″ to “spanner”.
I’m no expert, but even I could figure out that “spanner” might mean “something’s wrong”. And indeed it was. The drum wouldn’t drain, but neither would it wash. A week’s worth of shirts and pants were being held hostage in murky, scummy cold water that wouldn’t go anywhere, and a quick call to the estate agents confirmed that we wouldn’t be able to get anyone to fix it till much later in the week.
Here is where I did something that, in retrospect, was really rather stupid. I decided that I would be able to finish this load of laundry off by hand. We’d bought some handwash liquid previously, there wasn’t THAT much laundry, and we had a bathtub – how hard could it be, right?
Well, as it turns out, really hard. The bath taps are temperamental, alternately squirting cold water and scaldingly hot water; the clothes were cold and waterlogged and gross; and the soap made my hands dry and sore. All the scrubbing and rinsing and wringing in the world didn’t seem to be making things any better, but after half an hour I was determined not to give up – after all, I’d got this far, and giving up would make it all a waste of time, right?
Right. Another ten minutes and I was done: my wet jeans felt disgusting, I was tired, my hands hurt, and I was sick of nearly burning myself. I hung everything up to drip dry, called a friend, and arranged to take the laundry over to her house and use her washing machine.
I’m eternally grateful to both her, and the person who invented washing machines. I can only hope that mine will be fixed soon, and that I remember, in future, that I am not cut out for handwashing vast amounts of dirty clothes. Urghhhhh.
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Tags: electricals, moving house, things breaking down
Toasted
“I’m going to get the early train tomorrow. I’ve got some work I need to get through – I’m going to set the alarm early.”
That’s the kind of thing that should set alarm bells of an entirely different type ringing in the Destructo household. If there’s somewhere that I or DestructoBoy! have to be at a specifically early time, chances are something’s going to go horribly wrong.
True to form, it did. The alarm woke us up early. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Then I reached under the cupboards to pull out the toaster. The next few seconds crystallised; they seemed to last forever as pain and heat shot up my arm. It felt like an eternity before I realised I was getting an electric shock and managed to pull my hand away, though it could only have been a matter of seconds. The lights went out; the boiler went off; DestructoBoy! came running out of his cold shower to see what had happened. Seems the toaster had, somehow, become live – when I touched it, it electrocuted me and blew all the fuses in the flat at the same time.
And if we’d lived there more than a week, we might have panicked less at our lack of knowledge of where the fuse box was. Ten minutes of extreme stress (”I’m going to be late for work – I’m not having a cold shower!”) later and we’d managed to restore order to the flat, but I spent most of the day trying to reassure myself that electric shocks probably don’t have delayed repercussions for health. Probably.
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Tags: electricals, injuries, moving house, things breaking down
“There are no parking spaces out here, at all. It’s blowing a gale, and I think I’ve lost the parking permit.”
The move actually went surprisingly smoothly, all things considered. There were a few sticky moments – the worst part being when the sofa didn’t turn up for three hours past the time it was expected, and then looked alarmingly like it wasn’t going to fit up the stairs – but now everything’s moved, the old flat has been scrubbed from top to bottom, and all that’s left is to finish unpacking.
Whew.
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Tags: car problems, moving house
DestructoGirl’s Survival Tip #2
Always bring a map. Always.
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Tags: tips
A glitch in the Matrix
Just a quickie, because I’m STILL ILL, and that’s putting a serious dent in my productivity (and my intended blogging schedule!) –
I went to the doctor today. I had to book an appointment some fifteen days in advance, but it wasn’t an emergency, so, y’know, whatever. Being me, I arrived about 10 minutes early for my 3:45pm appointment (because you never know when the train will break down, or London will catch on fire, or your legs will fall off, or some other bizarre occurance will manage to make a simple twenty minute journey take two hours) only to find the place utterly deserted. No patients, anywhere. All the shutters were drawn up at reception.
I’d have assumed “zombie outbreak”, but then I realised there was actually a receptionist sitting at the desk behind the shutter. At my approach, she looked up and fixed me with a withering stare, and barked “We don’t open until 4pm.”
Slightly flummoxed, I pointed out that I’d made an appointment for quarter to 4. She sighed, tilted her head slightly in the direction of the waiting room, and begrudgingly told me I’d better go and wait outside the office, then.
The waiting room was plastered with posters informing patients that if they want to see a doctor, they need to check in at reception first, because “OTHERWISE THE DOCTOR WON’T KNOW YOU’RE THERE.” Which is good logic, but it’d be nice if the receptionist you need to check in with was on duty before the doctor. Or am I being unreasonable?
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Tags: bureaucracy, general stupidity, illness
Running on empty
The countdown to the house move is still ticking away – there’s really not long to go at all now – and what am I doing about it?
Well, I’m sitting at home writing this, because I’m too ill to go to work. I think I’ve been incubating something for a while now, and my immune system just finally gave up the ghost. Every joint aches; my head’s muzzy; my sinuses are blocked; I’ve had a headache for the last week; my throat feels like sandpaper. I’ve done nothing but sleep this week. Sleep, sleep, and more sleep.
And of course that sleep is full of anxiety nightmares. Nothing specific, and nothing worth mentioning (other people’s dreams are usually boring anyway) but it’s fairly obvious what’s causing it.
I thought the convention with being ill around times of great stress was that you didn’t get ill until afterwards. Like with Christmas – everyone rushes around trying to pull everything together at work and at home, trying to get all the food and the presents and fighting through the Christmas rush in the shops, and then by the time Christmas day rolls around, they’re so exhausted that they catch a cold and end up sniffling their way through the holidays instead of enjoying them. If I’d come down with this lurgy after the move, that would’ve made sense. But no, it’s now, and it’s not letting me do anything worthwhile.
Yuck.
Time for some warm Ribena, I think.
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Tags: illness
DestructoGirl’s Survival Tip #1
Always carry with you the following items: antiseptic cream, plasters, and painkillers. You never know when you’ll need them.
(Bonus items which are handy but not as essential: scissors, sellotape, a biro, and some paper.)
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Tags: tips
Moving house – the preparation
We’d planned everything down to the last minute. On Saturday morning, we’d get up at the usual weekday hour, leave the house at the usual weekday time, and drive to DesctructoVille to sign the contract on a new flat, then go shopping for a new bed. The estate agents only open til midday on Saturdays, and it would take at least an hour and a half to get there even if the roads were completely clear and the traffic lights were in our favour, so a lie-in was out of the question. Still, leaving the house at 9am would leave us with plenty of time, even if, as always seems to happen whenever we have to be somewhere at a specific time, something went wrong.
Or so we thought.
A bit of backstory might be necessary here: usually, people get to park their cars outside their houses, or even, if they’re lucky, in their garages. When DestructoBoy! moved into his flat last year, he was told he’d need a parking permit to park outside his flat, which lead to all sorts of fun and games when he moved and we couldn’t find the necessary documentation to obtain said permit. But once we’d collected everything together and managed to find the council offices, we were informed that actually, the flats DestructoBoy! lived in weren’t allowed permits. Or cars. No matter how much proof we had that he lived on the street and owned the car, no amount of money could buy him a parking permit on that street. As a result, the car is parked a 15-minute walk away across town, outside the home of a friend who, fortuitously, has free parking on her street. So, in order to go on any sort of journey, we first needed to walk for 15 minutes to get to the car. Doesn’t sound that disastrous, but you trying doing it for a year -it’ll wear you down.
Anyway, on Saturday morning, we managed to leave the house before 9am, and were feeling quite proud of ourselves. Until we got to the car.
DestructoBoy!: “Does that front tyre look a bit flat to you?”
DestructoGirl!: “Hmmmm… I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Five minutes later, it became clear that the tyre was very much flat. Too flat to drive on. But the shiny tyre shop at the end of the road opened at 9am, and we could manage to drive that far. As we pulled up outside, a mechanic emerged from the shop and beckoned us in, only to drop another bombshell: we didn’t have a flat tyre.
We had three flat tyres.
Which still shouldn’t have been a problem. But things were about to get worse. The mechanic moved our car into position, jacked it up, and started removing tyres – except then he couldn’t find the key to unlock the tyre bolts, or something else incomprehensible. After ten minutes of fruitless and slightly panicked searching, he said he could just break the locks, but to do that he’d have to charge us another £10 per tyre. Ouch. DesctructoBoy! agreed, though.
Then another customer rolled in. He’d got one flat tyre, and the mechanic figured it’d be easier to change this guy’s one tyre and get him out of the way first – the workshop was just off the street, and there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre – rather than finish the job he’s doing and keep this guy waiting. (Apparently, keeping me waiting isn’t a problem.) Five minutes later, he’d finished. One happy customer drove off … and a woman promptly drove in, hoping to drop her car off for an unscheduled MOT. The mechanic decided this would be a good time to call his brother, since clearly there was going to be far too much work for him to handle by himself.
To recap: our car had three wheels off, there was a slightly impatient woman sitting outside ranting about being late to see her grandchild, and time was ticking away scarily fast. DestructoBoy! didn’t have enough cash on him to cover the tyre change after an extra £30 had been unceremoniously dumped on top of the price, so he went off to a nearby cashpoint to get some extra money. In his absence, the mechanic asked me to jump into the driver’s seat and apply the brake so that he could fit the new tyres. I didn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about, but gamely went along with it anyway *after he’d pointed out which was the brake pedal, anyway). He replaced one tyre, then disappeared into the back of the workshop.
The mechanic’s brother finally strolled in and placated the angry grandmother outside with a cup of tea. Then the “happy customer” from earlier returned, in a distinctly bad mood. Apparently, the “new” tyre that had been fitted onto his car had a nail in it. Which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence about the three tyres that were about to be put onto DestructoBoy!’s car, but by then, I didn’t have a choice – and couldn’t even tell DestructoBoy! about it, since a) he wasn’t back from the cashpoint yet and b) I couldn’t move from the driver’s seat, because to do so would mean releasing the brake and I wasn’t sure if that was allowed yet. The mechanic’s brother (or, I guess, mechanic #2, but I’ll stick with the terms I’m already using) removed the offending tyre, replaced it with another one, and somehow managed to send the angry customer on his way without getting punched. Which was no mean feat.
DestructoBoy! got back from the cashpoint just in time to see the mechanic’s brother removing the one tyre that the mechanic had put on his car. We were back to three missing tyres on the car again. Then the mechanic came back and removed the final remaining tyre from DestructoBoy!’s car. We had less than two hours to get to the estate agent before they closed, and no tyres whatsoever on the car. Attempting to get an explanation from either of the mechanics about why they were now removing tyres instead of fitting them yielded no joy – apparently it was something to do with the car being small. Not as small as my remaining store of patience, mind you.
Having confirmed that it was okay for me to get out of the car, I got out… and started pacing around. Did I mention that it was absolutely fucking freezing outside? Because it was.
Finally, finally, after what seemed like an eternity of faffing about, the mechanics actually got down to the business of putting wheels on our car. It took maybe 10 minutes – but the whole ordeal had taken almost two hours. Eventually, all the tyres were on the car, and it was lowered down to ground level. DestructoBoy! went to settle the bill – and the mechanic asked him for “drink money.” Which, it transpired, meant “a tip.”
…
He didn’t get one. And our first stop, once we’d managed to leave that hellhole of inadequacy, was another garage – the one DestructoBoy! usually uses, and actually trusts. It turned out that the Chuckle Brothers had put on tyres of slightly different sizes: two slightly bigger ones on the back, and slightly smaller ones on the front. Which explained, at least, what had happened when they’d removed all the tyres and played Musical Chairs with them, but didn’t help us get to the estate agent any faster. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t make it. We’d fallen at the first hurdle – or, maybe not the first, since we’d found our dream flat, but couldn’t actually get as far as signing the contract. Doesn’t bode well for the actual move, does it?
Just to top it all off, we almost got killed in a near head-on collision with a blind and/or fucking stupid van driver on the way home.
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Tags: car problems, moving house, road trips
