Moving house – the preparation

13Feb08

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