Stroppy Knickers’ Progress: Part Two
18 April 2010
A few days off and my perspective has changed a little tiny weeny bit. I realise now that it’s all MY fault there is a problem with the doors, the boiler, the roads, the dogshit… it’s because I’m not having a siesta every day between 12 and 4 like everyone else! Bloody marvellous. I stopped having naps in the afternoon when I was two! But it IS sunny, and I am having a blast with my Sisters-In-Law pretty much every day too.
There is a shop here that doesn’t actually sell EVERYTHING, just most things. It’s called Home-Mate and it’s a bit like HomeBase in the UK only they don’t charge ridiculous prices for weaving a bit of seaweed into a mat and calling it “sea grass”. You can get pretty much everything you need for the home there, except a carpenter or a plumber or someone who realises a gas boiler needs to be vented to the outside.
Oh, it’s sunny again too!
19 April 2010
This afternoon the rest of the sanitaryware for the bathrooms arrived, along with two huge sheets of glass for the showers. Now when we want to get clean I won’t be running around yelling, “Mind the ash… oh God, mind the ASH!” four times a day. That’s a relief.
Allegedly, the plumber is coming in the morning, and will ring first. Which I believe means he won’t be here in the morning and will phone at about 2 in the afternoon to tell us he will ring in the morning. We’ve got a bit of a busy day tomorrow anyway so if the phone DOESN’T ring at 7am, I won’t be crying into my cornflakes this time.
It was sunny again. I saw a cloud.
6 May 2010
It’s been a while since I caught up, but that’s because nothing much has really happened yet. We’re still waiting for our container, still waiting for internet, still waiting for a lot of things, actually.
The carpenter came to inspect the doors last week, he altered a couple so that we can close them, in particular the bathroom doors and he’s going to arrange to replace the front door lock so that it actually locks. What a novelty! Of course, we don’t know when, that’s guesswork… but at least we didn’t pay them yet!
Monday morning the water people will be coming to lay drainage and water pipes. It’s become something of a sport for us, a game based on charades actually which we call “Whose turd is it anyway?” and produces something akin to glee as each new flush sends an as yet unidentified floater skidding down the road. Simple things please simple minds.
Obviously, it’s been sunny every day!
10 May 2010
It’s here! It’s here! It’s in Maltese waters, anyway! Our container ship has been sat sitting outside the harbour since Saturday, waiting for a berth. It’s got my kitchen and knickers on it.. and it’s there, right bloody there! And I can’t have it! Of course, this is all Mario’s fault since he is Maltese and speaks the language, and I am perfectly convinced the Maltese are what we would have called “prick teasers” when I was young and innocent. I just want my things, for the love of God… GIVE ME MY THINGS! 🙂
The geezer blokey phoned and said he will bring it up as soon as it’s unloaded, bless him. *bites finger à la Maltese lunatic in a traffic jam*
11 May 2010
16:40 hrs and a big red lorry rolls gently to a halt outside Namura Mansions. The inhabitants excitedly chatter, wondering if it’s the right container on it, leaning precariously over the balcony as the wires are clipped and the doors are unlocked…
..and out drops a galvanised steel watering can with its rose missing. Yahoooooooooooooo! That’s mineee! It’s OUR stuff!
20:00 hrs and the lounge looks something like Bermondsey Docks in 1941 following a visit from the Luftwaffe! The boys are putting beds together the girls are cooing over the cooker/fridge freezer and all is well with the world. Tonight, we sleep in beds. Real beds!
Silly me, last week I sent Mario a text which read “Can’t wait for the bed to get here (wink)” and the bastard kept it! He brought it out to show me, as he rushed into the bedroom with the mattress, grinning stupidly.
Shit, shit, shit!
12 May 2010
Girls are in bedrooms, trying to unpack clothes. Mike is putting wardrobes up in Mum’s room, Mario is picking up boxes from point A, depositing them at point B and then muttering weakly about wives and how quickly they can fall asleep when they get into bed. Oops.. heh heh 😉
The man is coming to fit the blinds on all the small windows today, and Melita are allegedly coming to get the internet on for us
[Ed’s comment: The entry ends abruptly there – wonder if Melita turned on the internet connection just then?]
One Response to “Stroppy Knickers’ Progress: Part Two”
Reading about your container arriving and your ‘just moving here’ trials and tribulations took me back 16 years to my arrival in Malta. My container got stuck in a strike in Marseilles for 6 weeks (so I had severe clothing shortage) and when it arrived I had the horrors of customs men who wanted to charge masses of duty on everything – one household of used stuff bar new fridge freezer we got as newly weds! Thank God, EU membership has got rid of most of those joys. But seems some angst still there – moving never easy – plus ca change!