Home Home on the flight path

Wow, it feels like ages since I last blogged (although it was actually just Friday)!
Our internet was cut off at home on Friday, so I wasn't able to do a catch up until today.
However, I honestly think I may have been to tired to type anyway.

Friday night (after watching American Idol of course - what a great finale!) we continued packing til the wee hours of the night. While we were watching AI a guy showed up to take the desk from the spare room. It was an old heavy duty desk that I tried to sell, but got no interest. So on Friday I put it on a 'free stuff' message board. I had TONS of calls. This guy came at about 9pm, and hammered away at it trying to break the wood glue seals. What a mess! He really banged it up, but he must have really wanted it! Eventually he got it apart and we helped him carry the bits down to his car - good to get rid of that old piece of junk! One less thing to have to worry about on Saturday!

Saturday morning it was chaos. We continued packing between helping our land lord haul boxes of his stuff up into the third room. Eventually the guy who bought our old sofas showed up. We helped him bring them out to his van, and just as he was leaving out land lord arrived with another load. He was quite happily surprised that we were able to sell them - especially when I gave him the £120 the guy paid (he even gave me £20 back as my commission)! While the boys continued on I went to the new place to meet a lady to do the official check-in. She was 45 minutes late! But thankfully the rain held out until after she arrived. Overall the place looked good, recently professionally cleaned, light bulbs mostly replaced, etc. She talked a million miles an hour going through the things that were wrong with me, water spots from leaks, cracks in walls, etc. Then, the real work could begin.

I don't think our land lord realised that when he offered to help us move our stuff that it would take SEVEN loads! Not only that, but the new place is on the third floor, so we had to manoeuvre TONS of boxes, our giant bed and many suitcases filled with stuff up 3 flights of very steep stairs. Wow, that was fun! We piled almost everything in the living room, to the point where we had to climb over boxes to get to the sofas to collapse! We didn't finish until about 6:30ish at night, then briefly we collapsed for a few moments in the living room. In our exhausted silence we then all turned towards the fireplace where a cooing sound was coming from. Ahhhh seems we have a pigeon who lives in the chimney - lovely! That was the only time we heard him or her all weekend though (thankfully!). Then before we could eat or go out or anything we had to take one of the beds out, partially disassemble it and move it up to the spare room to make room for the bed we brought as well.

We finished at about 8, and showers were a necessity before meeting up with our land lord for a 'Thank God we're done, I never want to move again' drink. He's a funny guy, but WOW is that strong Scottish accent hard to understand! After a few he headed home and Murray and I went out for some much needed refuelling. We sat enjoying our lovely pizza and pasta when we received a phone call from a very hard to understand on the phone Scotsman. Apparently he couldn't get the key to work to get into the flat. So, Murray had to run up there, and I hurrily got our meal wrapped up. Turns out there was a key mix-up earlier in the day.

By the time Murray got back we both just lied down complaining about our sore bodies, and looking around thinking how much it felt like we were in a hotel room, granted - surrounded by boxes & boxes of stuff! Just didn't feel like home though.

I must say - I think we like this flat more than the last one, except for proximity to the tube. Our room isn't as big, but there is so much attic storage space that all the stuff that we used to store in our room is now packed away out of sight which is Fantastic! Also, we have what Richard called a 'bling bling' bathroom. It's so great to have our own full bathroom (we used to just have an ensuite shower room). Our mirror is totally bling bling - it's about 5 foot by 5 foot - MASSIVE! Also, it's nice to have the kitchen right on the living room. Our old flat had those rooms on opposite ends of the floor and you felt so isolated while cooking.

One thing I realised on our first morning though was that we are definitely under the flight path to Heathrow airport. I could hear planes going by overhead all morning. But, they aren't that noisy - and this flat is still eerily quiet compared to our last one. Oakhill was located on a major road to South West London, with the fire and ambulance station just down the road so there was always sirens going past. Also, it was such a busy road that the traffic noise meant we couldn't open our living room windows if we were watching tv as it was too loud. The new place is on a quiet side street, pretty much just local traffic, and very little at that. And best of all - straight down the street - just 2 minutes walk away is a small local grocery store. **SIGH** I love Putney:)

This is what our new living room looked like Saturday night - clean, isn't it?