After a couple of attempts, we talked our way into some leg-roomy seats on the Sydney - Singapore flight. Thanks to overbooking, we weren't as lucky flying on to Manchester, but it didn't matter as much as we just slept and watched movies (Jo: way better than legroom).
We landed about 5 Sunday morning and stood around discussing how we were going to collect our gear from storage, collect the keys from the estate agent and collect the car from Watford - Matt's work's English HQ.
(Jo: Much to Matt's delight, we were able to talk about this for hours as nothing opened at the airport till 7.30am ☺ ).
As the car rental places opened first, we hiked to their terminal and surveyed them, trying to find one that actually rented vans and didn't just advertise them. Fed up with English customer 'service' we found a cafe and passed time till we thought it was okay to call our man at the storage place. About 9.30am we went to call him - only to discover we didn't have his phone number (switching SIM cards in Aust had wiped it from our phones). We eventually called a random number at the very bottom of Jo's previous call's list (one more call and it would have disappeared ☺ ) and arranged collection for around midday.
We rented the largest car we could find (VW stationwagon/estate) and headed North - or so we thought. After a few pretty complicated off-ramps we found a road with the right sequence of Junctions (1, 2, 3, etc... ☺ ) and sped off. Things got a little confusing when Jct 16 didn't look like the map said it should. It was the 'Welcome to Wales / Chroesawa at Gwrymiau' sign that really gave it away. Dutifully chastised, we turned around, drove back to north Manchester and apologised profusely (Matt: I even took some of the blame).
All this driving gave us a lots of time to listen to our estate agent's hold music - at least until the phone rang out. We'd been calling to arrange to final payment and collection of the keys for our flat. Eventually they called and abused me for not calling and that it was impossible that I had called the office that many times! Love that British Customer 'service'! By God's grace, (and a little of Matt's patience - I was about to throttle the guy), we got the key to the flat, but not to the secure parking because one of the other agents had managed to take that home by mistake.
Not over yet. Having arrived at the flat, we thought get busy settling in to our new home. Not so. The flat was in a state. The toilet looked like it never been cleaned (and hadn't been flushed), there was body hair all over the bathroom floor and walls, a pair of dirty socks were behind the lounge (Matt: they weren't even the right size), the floorboards were sticky and dirty, there was a puddle of water leaking from the dishwasher, no filters on the kitchen fan, and the washer/dryer turned out only to be a 'washing machine! (Matt: Jo graciously omitted to note the large water stain under the bed that had spread up into some of the skirting boards). We were so disappointed, hungry, tired and jet-lagged that we just nuked a square in the shower to stand in and out for dinner.
We found a Indian restaurant where the service was fantastic, and the food was goood. (Jo: I laughed so much as Matt kept falling asleep whenever he wasn't talking or eating...) We both woke up when they brought out the biggest naan we'd even seen. You've got to see the photo...
Back at the flat, we found our clean sheets and douvet and left the rest for the Landlord to sort out. Sweet sleep.
1 comment:
Hi Matt and Jo,
What a disastrous first day back - great you could have a laugh at the end of it at the Indian Restaurant. You could remember this day as a great naan of a day!
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