After all the drama of 'I'll probably be off the Internet for months' we managed to get an Internet facility via a mobile phone company the day after we moved in. Just haven't had time to hook it up until today and certainly wouldn't have had the time to use it.
The move itself went pretty smoothly with the last of the 4 loads being brought over in the rain. It could have been worse, the next day it threw it down and there was severe flooding in a lot of places. Boy, were we lucky!
A tanker finally brought water half way through the first morning so I rushed around flushing all the toilets that the workmen had been using since the last load of water had been used up. Unfortunately the relief of having water was offset by the plethora of leaks that suddenly became apparent. I could write a page full of details about what's wrong with this place and it's only confirmed my suspicions that the house has been built on shoestring by a cowboy builder and, worryingly, the results are showing immediately and it doesn't bode well for the future. What is really upsetting is that, after the first month, we become responsible for all repairs and maintenance - something we should have asked about at the outset, but it's so unusual for landlords not to sort out the repairs themselves that we overlooked it. I put it to Salwa that, at this rate, we'll be doing the contractor's job and putting the house to rights for her at our expense but it just went over her head. Every day something else goes and, if these problems can't be fixed permanently, hubster might as well hand his salary over to Salwa as it'll all be going on repairs. Some things can be fixed but when materials and fittings are cheap and nasty there's not much one can do e.g. one of the kitchen cupboard doors fell off the first day, the 'stainless' steel sink unit is already badly marked in the places where the plastic protective covering has come off, so I'm leaving the rest on there as I don't want to be blamed for damaging her sink, then the plastic drainage pipes under the sink unit are just pushed together and not sealed, hence, when water is run it leaks into the cupboard beneath.
Because it's her first house and first stab at playing landlady, Salwa's head is in the cloud's. Being so young, she hasn't yet found out the consequences of buying cheap rubbish and, unfortunately, we're going to be the ones who will bear the brunt of it. We're running behind with the settling in and unpacking because every day there's been meetings about the problems which have taken a long time. Day 2 we had to go to our bank to get the money for the 6 months-up-front rental payment. What should have taken us about 1 1/2 hours with a stop-off to sign up for the Net, took 5 hours because of traffic jams due to the floods so we lost a whole morning and part of the afternoon.
Apart from that we're settling in OK, although anyone who calls here and is silly enough to stand outside for more than a few minutes gets stoned by the little darlings next door. Today it was an Indian guy who has been sent to try to sort out some of the problems. We seem to have landed in the midst of yob city with hordes of boys roaming around looking for mischief. Just hope they don't spot our Chunky out on his rounds and try to grab him. One good thing is that Purdey, who was very sick for a week before we moved and also when she was in the cattery during our move, has now settled down again without any sign of sickness so that's a big relief. Thoughts are she might have been reacting to the stress of what was going on around her.
So, that's a 'quick' update. I'm still pretty busy unpacking and trying to establish some sort of order, so I won't be back on here full time yet. Just thought I would pop in and terrorise you after you thought you'd gotten rid of me for a few months.
