A Moving Experience

How many people get to write a blog post on the day they are moving house? I have to confess I wasn't expecting to!  But it's a nail-biting time, especially when your removal company have just rung to say they got delayed through traffic in London, drove over night, tried to park outside your new cottage in a tiny village in rural Wales at 1 a.m., got moved on by the police and now have to spend three hours resting until they are legally allowed to drive again! So there will be a small delay in the proceedings...

 

Time enough to write my blog. It's always a moving experience relocating, of course, but this time it has been particularly moving. We arrived here a few days ago, booked into a holiday cottage in the village and wondered what on earth it would be like moving into a small Welsh community as English newcomers. The first thing we noticed is that when people here talk to you they mostly listen to the answers. People look you in the eye, engage you in conversation and seem to really want to communicate. I like that. Life is slower here. I like that too - mostly. So how does the community work? Well, we got the keys to our new home on Tuesday and turned them in the lock full of excitement to see what our tiny cottage would be like without the previous owner's furniture. We're downsizing to come here, so a bit of a squash with all our furniture, but we'll make it work somehow. We're just delighted to be able to call a tiny piece of this beautiful area of the Snowdonia National Park our own. So we'll fit in somehow.

 

First mistake. When we opened the living room door there was a large pine Welsh dresser to greet us. Now, I know this is Wales but I didn't expect a free gift Welsh dresser with every house purchased. We bought a couple of items of furniture and a couple of kitchen appliances from the previous owner but this dresser was definitely not on the list. He offered to sell it to us and we turned him down. He didn't want it - but neither did we. Now what? Furniture arriving in a few days' time. No room for it. How does this sort of thing work here? Should we ring the council to take it away? They'd charge us and it might take weeks. Should we chop it up for firewood? What with? And what would we do with the wood? OK, a secondhand furniture shop then... Only one in the next village. Try that. One visit to the shop, one visit from the owner, a nice white van turns up, no dresser, twenty five quid in the pocket!

 

Time to clean up. Not too bad in the kitchen, but not too good either. Anyway, it's nice to do your own cleaning and know it's really clean and hygienic. So we set to with buckets of nice hot, soapy water. The only problem was that when we emptied out the dirty water down our nice clean sink it ended up in the cupboard below. Whoops! Now what? We fiddled with it and failed to fix it. Where do we find a plumber? Looked for some handy plumber's phone numbers and failed again. Ask the neighbours! Right answer! Next door neighbour told us one of the other neighbours had done a plumbing course. Ask him... So we did. A few hours and ten quid later we were fixed. Could we pay him for his time? No way. Thank you, neighbour! Is this how community works?

 

Our next door neighbour looked at our shed. "The floor's not too good", he pointed out. We knew that. "Needs a new bit of floor and a new joist underneath. I could help with that." Wow! He also let slip that his summer house needed a new roof and the guys were getting together on Sunday to put it on. Sounds like an Amish community project, we thought. So that's how it works... Sunday might be a bit busy for us, having just moved in, but we'll certainly be there to lend a hand if we can. I could get used to this new way of life.

 

Well, that's all for now. I guess our furniture will be here again soon. At least they found us!