Following an enormous amount of stress, last minute panicking, and worry, we now
have our own house!
OK, in reality some bunch of money lenders actually own it but at least we’re not going to be paying someone else’s debts off with our rent for a while.
We have now achieved our goals of:
- Moving to America.
- Getting a job.
- Getting a house.
In less than six months! Not bad eh ? So can I come home now please ? Only joking…I think.
Let me tell you, it’s pretty bloody scary buying a house, especially when it’s more than 3000 miles from your friends and family. But we both have a really good feeling about this place, and it is a lovely, lovely, lovely house. So come and stay people! Please ? You’ll like it! And we miss you!
Recent events had shaken our confidence in whole deal coming off and so we had done very little (or “bollocks all” as they say in my country) to prepare ourselves. After “closing”, and after Fred, our most excellent mortgage/real-estate dude, had bought us a slap-up lunch at LeBus, he dropped us back to the in-laws billet. I had a sudden panic that he was leaving us alone in a new world where we had our own house, without a big book of instructions on what to do. “Don’t leave us!” I said, pathetically. But he did, and after we made a few phone-calls we decided to go to Ikea and buy the bare minimum of furniture to make our house into a feasible home.
As shocking as it may seem to some of you, and despite Michele and I being married for over 10 years, I have never been inside an Ikea. Based on the superlatives used by past and regular patrons I have known, I was expecting something between Xanadu and Shangri-La. But it turned out to be a furniture shop! In fairness, we encountered an unnaturally helpful and friendly guy in the bedroom section (called Ira) and the gear in the place did look really well made, and it was really cheap…
but…
We needed a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. And we obviously wanted it delivered. Did I mention that there was a lot of it ? So we took the list of stuff we wanted downstairs so that we could pay, and tell them where to send it. But that’s not good enough for Ikea. At Ikea you have to show your dedication to the Ikea way by finding the shit yourselves, pulling it off of shelves, and conveying it to the checkout. After paying you then have to convey it to a delivery desk nearby, where staff take care of storing, delivering and installing your shit.
As we were trying to find one of the two sofas we had ordered I realised that me and Michele humping furniture from one place to another in the same warehouse was utterly ridiculous and so instead I found a nearby member of staff. We’d already been told, admittedly in apologetic tones, that we were indeed required to be involved in this superfluous leg of the furniture’s journey, but by now it had dawned on me that if Ikea wouldn’t get our substantial purchase from one place in the warehouse to another without us being involved then they should really stuff our substantial purchase up their Swedish arses.
Pointing this out to a member of staff resulted in the assignment of Monkey-Boy to our aid. Reluctantly he got us to the checkout and then fucked off sharpish. So, once the cashier had run up our substantial purchase I asked if I could speak to the manager before we settled the bill. He was irritatingly nice and agreed that if we knew what we wanted and also wanted it all delivered we shouldn’t really need to drag it across a warehouse, presumably as penance, first and summoned someone else to help him drag it to the delivery section… where three other members of staff moved it to a different rack in preparation for delivery tomorrow.
Tonight Michele’s mum bought us a bottle of Cava to help us celebrate. We did, and I still am. Come and visit us!