Our Own Place

The corridor from the front door

Wednesday saw Grant catching the train from Weybridge, but without a return ticket this time – at the end of the day he would be going to our new flat in Woking.  After a bit of dawdling about post-breakfast, I packed up the car with all our bags and cases and headed over to Woking.  I was going to be at the realtor’s at 12 midday sharp!  Luckily all went smoothly, and by 12.15pm, I was taking the first bags up from the garage to our own flat.  It’s our first time living in a secure building, so hopefully I can be forgiven for returning to the car without the electronic fob that lets us into the building.  It was stressful for a few minutes as I found myself stuck in the basement garage with no way of getting out.  To my great relief, a lovely couple arrived in their car and believed my story about being a new resident.  They not only let me back into the building, they helped to carry some bags too.  Thank goodness for kind neighbours!

Our bedroom

I set to work unpacking and making the place ship-shape for Grant’s homecoming that evening.  This took much longer than expected (exacerbated by the kitchen not being quite as “fully furnished” as expected – no pots or pans! So a quick trip to TK Maxx in the mall was needed), and the stress became magnified when neither of our cellphones seemed to work.  I knew it was not the building, as I had made calls earlier in the afternoon with no problems.  When even Skype failed to make contact with Grant’s phone, I decided it must be the network (which turned out to be right).  As Grant had no way of making contact, and no way of getting into the building, I went for a walk to the station at roughly the time I expected Grant to get in.  Again, it was perfect timing – he emerged from the station just as I arrived and we walked home together.

Our bathroom

So our first evening in our place was not as organised as I planned.  We still had no groceries (apart from teabags and milk) so that was first on the agenda.  We made a quick list of essentials to get us through the evening and morning and went in search of our nearest supermarket.  It’s not too far in fact. We also discovered that there was no hot water – the stopcock that lets cold into the cylinder seemed to be off and no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t move it. A call to the property managers proved useless (they don’t have an after-hours emergency contact) so we made do with cold plus hot from the kettle, and we finally got dinner at about 9pm!  Practically bedtime really!

The following morning did not give Grant the best start to another working day. A quick wash from the basin (hot water supplied from the kettle) is not a good substitute for a real shower, but it sufficed and I was going to get the situation sorted as soon as the property managers were in their office.  As a matter of interest, I decided a cold shower wouldn’t be TOO awful when I got up.  I was wrong.  It proved to be an excellent incentive to get the plumber in ASAP.  This did get sorted not long after lunch, as did a proper start-up grocery shop, so when Grant got home that evening the house was sorted and dinner was under way.

The spare bedroom (come visit!!)

Friday was a quiet, settling in day for me as my copy of the best bread book ever arrived and I got on with the sheer domesticity of baking bread while pottering about sorting out where everything should live.  We were expecting our first visitors on Saturday morning so everything had to be perfect.

The main bathroom

We had a lazy start to our weekend – there was no need to get our bed out of anyone’s way or urgency to be anywhere which was lovely.  Mark and Paula brought the girls over for morning tea and they ended up staying for lunch.  It was lovely to have visitors and to repay some of their wonderful hospitality to us.  Our first photo for the flat is an absolutely gorgeous one of the girls in their Tumbletots gear (although we have got on to getting some of our own babies up since then too).

The dining/living room (the kitchen is behind me)

On Sunday Mark had an exam and training day (he is training to be an Aquatots instructor) so we joined Paula and the girls at the Pool in the Park for a swim.  This is literally a five minute walk from our door, which is wonderful, and has a lane swimming pool, a teaching pool and a leisure pool with waves, a rapids ride and water slides.  We ended up spending about an hour and a half in the water, and Grant even took Emma down one of the slides.

The kitchen

On Monday Grant went off to his train and I drove to Camberley for the new staff Induction Day at Collingwood College.  It was great to meet some of my new colleagues, and I spent another hour with the class I taught for my interview (this time with their usual teacher; I was just helping out).  The drive wasn’t bad either; I think getting back to work in September will be great even though my most senior class is Year 11.

After finishing up at Collingwood, I decided to drive to the closest IKEA store (at Wembley) to look for some metal shelving for the airing cupboard.  The drive there was pretty uneventful and I found what I wanted but I have to say I don’t like IKEA!  The store is a wretched maze, designed to get you in and keep you there, much like a Las Vegas casino.  I won’t be going back in a hurry, not least because thanks to two accidents (not involving me) it took over and hour and a half to get home.

Just the dining room bit

The rest of this week has been a quiet domestic week.  Grant has gone to work each day, and I am getting us settled.  I have changed our address with the few organisations we had an address with, joined the local library (bliss!) and started a get-fit regime.  And of course I have finally got this blog up-to-date!  I would really like to find some sort of temporary work if possible though, so fingers crossed.