The Mad Getaway

Well we made it by the skin of our teeth! Our day for leaving the house was Wednesday 30th as we had booked a hotel by Gatwick using up some airmiles in the process (well we couldn't sleep in an empty house could we!) Come the morning the post still hadn't brought our work Permits &, despite emailing the Embassy every day since Monday (as they had suggested) neither had any fax!! Jean at CSUK found us a telephone number for the HIgh Commission so I called & the operator agreed it was an emergency & put us through to the emergency line. We left a message & waitied for that fax. 3.15 pm still nothing!! I called again & the operator took pity on my plight, told me to hold the line then came back to me saying they would be faxed to us within the hour, which they were..PHEW!!!

That was not the end of the stress though because by the time we finished packing up the house we totalled about 65 boxes for the shippers to collect. They eventually arrived (took another phone call & a realisation that they had had some mis-communication issues) with their high top Transit, which was half full, so it was very quickly apparent that they had seriously underestimated the number of boxes we had and we started to panic (even more than we were already). It was decided that they would come back the next morning and load the boxes we had to give them the garage remote & alarm code & keep our fingers crossed they would come because, as I said before, we were staying at a hotel by the airport that night and flying to our holiday in Florida the next day! We finally finished clearing the house at about 10:30pm and jumped into the taxi for the hotel. Our wonderful neighbour took our keys & was poised to keep a check.