Burning our Bridges

BURNING OUR BRIDGES?

Back home in the UK I looked up various properties on the Internet and found several possible suitable houses.  The broken English descriptions of some of the properties were a joy to read, including one which stated that the house had a large room dedicated to just a toilet, with a photograph to prove it.  Actually the room was a going to be a bathroom but was never completed – we saw it on another trip.

We had, by now, both decided we would like to live in France and we put our large semi-detached house on the market.  After several viewings by people we came to refer to as ‘day-trippers’ we finally shook hands with a family who really wanted to buy the house. 

We decided before we left the house that we would have a last BBQ as we would be moving to a small apartment until we could buy a property in France.  After the BBQ, I had a bath and Andy had a nap in front of the TV.  When I came down from the bathroom, I thought the neighbours were also having a BBQ as I thought I could smell cooking.  I wondered what they were cooking, as it smelled awful, then realised it was not a BBQ, but a fire! 

Andy had tipped the ashes from the fire onto a bare patch of soil in the garden, as he always did, and the ground had caught light and the flames had run to a small container in which we kept petrol for the lawn-mower!  The fire engines came roaring up the road to extinguish the fire in the garden, which, by then, had taken hold of the fence and the shed – we had a couple of large sheds and the next one along held all Andy’s collection of radios and my perfumes, packed, ready for the removal men.  Had the fire spread to my perfumes and after-shaves, there could have been massive damage as it is all very flammable, even though the majority of my bottles were empty.  As it was, we had to replace the wall of the shed, a couple of fence panels and a garden lamp-post.  Also my garden tools were welded together in one big lump.  Luckily, we were insured.

With the proceeds from the sale of the house, we bought a small, but practical, flat, which was situated above a parade of shops, and banked the balance ready to buy in France.  We had the removal men arrive for the boxes for long-term storage – our collections of radios and bottles and a few other items we would not need for a while.  There were over sixty large boxes to go into storage and we filled up two and a half huge containers.  As the removals company had quoted for two containers, they only charged us for two. 

It was slightly worrying to see that a large carton of radios, clearly marked ‘this way up’ was being used as a door-stop – upside down!  However, they arranged to get everything away and we set about packing for moving to the flat.

THE FLAT

The same removal men returned a few weeks later and I told them specifically not to touch my handbag in the corner of the room – this contained my blood pressure tablets, a black pearl and white gold necklace, a full Gucci purse (our float money for bingo) and various other bits and pieces I had to take to work on that day and which I definitely did not want put onto the removals van.  When I looked for my handbag, it had gone and with a full load on the van I had the feeling it would be some time before I saw it again.  Luckily, I managed to get an emergency prescription for my tablets.

We went to the Estate Agent to collect the keys to the flat and they would not let us have them.  We called the Solicitor and he said the deposit had not yet been received from our bank.  We all sat in the pub opposite the apartment, along with the removal men.  I kept calling the Solicitor who told us to stay put.  The removal men eventually said if there was any further delay they would need extra help and we would have to pay for it.

Andy walked across to check the flat, as the previous owner was supposed to have removed the old cooker, fridge and two huge boxes of rubbish.  He wondered if the man was actually inside the flat.  The door was wide open, as were the windows, and the door keys were on the kitchen top.  There was no sign of life, so we moved in.  The cooker had been removed – by cutting through the cable and leaving it on the floor (with the wires still live).  The fridge had gone, but not the two huge boxes of rubbish. 

I noticed a really bad smell – it was so bad that I was physically sick and flew to the bathroom only to discover that the toilet was filled with bright green mould.  The dreadful smell was coming from Helen’s room (youngest daughter), where food, including butter, cheese and other obnoxious things had been slowly melting through the boxes.  Under the box also dwelt the remains of a tin of paint – unfortunately, no longer contained by the tin.

Andy and Helen donned face-masks and rolled up the carpet, complete with boxes of rubbish and took it to the local dump, whilst I tackled the toilet.  That afternoon we went to the carpet store and bought a new carpet.  Whilst they were at the dump I cleaned up, having already scrubbed the toilet, and started on the bath – only to give up almost immediately, as I would not put my feet inside it, let alone my body!  A new bath was promptly ordered.  I sprayed everything in the apartment and eventually got rid of the stench. 

Our bedroom, when we viewed the flat, had a broken extractor fan in the window, which had since been removed and replaced by a sheet of chipboard.  One of the smaller panes of glass had also been broken.  Andy replaced the glass whilst I carried on scrubbing.  I cleared up all the broken glass in our bedroom and then noticed that where the previous owner had removed the curtains from the main room, he had simply ripped them down, breaking all the curtain rails and these and curtain clips were all over the place, along with screws and nails and more bits of glass.

The delivery-men had given up putting boxes in their respective rooms half-way through and decided that the boxes could go anywhere, regardless of where they were marked.  When they lifted a large box of tinned food onto the work-surface in the kitchen, the entire top crashed to the floor.  Luckily they chose to put just the tins there and not the microwave oven.  The kitchen worktop had been held up with four nails!  I started to put away some of the tinned goods and found two of the kitchen units crammed full of empty drinks bottles.  Luckily the pub across the road had a bottle bank.

The mail was piled high for five separate addressees.  I made piles for each of these and took it all to the Post Office.  We opened the mail marked ‘Occupier’ and found red bills for water etc for well over £200.   Over the ensuing 2 years in the flat, we received dozens of letters asking for outstanding balances to be paid, and almost every evening we were called by debt collectors and, strangely enough, people offering loans to the previous occupier, who, we discovered, had possibly moved abroad.  We had decided to keep the existing telephone number to save any extra expense.

We switched the water heater tank on, and went across to the pub for a drink.  When we returned to the flat it was full of steam and condensation was pouring down the windows and walls and there were puddles on the windowsills and floors.  There was no timer or cut-off switch on the tank and it had just got hotter and hotter until it boiled over. 

Before we went to the pub, we had locked the door and pushed it to make sure it was locked.  It promptly opened again.  Andy had to fit a new lock before we could go anywhere.

We eventually managed to undo all the boxes and there was still no sign of my handbag.  It turned up months later.  The bedroom was piled high with clothes and linen and our new wardrobe came after about two weeks to house it all.  My PC and desk were up and running as I was still running my collectors’ club.  Andy’s workbench was also ready to use.  We had decided to use a small corner of the lounge and set our workplaces back to back as we only had the one swivel chair and could share it.

The boxes of alcohol we had packed were amazing – every time we had had a BBQ, people brought bottles of various drinks, usually drank my home-made punch, and the ‘Bring your own Bottles’ were rarely opened.  We had also won quite a lot of bottles in games at our local club’s Bingo night.   It seemed that every time I brought another box to unpack it was alcohol.

After a lot of hard work, cleaning, unpacking and storing, we finally had a place to sit and relax.

When we first got settled in the flat – merely a place to sit, eat, and sleep, whilst waiting to move to France, it appeared to be very nice.  It was a bit like a holiday hotel room at the front with a small balcony where we could sit and watch the world go by.  Everyone seemed to know us and they all stopped to speak to us.  Previous to moving into the semi-detached house we had just sold, we had lived in that particular area for about twenty years.  I thought we could be happy there.  Then – the new neighbours moved in.