17th Feb 2010 Weds

ANATOMY OF A MOVE – First Blog
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Hi,my friends,

The relocation from east of the Thames to west of the Severn is complete. It has taken 18 days to move no white goods, very little furniture, and 30 small-ish plastic boxes a distance of 66.2 miles across 4 county borders along A roads.

EXCORCISING THE GHOST
The move was due to have taken place on 30th and 31st January. That was delayed because we had a “ghost” tenant, in my new apartment, who had done a runner but left himself still connected to British Gas, bt phones, and Sky TV. Their technicians had to visit me in an empty apartment, in order to satisfy themselves that I wasn’t a trespasser with serious mental health issues and stalker deluxe overtones. No utilities could be activated in my name until then.

Because I wasn’t going to move in to a heatless house (the memories of the SofaNest days still burning bright) I cancelled the men with the van. A menopausal friend asked me to do a friend a favour, so I arranged the next van for the first date it was available – the 8th Feb. (That’s tomorrow’s blog.)

Fine. I travelled up to my new home area, stayed with friends overnight: really lovely people, lovely home. I spent a day in the unheated apartment waiting for the utilities engineers to arrive.

I’d forgotten to take a camping chair and ended up sitting on window sills in an icy apartment, or going downstairs to sit in the warm car with a broken music system. For a person whose disability involves a twisted pelvis, this involved discomfort on a major scale... or boredom on an even greater scale; but I belong to the suck-it-up and soldier-on era. So sucking and soldiering took place.

NEVER TRUST TECHNOLOGY

The bt man got lost. That wasn’t really his fault. This is a converted stables and barn, and is part of a farm which has been carved up. A couple of fields, a few hundred yards and a wood away, were made into a static Caravan Park for the summer tourists who come to tramp the nearby picturesque Malvern Hills. (And if only I could find the little lead between my pc and my camera I could show you the Malverns, all snow-covered, glinting in the morning winter sun – beyond picturesque!)

The Caravan Park is accessed from a different road approached from the north. We, in the farm house, stables and barns are approached using a tarred footpath from the west. It all used to be one road, but the middle part has been closed to the public. (One of those delightful Englishisms, no doubt - and one day I really must find out why.) If one punches my postcode into a GPS one will be directed to the Caravan Park.

Barring Semtex there is no way to get through the closed part of the road and a detour of 3 miles is necessary. The bt man needed to know this.

STAND ON A CHAIR, LEAN OUT OF THE WINDOW AND WAVE

Upstairs in the freezing apartment my cell phone rang. I had left it on a different windowsill to the one I was perched on. I applied the Ninjastix and hurried over. The phone promptly stopped ringing.
I tried to phone the number back. Got a “No signal” signal. I walked around the apartment until I found 2 bars and pressed redial. The bt man and I had enough of a conversation to establish who we were, and then the phone cut off.

The “No signal” signal again. Used the Ninjastix to best effect. Moved over to the kitchen and found 2 bars. Got as far as the fact that he was lost before we got “No signal” signalled. The bedroom? No bars. Back to the family room. No signal. In fact, no signal anywhere. Kept plying the Ninjastix until we found a whopping great 3 bars in the bathroom. Good, I needed a pee anyway, I could call seated, in chilly comfort – and Pooh! to the echoing, hollow-vault noises we all pretend not to know are made when calling from the bathroom.

Once ensconced I picked up the cell and saw no bars. Long story short; it turns out that this area is not well supplied with cell booster stations. Not only is the signal never more than 3 bars, but the signal is also playful. It pops up, then ducks down and disappears. It plays hide-and-seek. It never allows more than one sentence of clear speech and 2 more of, “Chost in the Grroble vans Drooble and then Shweep-shweep,” before it cuts off. I should be grateful though, because, scenic, friendly, lively Upton-upon-Severn, our nearest “town” has no signal, at all.... Just like my hillside home in Zimbabwe.

LEAN OVER THE EDGE OF THE BALCONY AND WAVE IT AROUND

Being a white African, I am not only a southern hemispherical living in the northern hemisphere, but also a Bronze-Worlder living in the Gold World. (I am being unduly influenced by the ongoing Vancouver Winter Olympics: naturally I mean that I’m a Third Worlder living in the First World. Now, if you didn’t get that, then please go make some coffee and have a stretch before coming back to your pc.)

Having my Ninja Granny “Insulting Idiots (Highly Commended) Rosette,” and a foot in each hemisphere, I often make blunt, rude, but always truthful, comparisons between aspects of life in each hemisphere. So no mobile signal in Upton and no signal at my Zimbabwe home.

In the Third World, in 2000, under Our Beloved Leader’s kind and just rule, I came under threat of death for being so misguided as to take an opposite view to Our Beloved Leader’s.

I was informed of my “death sentence” by the local Youth League leader and advised to pack up and leave my house in a secluded, wooded, hillside plot immediately, if not I was to be visited by the Youth Militia and beaten to death at 6 a.m. on the morrow.

I remember thinking that if I were a murderer I’d have a learned judge in a white wig and a black hankie deliver the news, but I had a spotty, precocious Youth Leader in dusty dreadlocks and a Bob Marley Dread-hood. Was nothing in my life ever going to be in conventional good taste? ... However, I digress.

After checking up with my down-the-hill neighbour, a bona-fide war veteran, who checked with a member of the District Party Caucus, my mind was put at rest that no “direct action” had been sanctioned by the Party Caucus.

My neighbour winked and said not to worry, she would have a word in the Youth League leader’s ear about how very ticked off the Party Caucus would be if he acted autonomously. (In the interests of accuracy what she actually said was, “Unanimously,” and she may have been right.)

I wrote letters to be given to my older children, and lovely funeral plans; just in case there was a Party Caucus Cook-up; then drove the 30km into Harare and told my coffee-morning girlfriends that I had decided not to evacuate into town.

There were protests, but I was adamant and the conversation turned to practicalities.
Did I have a First Aid Box? Yes.
Was my phone working? No, the copper wire in the overhead line had been stolen a few weeks previously and was waiting to be replaced (and so it would be - in six months.)
Did I have a cell phone? No.
Ah! Then I must borrow one. There were murmurs of agreement, and a concerned friend produced a spare phone and pushed it at me across the table.
I protested that I didn’t want one. The girls told me not to be so stupid.
I said that I couldn’t use it. She said it was very easy to use, Just press this button and then the numbers on the keypad and...
I said that wasn’t what I meant. I meant that there was only one place in my house where I could get a cell signal.
Someone else interrupted to say that then I had to leave the phone on the spot where the signal was.Then, at the first sign of the chanting, blood-crazed Youth Militia invading my plot I was to run to the phone and call the local private security company and ask them to send an armed response team for intruders.

I thought that was an excellent plan, but still wouldn’t take the phone. It was impractical. I had to speak loudly over the barrage of protests and explained that I didn’t bother with having a cell phone because the only signal on that remote, secluded, thickly wooded plot was to be found if I stood on the upstairs balcony, over the front door. And even then, the only signal was where I sat on the balcony railing, leaned out at full stretch and held my phone up high in the air.

There was silence from the girls, until one said, “But it’s better than nothing.”

There was more silence from my girlfriends as the rest of them thought that, actually, it was worse than nothing.

So, I leave the decision to you. Upton High Street or Zimbabwean hillside, is having a mobile with no phone signal better, or worse, than nothing?

Have a Superdelicious lovely day, my friends.
The Signal-less Survivor Ninja Gran xxx

Copyright with author 2010