20th Feb 2010 - Saturday
ANATOMY OF A MOVE – Second Blog ¸.•´¸.•*¨`*. ¸.•*¨*.¸¸.•*¨`*.¸.☆
Subtitled: NEVER DO A FRIEND OF A MENOPAUSAL FRIEND A FAVOUR
The ghost tenant was finally laid and I could now complete the long awaited move from a house in a village near Oxford to a first floor apartment on a farm near Malvern Wells. Minimal furniture and equipment had to be moved 4 counties and 66.2 miles from east of the Thames to west of the Severn.
The man with a van has to be mentioned now. I have a girlfriend, I’ll call her Loppie, (because I don’t want anyone to recognise her real name) who has an unemployed, (credit crunch victim) boyfriend, “Aitch,” who has access to borrowing a mate’s white van.
Loppie is menopausal, and besides a downy little moustache, has developed into a drama queen and control freak of note. None of us are perfect. (I won’t even tell you about the interesting little whisper of a beard I’ve developed unless I wax fortnightly: I guess it’s the feminine version of menopausal-male hair slippage – you know, when it slips down from a man’s scalp and curls up to nest in his ears and nostrils.) Yup! None of us are perfect. Long live Depilation, I say.
But I digress...
Before she became menopausal Loppie was a nice person who was very sweet. Nowadays she’s just tolerable in a social situation, but unbearable in any team project. One day, when I’ve recovered my sense of humour, I’ll tell you about Loppie and our local Christmas Pantomime in early December last year. She appointed herself Script re-writer, Censor of smutty jokes, Director, Props-manager, Prompt, Stage-manager, Wardrobe mistress and On-stage Narrator. It is only February; so still too soon to try and write about The Panto without profanity and blasphemy involved.
When she first heard that I was moving, and I hadn’t asked Aitch, she was quite snitty and muttered something about “Aitch could have helped, and goodness knows, he could do with a bit of income.”
But I hadn’t asked Aitch to get involved because I couldn’t stand the thought of Loppie appointing herself “Obersturmbanfuhrer” of The Move.
Long story short: After the original moving van was cancelled because of us having to lay the ghost of the departed tenant, I phoned Aitch, in secret, and told him that so long as he could keep Loppie away from The Move and if he thought that he could do the job, then he was hired. He told me that he sympathised with me about Loppie and said that he couldn’t afford to give “mates rates” and quoted £200 for himself, the van and some muscle in the form of one college student. I agreed.
This was £20 more than the original, large van would have cost, but you know my motto: so long as I can be of help, I will. I throttled the nasty, little voice that was gleefully chanting Oscar Wilde’s saying, “No good deed shall go unpunished.”
The chanting became louder when the phone rang at 10:00 p.m. on the night before The Move. It was Loppie asking if I minded if Aitch were a bit late on the morrow because he was still away for the weekend doing some DIY at his very elderly father’s house.
I’m a coward when it comes to Loppie.
I should have said, ”Absolutely, I mind. I’m not paying mate’s rates, and so I expect him to be professional and turn up at the agreed time of 8 a.m.”
What my chicken-heart said was, “Must he?”
Loppie replied, “Well, really, he’ll be short of sleep if he has to get up too early.”
My brain said, “Too bad. He should come home earlier then, shouldn’t he?”
But my yellow streak caused my mouth to open and close, and finally a reedy, “O.K., but not too late, please,” came out.
The chanting voice became shriller, “Wimp! Chicken! Cowardy-custard!”
Weakly I said, “Well, I have to be in Malvern by eleven, so that means I have to leave at nine, and I want to show him what he has to put in the van.”
Back came Loppie’s clear RSM tones, “Oh! It will be fine. Bye-bye”
Please repeat after me, “No good deed shall go unpunished.”
Aitch arrived at 9:30 the next morning. I was beside myself with anxiety. I had visions of not making it to Malvern in time to open the apartment up for another truck delivering an ebay dining room suite.
I rushed Aitch upstairs and showed him the two beech wardrobes that had to be dismantled and taken down as slat-packs. I pointed out the computer desk, two bookshelves and the sofa. Bring those, and my cripple-stool. (A large NHS hospital-type stool for people who have hip problems. It’s not pretty, but it is a thing of great beauty for me.)
I took care to point out two separate banks of clear plastic boxes. Bring those on the left, leave those on the right because they contain stuff for binning. I would be back in a week’s time to take their contents to the recycling centre.
Was all that clear to him?
“Yeah! Yeah! It’s not rocket-science.”
I rushed off to Malvern. I had noticed that the van wasn’t nearly as big as I thought that it ought to be. But then Aitch and Loppie had been round to my house at least a score of times over the years. I was comforted by the fact that Aitch knew what furniture there was and wouldn’t have accepted the job if he couldn’t do it.
Repeat after me, “No good deed shall go unpunished.”
When the van arrived at my new des-res and the off-loading commenced, I discovered that:
- The computer desk and the cripple-stool had not been brought. “Sorry, they just wouldn’t fit into the van.”
- Neither wardrobe had been brought. They had not even been dismantled because, “You know, once you dismantle something it never goes back together as strong as it was before. These need to be moved as they are”
- “There were a few boxes we just couldn’t get in.” That was because they brought ALL the packing boxes, including those that needed to go to the dump. The "few boxes" that just didn't fit in were only my food, groceries, crockery and kitchen-ware.
No apologies were made, no concern was shown for the fact that another van would have to be hired to complete Aitch’s good work. No shame shown for the fact that I live on a very small disability pension and the additional expenditure meant going without. I smart still.
A week later I hired the original large white van for £20 less than Aitch, and moved the rest of my belongings. They arrived on time. They took what they were supposed to. The wardrobes have been disassembled, moved and reassembled and are sturdy as anything.
I do, however, have an apartment full of boxes of junk that I now have to haul downstairs and to the car. NinjaStix and all. Then I have to find my way to the dump and drag the stuff out the boot over to the disposal areas.
And I spent a week, with the snow thick on the ground outside, eating cold foods off paper-plates.
I did a lot of repeating, “No good deed shall go unpunished, cos they come back to bite yer in the bum!” And I did a lot of wondering if juju dolls and long pins really work.
Want to know the final bit of the story? I have a lovely, but huge, solid oak shelving unit in the old garage. I have to sell it and get the garage cleared out.
Loppie heard about it and emailed to say, “Aitch could do you a favour and take those shelves off your hands. He knows a carpenter who’d like to use the oak. He'll take it away for free.”
Gee! Selfless of you, but no thanks! Not another good deed, please.
(¯`v´¯)
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Have a superdelicious lovely day, my friend
The Bum-Bitten, Good deedless Ninja Gran xxx
Copyright vested with the author 2010
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