a shame

I haven’t mentioned that we were burgled. The night before we moved in, Of course it was a shock, but in truth, it could have been so much worse. Considering what could have been taken (tv, stereo, ready-to-pick-up-and-take-me-home-to-unpack boxes) it’s only really Ben who is really miserable. His touch rugby things and his ski touring bag were stolen, and his sunglasses and favourite hat as well as a few other things. It’s not that he’s upset, but he’s UPSET because it was a special top: swapped with the NZ Touch team when he played against them representing England, just over a year ago. He hasn’t been wearing it much (in truth he hasn’t been able to play much) but it’s been making an appearance more and more often, and, well, it’s upsetting. So we had to replace half of a sliding door. And the police popped round. A neighbour popped over a bit later with some of our mail that had been removed from our letterbox and dumped with 3 of Mia’s books, next to his car, which had also been broken into. It was clearly an opportunistic break in, but it did put a bit of a dampener on things. Not, naturally, for the hard core desperate-to-be-in-her-own-new-house ex-South African who faced her first night in her violated home ALONE while Ben was on his nightshift. No, seriously, I didn’t flinch or falter! In any case, Ben wangled a bit of a shift swap (he did 3 hours before Graham took over) and Ben’s mum and aunty helped whiz around unpacking kitchen things and tidying and cleaning and assisting with the children. It’s fantastic to have such willing and able and enthusiastic family help.

And then our bed didn’t arrive because the delivery guy couldn’t get hold of me, (my phone was out of range) and so we faced sleeping on the floor for a while…but to their credit, they made a plan – being so central really helps I think – and we had a bed (unassembled) and a mattress. A mattress which turned out to be too soft in the end, so we decided to change it. Only…Joshka vomited on it…which we cleaned up, of course, but then we debated whether they would take it back or not. They had to order another one in, in the end, so, after a week of sleeping on a soft…erm, ever so slightly soiled mattress, we WERE able to swap it for our current (divine) one.

You know how people always say how there are so many hidden costs when buying a house? And you go, yeah, yeah, I know. And you do know, but you never QUITE know and it’s always a surprise when you can spend a thousand dollars in a day and not really have anything to show for it. Furnishing a house is like that too. But we’ll get there!