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Published: November 25th 2008
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Ok so there were lots of balls up in the air now and the plan was to slowly put each one down without dropping it. So here's how it went.
The cars (Maizie & Phoenix) were safely stored in their lock-up warehouse and declared off road for the 6 months. So far so good.
Work was crazy in the last couple of weeks due to what can only be described as the mother of all "Moses affects" - this is where you end up doing so much work before you can actually leave and then when you return it seems like you didn't really have any time off! There was a good turn out to both leaving drinks dos. Luckily for the NU lot there weren't any photos available to publish. So we both got work wrapped up too. Top tip for anyone planning on taking 6 months out from work. Make sure you don't finish work, pack the house and move into a storage container the same few weeks - this is utter madness don't do it!!!
So all that was left was to finish packing the house and move it into a 20 foot storage container
and clean the rental house down, close the utility bills down, port the mobile phone SIM to PAYG, pack the ruchsacks, say goodbye to the families and we're off........easy....
We guess the wheels started to fall off the cart the moment we had trouble with hiring a van for a second time from the van hire company... for some reason instead of the same 5 minute phone call on the previous booking, it turned into a huge episode for them.... vans were in short supply for this week apparently and due to new policy conditions it had to be booked through the company Intranet site... don't ask us why!!... so a decision (a bad one looking back) was made to move without a van... after all the larger stuff had already been moved the previous week.
So we started moving several car loads down to the container. The next wheel fell off when we turned up the next morning (Saturday 22nd) with 2 cars full of boxes only to find that the container yard was locked shut! After a couple of frantic phone calls we were told that the container company had sold up, sacked all the staff
Half Container Full
I guess we're kinda "half container full" type of people ;o) and the new company wouldn't be opening up shop for at least a week! At this stage panic set in, we only had 1 day left to clear the rented accommodation and vacate it not to mention boarding a plane for China in 2 days.... we got on the phone to several friends asking if they would help store some items for a few weeks until our families could help move it once the new storage company opened for business again. Looking back this was a REAL low point for us. Thankfully some friends came to the rescue and took several car full of boxes away.
We also negotiated with the landlords to move the remainder of the house contents into the very damp garage for a few days/weeks as required. Things were not going well. Oh yes and then it snowed 😱
By some minor miracle Dad H spotted the storage yard gates open. We rushed down to see to poor unsuspecting lorry driver who was told the whole "we're flying to China in 2 days and have to be out of the rented house tomorrow story!". The lorry driver was fantastic, it turned out that the
Who's Stressed??
You have to smile when it all goes wrong!! lorry driving side of the firm was still operating but the container side was getting new staff. He rang in a few favours and basically made it possible for us to get to our container to finish the storage job. By this time it was starting to get dark.. we worked like crazy to load everything from the house/garage into the container. We also managed to get some extra help loading the container from a friend who had already taken some of our stuff into his own garage earlier in the day - it was total madness.
So the house was finally cleared, the container filled, the house then was cleaned head to toe ready for the rental inspection. The house and storage saga finally over. So it was final goodbyes to Andy's parents in Ipswich and then down to London with Claire's parents.
Its fair to say that we had taken way way way too much stuff down with us to London and we seriously needed to sort it all out. So Claire's parents house was turned into back packing equipment consolidation centre and there was hardly a spare inch of floor to tread on.... We know
Bring it on...
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!! they'll miss us really 😉
The next problem was that Andy's mobile phone company completely made a hash up of porting the contract SIM to PAYG so that the number could be kept. It took nearly 48 hours and about 6 phone calls to sort it out.
The final blow came when at 11PM we logged onto Air China to select our seats on the flight when in large red letters we saw the word
CANCELLED. We ended up on the phone for 3 hours with Star Alliance trying to understand why we hadn't been told and tell them that a 24/48 hour delay until the next Air China flight was not acceptable.... to spare you all from another long story Star Alliance after some pushing agreed to get us on an indirect flight via Hong Kong on an Air New Zealand then Air China flight arriving 8 hours later than our originally booked flight. So we agreed to this although the added complication is that now our RTW e-ticket is no longer valid and we now have 12 paper tickets to guard with our lives for the next 6 months!!
So with some final farewells we
Extra help
Peter braving the weather to help friends in need - Thanks Peter set off at 1PM with Claire's parents to Heathrow. Another top tip.... when the airline company changes, check which terminal they leave from! Its a long walk from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 😊
We finally boarded the Air Zealand flight at 9:05PM after having probably to most stressful 72 hours of ours lives.
CHINA HERE WE COME!!! (via Hong Kong first)
Extra special thanks to our Families, Jim Dowe, Peter & Denise, Foxy & Kelly and Conrad & Alison for helping us in our last hours of need.
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john jordan
non-member comment
13.00 hours
you should have left at 13.00 but it was 15.00 when we left homel