Helping James Move House

On Saturday, James was moving out of his mother’s house. I turned up to help with my car. It took us three trips to move all of his things. We probably could have done it in two, but we still would have wanted to go back and check he’d not missed anything so we decided to pack the car so I could see out of it. I like it when I can see out of the car.

The flat

The flat is above a bar. One of the roughest bars in the area, apparently. But that’s not saying much, really. They do play their music pretty loud at the weekends and are open relatively late (not like night club late, but late-ish). But James’s room is on the top floor, in the attic, so might be all right.

To get in, you have to go up spiral stairs outside. I don’t imagine that’s too pleasant when it’s snowy. Still, he’s moving again for University in September so, climate change permitting, we won’t have to experience that one. (Shhh… Don’t talk about the weather; it can hear you!!)

Inside the front door is a little room. A sort of hallway, I suppose. With a sofa. It feels like a reception area. Most surreal, I found. Upon later inspection, I discovered that sofa isn’t all that comfortable. Maybe that’s why it’s been put in this little box out of everyone’s way.

Go through the reception box and you find a kitchen. Reasonable size. James hunted well, I feel.

Then you have to go up more stairs (but straight, indoor stairs this time, so I can’t complain too much) to the attic. And unlock another door into another room with another sofa. There are two bedrooms off this living area, and one of them is James’s.

His bedroom is pretty big. And furnished. Shame about the bed. It’s not only mattressless, it’s broken.

Arriving for the first time

The landlord told James to arrive at 10am to collect his key. We arrived at 10.07, so naturally we were deemed early and the landlord hadn’t arrived yet. The bar man tried to let us in but his key wouldn’t work. He’d been struggling with the door for a couple of minutes when the landlord showed up. He let us in, but hadn’t had James’s copy of the key cut yet, so said he’d go and sort it out while we unpacked the car.

Half an hour later we collapsed on the sofa, exhausted. Landlord hadn’t returned from the key cutting place so we couldn’t go back for more stuff yet. Now seemed like a good time to rearrange the furniture.

It wasn’t much later with James’s keys turned up, and they sorted out the final paperwork and money stuff. And Landlord said we could collect some bits of wood from the yard to fix the bed with.

The bedroom

The bedroom is pretty big. Much bigger than his old room. And there’s room for his table that he brought with him from the house. He put it under the skylight because he’ll use it when he’s painting his models. And there’s a wardrobe (albeit much smaller than the one he left behind). And there’s a computer cupboard. And there’s two little tub chairs. I like tub chairs when there’s two of them because if you put them together facing each other you have a nice little cot to curl up in with your pillows and blanket. I had a little snuggle while he was sorting his computer out. And there’s a built in shelving unit type thing that’s either really useful or a waste of space, I’m not sure. And there’s a broken bed.

The bed

The bed is deigned like so: one long piece of wood in the middle, from the head of the bed to the foot, which supports panels that go across. Each panel is half the width of the bed and they clip in place at the edge and over the long piece. The long piece is cracked and splintered and it touches the floor in the middle. It seems the previous tenant tried to mend this with sticky tape.

The landlord said we could help ourselves to some wood from the yard to fix it with, but I’m not sure what he thought we could do with a scrap or even a small plank of marginally rotten wood. There were some logs, or would you call them stumps? Rather wider in diameter than they were tall, anyway. One of them might have done it, if we could find one just the right height to prop up the cracked wood. But that seemed a little overkill, and we figured that wasn’t really what he meant by ‘take some wood’. Still, we found an abundance of bricks that didn’t look like they were being used, so we took four of them. We stacked them in two pairs and they were just the right height to prop up the wood. Then we put the panels back in place. One of them was bent, but we put it in the middle (where we figured it had probably come from) thinking it’d probably be alright, might even bend itself back in time. If it’s not, we can always swap it for one at the foot.

Job done!!

The mattress

The bed did not come with a mattress. We did not have the equipment required to carry James’s mattress from the house to the flat (i.e. a van). So he decided to buy a new one. He’d seen memory foam mattresses on sale in a shop down the road, about five minutes walk from the flat, and they come in a box that’s not too difficult to carry. So we went and got it.

I unpacked the mattress and found it rolled up inside its packaging. It was at this point that I learned that before they roll them up, the fold them in half. When we unfolded it, it didn’t want to go flat. It had a silly kink right in the middle (I say kink, it was about 10 inches tall). After spending what seemed like a silly amount of time trying to convince the thing is wanted to be flat, like a good mattress, we had a look around to see if any instruction leaflet had come out of the box. We could not find one. We propped the thing against the radiator, thinking that the heat might convince it that it wants to be part of a bed now, and we went shopping.

When we got back, James found a paper on the floor, which looked suspiciously like is had come out of the box (our first clue was the title on the page: ‘memory foam mattress – instruction manual’). It must have been underneath the thing whilst we were trying to flatten it.

It was at this point that we learned that you’re supposed to leave the foam to air for 72 hours after removing it from its packaging. So we weren’t allowed to sleep on it that night. Oh dear. What to do? We’ll work something out I suppose.

The computer

The room came with a neat little cupboard for computers, with a slot cut out of the back for all of your wires and various shelves, and a slidey shelf for your keyboard. Only problem is, the computer is so old and massive that won’t fit in the cupboard. So the tower will sit next to the cupboard and all the other stuff will go inside. Did I say that was the only problem? That’s not quite true…

Computers do not like being moved. Fact. This computer had a nasty little tantrum, well beyond the usual difficulties. For a moment I had thoughts of my old laptop, which once crashed so badly that it lost one of the files required in order to run windows. This guy didn’t get quite that upset. He at least came up with troubleshooting options for us, after a half hour wait. We spent a couple of hours checking periodically to see if it had decided to tell us anything. Eventually James got it working. But it doesn’t like the Internet here. It’ different to the Internet that it’s used to, you see.

I have every confidence that the computer will soon adjust to its new surroundings, just like any pet or child would.

The kitchen

The kitchen is pretty big, but there’s a fair few people sharing it. Nobody seems to have much food in, probably because there’s not enough space for everybody to have loads of food. The freezer’s not very big, but there’s barely anything in it. When we bought ice cream, we didn’t have to eat it all straight away, which is lucky, as he hasn’t got all his utensils yet.

And it’s clean!! The whole place is not completely full of clutter and unwashed pots! I was amazed at how clean it was. There was a little bit of washing up in the sink that had yet to be done, but only a couple of things.

The kettle was fun. It’s sat on the counter looking nice and innocent. When James opened it found the inside was completely dry, as if the thing had never been used. After filling it up, he realised there was no stand to put it on. I told him that’s because it’s a corded kettle, then we realised there was no cord. He had a look at where the cord plugs in and decided that it would fit the lead that plugs his computer monitor into the mains. We tried that and found it works, so I finally got a cup of tea!! Also, James said that he has an identical lead at his mum’s and will collect it next weekend. Tea is very important.

The night

For the first time, we could find out how loud the music was going to be on a Saturday night. In spite of being two floors above the bar, we could hear the tunes with clarity. We could not decide whether it got louder as the night went on or weather it just seemed to because we got quieter and more still and had nothing to listen to but the sound of downstairs.

Still it wasn’t too loud. We could hear the words of the songs, but we couldn’t exactly feel the bass through the floor. It wasn’t really loud enough to stop us from sleeping, especially after the tiring day we’d had.

Also, we imagine that it would probably seem a little quieter if we had been lying on the bed, rather than a makeshift bed of pillows on the flattened box that earlier that day had contained the mattress. All things considered, not a bad night’s sleep.