And we’re off!
Well, not exactly. But moving out of the place we have called ‘home’ since last year and into a small, rented cottage for the next two months is indeed the first step in the ever-shortening road to Europe.
And what a start it was. Filled with bouts of desperation, episodes of homelessness and series of international incidents. The blundering sequence of unfortunate, incoherent and relentlessly unfolding mishaps, otherwise known as my Thursday, has made me realize that I seriously need to find some glamour and grace before I hit the streets of Paris if I ever hope to blend in.
Entrances and Exits
On moving day, Gary and I packed up our things and expertly tossed them into the back of our cars, heading off to a full day at work with the intention of moving into the cottage that night. At least that was the plan. I duly arrive at the cottage at around 5pm, with most of my worldly possessions literally bursting out of the windows of my petite Renault Clio, to find cars and boxes sprawled across the driveway.
In the middle of the madness stood an unidentified Israeli gentleman, schlepping lamps and heaters between the cottage door and his car. It dawned on me with a sudden pang of terror in my chest that the tenants who were supposed to have moved out that morning were still in the initial process of getting their things together. In my best impersonation of nonchalance, it’s a rather unfamiliar emotion, I began a friendly conversation.
AB: I don’t mean to rush you or worry you at all but do you perhaps have an idea of when you will be all packed up?
UI: (shrug) (long pause) maybe an hour, maybe three, maybe longer.
AB: Any indication of whether it will be closer to an hour or closer to longer?
UI: With G-d’s help.
With a fatalistic look of defeat heavenwards, said unidentified Israeli proceeded to turn back to the cottage leaving me, a metaphorical and dishevelled bambi in the headlights, to walk towards my car, get behind the wheel and do what I do best. Call my mom.
After a series of frantic conversations between Gary, myself, my mother and the cottage rental deities, I headed towards our only other option for the night – the Ascot Hotel in Norwood.
And so it was that I pulled up to the red carpet adorned pavement that is the entrance to the hotel. With just a little less than the star-studded glamour of Meryl Streep at the Oscars, I double parked my car in the rush hour traffic and began offloading plastic packets jammed full of shoes, hairdryers and all other manner of personal objects. Shouting obscenities at the grocery delivery truck inching closer and closer to my vehicle as it hooted for me to get out of his way, I tossed my bags and packets at unsuspecting pedestrians walking down the street in the hope that this would make the process of unpacking go faster. Surely at least ONE of these innocent bystanders actually worked at the hotel and would be able to save me? I then needed three gentlemen from the hotel to help me carry all my assorted bags and belongings up to our room. My car was then parked in the bowels of a locked and isolated garage, something straight out of a murder scene straight from CSI New York, which had a driveway that would make Laurence Hamilton sweat.
Stuff in tow and back at the hotel room door, holding a clear plastic Tupperware box filled with my toiletries (a strategically brilliant packing manoeuvre but with an unintended public humiliation factor of enormous proportions), I looked at my luggage saviours who stared back blankly and asked, ‘Where is the key’. To which I immediately replied in an increasingly high-pitched squeal, “I don’t have the key. Do you not have the key? Where is the key!’ A search of pockets, bags and in all out desperation the carpet railing, ensued until I had to admit defeat and run back out into the road, down the street into the dingy and now dark car garage and proceeded to strip and search my car for the indignant room key. Sweating and sheepishly with key in hand, I returned to the room. A few minutes after the commotion of this episode, and after a hundred mumbled ‘thank you’s and ‘I’m so sorry about the key’, I collapsed on the bed and gratefully turned on the aircon. Oh paradise! A lovely clean room, fresh sheets … Suddenly a knock at the door. Images of my worst nightmare flashed before me, that the bellman was returning a pair of my knickers which I had unknowingly strewn behind me on the main staircase as I dragged one of the many bags which had split apart under the arduous packing pressure. Thankfully, and this proves that everything is relative, it was just about a minor insect infestation in the room. ‘There have been complaints about cockroaches so I just need to spray quickly’. Wait till Gary hears this I thought.
At that moment my ever cool, calm and collected husband pulled up outside the hotel and I dashed onto the balcony to vent all the events of the day to him from across the street at high volume for added dramatic effect. There he was, perfectly poised in his suit and tie and serenely being helped out of his car on the red carpet. Damn him.
After returning from dinner at the local kosher restaurant, we returned to our hotel to find the lounge crawling with middle-aged German tourists, one or two whiskeys worse for wear, listening to a jazz band which had assembled itself in the lobby. Yes, it was our lucky night - Thursday Night Jazz’. A really wonderful turn of events any other day of the year but not music to my ears after the exhausting marathon of moving madness we had just run.
My husband wittily summarized the situation to me upon returning from the bar. “Well my dear, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that there is jazz tonight in the foyer downstairs and we don’t even need to leave our room to hear it. The bad news is that there is jazz tonight in the foyer downstairs and we don’t even need to leave our room to hear it’. Yes, the jazz went on into the early hours of the next morning, with what I can only imagine was one of the band member’s girlfriends shouting ‘Whoohoo’ every 5 minutes. The jazz itself was not that bad at all, although it was hard to tell through the sound distortion of our bed being on the other side of the wall. At least the saxophone did the trick of drowning out the beer bottles being drunkenly smashed, with ensuing police sirens, on the street outside.
What a day.
The end of this story is that we made it in one piece into the cottage the next day and spent a peaceful Shabbat there with one or two bottles of wine to take the edge off.
Ah the cottage – one step closer to Europe!
