Moving on up

Moving. Difficult at the best of times, our experience was unmitigated disaster. It started off well, as we found our new flatmate fairly fast. We set up a few interviews with some young professional girls (we had a flood of responses to the ad we put up on Daft, as the room is a very good price for what it is) the first with a Spanish engineer called Laura. We liked her very much but felt we should at least meet a few more people so as not to just take the first girl we met. We talked to a couple of nice girls, but after each we just said to ourselves, “She's cool, but I like Laura better”. So in the end we cancelled all our other interviews and just called Laura and asked her to move in. She agreed, thankfully, to put up with us and for the moment everything was rosy.

Meanwhile, finding replacements for us at the old Bolton street flat was proving harder than previously thought. Normally we'd never have problems finding someone, but this time was somewhat different as we were looking for three girls at the same time (Marie was moving back to France four days after we were due to move) and Sabrina was quite picky about who she would live with. No men, no students, no smokers, nobody under 21, blah blah blah. Usually it takes about a week to find someone suitable, so we thought three weeks would be plenty of time. But Sabrina took so long to decide who she wanted that by the time she picked people they'd already found another place. It was a stressful time for us all, showing people the flat every day (it's quite exhausting after an eight hour day at work to smile and joke with strangers in your living room) and worrying about finding a replacement to cover the rent (not to mention get our deposit back). In the end, we found three people in time, but only just.

Finally, or so we thought, it was time to move. By this time I hadn't seen the flat in more than a month. When I did see it, it was only half finished, I only had a quick glance, and Shelly and Laura hadn't seen it at all. I wasn't even sure where the bedrooms were or what was in the apartments or anything. Whether we would even have a microwave. At this point I was ringing the agents every second day asking when the flat would be ready and when we could sign the lease. They gave me the standard response, i.e. “We're not sure yet - when we know we'll call you to set up a time”. Finally it rolled around to Wednesday the 6th. I called the agents as usual, only to be told, “We called you yesterday” (a lie, no voicemail or missed call) “Only the people that called back can move in on Friday”. You can imagine how I felt at that point. I lost the plot at the poor woman on the phone. “You told me we could move on the 8th, we planned to move on the 8th, now we have nowhere to live, I've called seven times in the last couple of weeks, nobody could tell me anything as of Monday and now suddenly a delay of a couple of hours means we can't move in?” Rant rant rant. All the builders' fault apparently - true, but typical buck-passing. The apartment wasn't ready, wasn't fit for human habitation and that's just all there was to it.

I put the phone down, stomped around the office for a bit making “Grrr” noises until someone asked me what was wrong and then I had another rant. Then I sat at my computer and wrote a scathing email to the lettings department with the subject “***URGENT - Attn: Lettings Manager***”. I don't remember exactly what I put but I remember the first line was something along the lines of “Your website boasts about professionalism and personalised service but throughout my dealings with your company I have experienced neither of these”, so you can see the general tone of the correspondence. I sent it off in a big huff not expecting a response (despite my at least 30 calls to their office between trying to see the apartment and trying to sign the lease, nobody from the agent had ever called me back).

To her credit, at half nine the next morning, Carina, the manager rang my direct line. By this point I had calmed down somewhat, but reiterated my concerns (mainly that no information had been available until the previous day and when there finally was, it was bad news, and also my newfound state of homelessness). She reassured me that we were top priority to move in as early as possible the next week. Monday, Tuesday? I asked. She wouldn't pin down a day.

Right so. I told Shelly and Laura the bad news (very difficult) and we tried to sort out where we were going to live until Monday. We called the girls who were going to move into our flat and asked if they could move in on Monday. They agreed, so we were fine until then. Laura was a different story, but in a big pinch she stayed at her boyfriend's house (he shares a room with another guy). So we were ok until Monday.

That weekend was Marie's last in Dublin, so we went out to celebrate/commiserate. We went out to dance at Odeon, and to eat at a Chinese restaurant Shelly knows on Parnell St. We had fun and didn't cry.

Monday rolled around and I called the agent again, pleading with them via ESP to give me good news. They didn't. We'd be moving in Friday. Definitely Friday, or maybe Friday? Definitely Friday she said. I was angry but at least we had a definite day. In the meantime we had to figure out what the hell we were going to do with ourselves and our luggage until then. I was fine as I have lots of friends with convenient rooms or couches in the city centre that I could stay at. I ended up at my friend Eimear's, who provided me with:

a) a bed
b) a room to myself
c) a house in Ballsbridge (the Toorak of Dublin for the Melbournites, the Puerto Madero of Dublin for the Porteños) next to the biggest Tesco in Dublin at which works not one but two cute guys and
d) a towel.

Plus her place is close to work. So sweet. In fact, I almost had it easier there than at Bolton Street. Shelly stayed on the Bolton Street couch (squashy, but bearable for four days) and poor Laura still at Derek's. That week was harder on me than I thought it was going to be. Silly me, I thought I'd just be having a good time with Eimear and her housemates who are all really fun. I had this big idea that it was going to be like one big long slumber party. I did have fun, but I underestimated the stress of living out of a suitcase, negotiating unfamiliar bus routes, being a “guest”, having to co-ordinate with other people what time I was going to arrive home, not having anything in the fridge (well, to be frank that's not much of a change from my regular life). The weirdest thing was not having keys to anywhere. Well, I had work keys, but I had handed over my keys to Bolton Street and hadn't got keys to my new apartment, and I felt more “homeless” without keys than without four familiar walls. Even when I stay in a strange place I still have my keys - a symbolic representation of my home.

I muddled through the week slightly more dishevelled than usual, and finally made it to Friday. I tried to leave work early, and achieved a half hour gain and left at 17:00. I caught the 18 back to Ballsbridge and got chatting to a lovely woman with the cutest pigtails and an even cuter daughter. We compared “moving out” stories, flute lesson stories, and general anecdotes and jokes. We had great craic until she and her daughter got off in Sandymount. I got back to my temporary home in Ballsbridge, had something to eat and chatted a bit with Eimear and Denise before I called a cab to take all my stuff back to Parnell st. What a relief to finally have a home!

Shelly had called me at work to gush about the apartment but I didn't have time to talk to her, so I didn't really have a clue what the place was like. I walked in and it was - well, it was a new apartment! Everything beige and totally characterless, but new and clean! And we can make the character over time. We had a dining table to seat six, couches to seat four (or six if you wanna get up close and personal), a coffee table, dishwasher, washing machine, brand new oven, microwave and stove, an enormous fridge and freezer (well, enormous when you compare it to the miniscule bar fridge we were using in the previous apartment) and, wait for it, DOUBLE BEDS! Well, Shelly and I have doubles and Laura has a king size bed. My bed is just about as big as my room, but what the hell else do I need to put in there? Laura has an ensuite with shower (oh my god) which means we'd gone from four girls and one bathroom to three girls and two bathrooms - a much nicer equation. The shower pressure is great too, and the bath is spacious enough for a good relaxing soak.

So that's what we got. Here's what we didn't get: duvets, pillows, cutlery, crockery, cleaning equipment, pots and pans, knives, kitchen utensils, and lots of other bits and pieces. So Friday night I ate with chopsticks Shelly brought and slept on my double mattress in my sleeping bag. Welcome to my new apartment!

On Saturday morning the three of us went SHOPPING! Homewares all the way. We went to Talbot street where all the bargain basement stores are and bought the lot. The best buys I think were the duvets at 12 euro fifty and the 16 piece crockery set for 10 quid. Hurrah for us. I think we spent about 100 euro each and came loaded. The rest of the day was spent organising the apartment and cleaning it from top to bottom, so we were exhausted by the end, but it was worth it in the end, as we finally had a usable, neat apartment! To celebrate I had bought a bottle of bubbly (el cheapo from Tesco, but hey, I'm no Paris Hilton) and we drank it out of glasses (we didn't have the budget for champagne flutes). Cheers to new beginnings.