crazyscot

The van turned up, eventually. They sent extra people and managed to unload all 187 pieces, and unpack the furniture, in two hours flat. We have gone from rattling around a mostly-empty house to being somewhat hemmed in by boxes. It's not quite as bad as at the flat, because we have so much more space: the bulk of them have gone into the spare room (where I fear they will languish until we next move).

We've unpacked a handful of boxes, including some kitchenware (would you believe it's rational to hug a saucepan?!) and opened a fair number of others to survey. As expected, some have already been opened and resealed with tape reading "OFFICIALLY OPENED BY MAF BIOSECURITY NEW ZEALAND PURSUANT TO THE BIOSECURITY ACT 1993". We haven't heard from the movers that we screwed up with our declarations (though I suspect the inspector's lateness might have caused them to be less fastidious than they might have).

Nothing appears superficially to be broken, but we haven't opened up all the boxes yet, let alone powered up the computers, TV, piano etc (not that I'm going to immediately in case there's a condensation issue - not that I can as I haven't assembled enough plug changers yet). However, in the boxes that I have looked into so far, I have giggled at one (1) Yellow Pages, Cambridge edition (OK, rejs points out it might be useful as a monitor stand); and I grinned at the memories evoked by a bag of smithereens which used to be a pink Freeview box :-).

Stress level: 3/10.
Paracetamols taken today: 1 (not too bad)

Thankfully, today came together a bit. The missing V5C turned up; the paperwork was prodded along; some pragmatic decisions were made[*]; my collection of opened whisky was found a new home for (I'm not allowed to import unsealed bottles, sob) but in return I now have a home for one of my backup discs [#]; and the second preliminary packing run has been completed successfully, modulo us needing to redistribute weight around our baggage allowances.

[*] we're going to buy new duvets when we get to NZ, because we don't have the space; besides, we'll be setting up a guest room...
[#] off-site? pah! mine's off-continent.

Tonight, the shoe-cleaning; and tomorrow, the removers!