lostcarpark | Mission Acomplished!

On Thursday I learned we would be moving on Friday, but it wasn't plain sailing from there. We spent much of Thursday night packing. My local Tesco very kindly provided me with a stack of plastic crates (the ones they store fruit in). We stayed up quite late getting as much as we could into bags and boxes.

Friday was an early start.

madangie's sister, Sandra took Jack off to visit his grandparents and we continued with the packing. Robert and Björn arrived to help.

madangie and I left them to pick up the van. We got to the rental place, and everything was in order. I opted to take their insurance rather than transfer over my car insurance as it was only an extra €30, less hassle, meant my car was still covered in anyone dropped a safe on it in the car park, and wouldn't have caused problems contacting the broker on a saturday if we needed to extend it or transfer back early.

We got back to the apartment with the van and backed it into the car park. I was surprised how easy it was to get the hang of driving something so big. The only difficulty was making sure I didn't take corners too tight. The car park was a slight problem as the van was too tall to fit below the courtyard, so we had to block the enterance. This meant I had to stay down there to move it out so people could get their cars in or out. This was generally fine except for one person who got rather narky about being blocked in, even though I moved it out of his way very quickly. Most people were very understanding.

We were waiting for the solicitor to call back with details of the closing, but it wasn't until 4pm when we were leaving that I got a call from the solicitor to say the buyer had arrived with the draft. They wanted to know how I was getting them the keys. The original plan had been to drop them into the buyers solicitor in Dublin, but if we did that, there was no way the buyer could pick them up before closing time. So we arranged that I'd head for Trim in Co. Meath to meet the buyer, and Björn and Angie would head for Drogheda.

It was 5:30 when my solicitor called to say he had closed on the house and I could pick up the keys from the estate agent. I told him I was in Trim, and he said "Oh, you'll never get there before 6." "That's okay," I said, "I can get Angie to do it."

I called Angie, and told her she could pick up the keys and tried to give her directions to the estate agent. She called back a little later to say she couldn't find it. I tried to redirect her. Then the estate agent called, so I gave her Angie's number.

I met up with the buyers and they seemed very nice people. They had bought the apartment for their son who's studying in Dublin (personally I don't think this is a very good idea, but I wasn't going to tell them that). I gave them the keys and did my best to explain how to get in and out. There were still a few things in the apartment, so I said we'd be back to pick them up and I'd meet the son to show him the ins and outs.

Around about then, I got a text from Angie: "I have keys."

So I hot-tailed it over to Drogheda - about a half-hour's drive. A lot of the kitchen stuff was in her car, so she was already getting settled. With our little army of helpers (at this time we had Björn, Ollie and Aoife), we unloaded the van. We did our best to send things to the appropriate rooms, but it didn't always work. Before long we had an empty van and a lot of boxes and bags all over our house.

We dismissed our helpers at this stage, and headed back to Dublin to pick up our remaining belongings. On the way we realised neither of us had eaten all day, so we stopped at McDonalds and scoffed mega meals. We loaded the rest of the things into the van and ran the vacuum cleaner around the house. We decided not to take the microwave as it didn't really fit our kitchen, and we'd like a slightly bigger one (one that the pop-corn bags can turn fully without getting stuck). Then the buyer's son arrived and we handed over a second set of keys and made sure they were able to get in and out.

We drove back to Drogheda, and collapsed onto a matress (didn't have a bed set up yet).

It was a very busy day, but we got there and we were very happy.

More to follow!