Gary and I keep asking each other if we’ve phoned the council. Neither of us want to phone the council you see so instead of one of us just phoning the freakin’ council, we’re just asking the other if they have phoned the council.
It’s like, the shittest form of procrastination ever.
Anyway, needless to say, neither of us have phoned the council. We have both emailed them though. You’re either a phoner or an emailer and I think it’s fairly obvious which category Gary and I fall into.
In case you’re not aware, we live in a rented flat in the heart of St Albans and when I say heart, I mean heart. Very well protected, difficult-to-get-to-heart. You cannot drive to our flat – it is literally impossible. Our flat is basically in the cathedral grounds which is why I am always uploading cathedral pictures to the ‘gram when I have no ideas for my photo-of-the-day because we can look out the window and ooooo big church. Getting to our flat on foot is possible – there are many ways to do that – but if you’ve never been before, you basically need me to direct you over the phone because it is well hidden. Which is why I spend approx. half my life shouting DO YOU SEE THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE to delivery drivers who refuse to read the delivery instructions I have so carefully provided. Future tenants: for gawd sake, use CollectPlus at all opportunities.
ANYWAY. When we moved into the flat, we were able to remove a bollard in the cathedral grounds and extremely carefully drive our removal van up the usually-on-foot-only pathway into the little square our flat overlooks, unload all our stuff, and then carefully drive back out and replace the bollard that usually prevents anyone driving up.
We assumed we would be able to do the same when we move out this month. It is literally the only way to get a removal van within half a mile of our flat.
HA HA.
We are no longer allowed to do this. Something to do with the very old, very uneven flagstones that are struggling to bear the weight of all the people passing through the cathedral grounds, let alone that of a removal van. I mean, tbf, I do moan about the game of Russian roulette one has to play when walking over those flagstones in the rain. Will you step on the wrong one and have your feet and shins soaked as the mini dirty-rainwater tidal wave seemingly bounds up out of the ground or will your jeans make it home without muddy splash marks?
So the question is – how the fuck are we going to move out? Hence trying to contact the council and see if they will make an exception to the whole bringing-a-van-up rule because we can’t help noticing there wasn’t a problem when they were hauling in an inflatable Santa for the Christmas market or when the new brewery opposite was hauling in their craft beers. But the council aren’t responding to our emails and neither of us wants to phone the council switchboard and explain the situation 254 times whilst someone tries to find the right department. Let's just say we haven't had great experiences with the council in the past - there was a whole 'saga' last year over some floodlights being left on overnight to shine right into our bedroom... let's not get into it.
In the meantime, we have 14 days until we move out, no furniture whatsoever for our new house, are still in possession of a lot of furniture in the flat that we no longer want and haven’t even started packing. Plus there’s work on the new house that needs arranging, about 897987 people I need to inform of our address change (including the optician, bank & wedding photographer) and I think I’m supposed to be going to work amongst all of this. How am I dealing with this situation? Denial mostly. Hence why I’m writing this when I really should be clearing out the bathroom.
Remember when I thought it would be ‘fun’ to get married, go on honeymoon and move house within 6 weeks? Uh huh.
Photo by Leone Venter on Unsplash
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