Enough Rope

To say I'm tense at the moment would be a slight understatement.  Clifton Suspension Bridge has got nothing on me.

So, we have the chap who said rope & pulley work is highly dangerous and flounced off.  We have a chap who hadn't really heard of this system but gamely said he'd got some ropes.  I declined, on the grounds that it would help to have someone who had at least done it before.  Other chaps or companies have sent just a standard tariff, with no reference to the r&p work at all.  The more I say r&p work, the more niche and sleazy it sounds, and I wonder if I'm looking on the wrong websites.

Another guy wants photos of both ends.  That is, the locations at Brussels and Gent.  Difficult, what with me living 50k from Gent and having no camera.  He is based in Amsterdam and is the only person yet who I've found who actually advertises r&p work.

Another guy has taken himself off to look at the place today.  I haven't heard anything further.

And yet there may be a small miracle at work.  Last night I was posting on a website I frequent.  It is, nominally, a place for intelligent discussion, but is more like a large school playground/dating agency/grammar lesson/lunatic asylum.  I was in a head-ripping-off sort of mood, not good, when someone I'd never spoken to suddenly popped up.

She has a rope and pulley.  Her friend is expert in the use thereof.  He may be willing to do it for free, as long as I can get all my stuff to Gent.  She, again, is in Amsterdam, which seems to be the spiritual home of r&p work.  (Stop giggling.)  It really is a miracle, for which I will remember to give thanks, to someone or something.

Tomorrow I'm going to Gent to ambush the other residents of my building and pin them down until they tell me what company they used to get their stuff in.  It's good to know there is a back-up plan though, in case they refuse to tell me.

18 days.

Heave Ho

The place I'm moving into was built around 1500 and it's in books and that.  People take photos and put them on Flickr.  I see I'm going to have be careful not to dance around naked too much.  Although maybe they could pass me off as a quite substantial ghost.

At some point in the last 500 years, someone must have got some furniture into the building.  Not via the pretty front windows: too small.  Not via the stairs: too narrow.  Not via the lift:  they didn't have one then and it's tiny anyway.  No, someone must have got things like large oak settles and huge tables and heavily pregnant vrouwen in through the big back windows, using the rope and pulley, accessed via the yard of next door's brasserie.  The apartment owners were very relaxed about the matter and said that movers would know what to do.  When I asked how you get the rope up there they said like in a Western.   I think it was a joke. 

The mover (more accurately a man with a van) whom I had selected for the honour of moving me said he would not do this rope and pulley thing as it is highly dangerous.  He concluded by saying he would not now be passing by on Monday to give me a quote.  Dumped by a man with a van.

I feel as if I've been set a puzzle with three weeks to work it out.  Someone knows the answer, but not me, not yet.  I'm buggered if it's going to beat me.

Leaded Light

You would think that signing a tenancy agreement would be a simple thing.  Reader, it took all day.

The agency was obviously chosen by the owners for their own proximity.  Oostkamp is a genteel town some way outside of Brugge and not the easiest place in the world to reach.  One bus an hour on Saturdays from Brugge station, and that bus was showing dangerous signs of not turning up. Unfortunately the only option was an €18 taxi.  Most of the morning seemed to be taken up with a drily heaved panic.  Would I get to Gare Centrale on time? (Yes.)  Would I find the ticket machine?  (Only just.)  Would I even catch the train?  (Again, only just, due to platform change and mass galloping exodus.)  Would I catch the bus to Oostkamp?  (Apparently not.  Thank goodness for cheerful expensive taxis, eh.) Would Mr and Mrs Gent Apartment like me or would they change their mind at the last minute and throw me derisively onto the busless streets of Oostkamp?  (It was fine.)

Two hours at the agency though.  Well the contract was in Dutch innit, so the agency had to explain everything to unpolyglot me. 

And then THREE FUCKING HOURS to get back.  I'd quite like to sleep and think about my leaded windows and the logistics of getting furniture up a rope to the back window.   But I'm babysitting.  Leaded window dreams will wait.

Gentlewoman II

It's that kind of day.  Delayed responses.  Sweeping the big rug before rolling it up.  How can I shed that much hair and still have hair?  I've got boxes and bubble wrap and a headache and a big fear.

Unpicking that a bit, it's all sorts of things.

Gent really is pretty foreign.  Oh yes, they all speak English.  But the official language is one I can hardly understand, and attempting to read it feels like eating pins with my eyes.  So Flemish for Dummies on Youtube is very handy.  French, although far from being fluent on the tongue, is a language which I can read quite easily.  Gent is really a foreign place.

The rental contract is for a minimum of three years (breakable with all sorts of penalties - limbs, eyes, firstborn son, that sort of thing).  Which means I appear to have made a very definite decision to put roots down in Gent.

And then there is all the stuff around commuting and whether it's insane.  It isn't really - it's one hour door to door.  For Londoners, an hour commute is normal.  Some people commute from Brighton.  Not to Gent, that would be insane.

And just a general, sucky fear about whether this is all right.  Well, I don't know if it is.  I have a good job that I like, and now I have found a beautiful place to live in a beautiful place to live.

So that should be all right.  Yes.

 

  

Gentlewoman

Yesterday I phoned the agency and they had said that because my salary wasn't three times the monthly rent, I might not be considered without a guarantor.  So in my head I thought fuck that and started looking at other places.  Fuck them and their beautiful, spacious, gorgeously-situated flat.  Fuck fuck fuck. When they called this morning to say the landlord was offering me the tenancy, my brain was on a sort of delay and didn't react.  I wasn't going to get this flat. It took a few hours to go OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD.  OH MY FUCKING GODDING GOD.

I'm still quite scared about the whole thing, but it's happening.  I am moving to Gent in slightly less than four weeks.

These are my windows.  They are lovely windows.

Gently Does It

I'm wondering how many times I can get away with punning on "Gent".  Several, maybe.

It didn't start so well, with engineering work adding minutes and minutes and minutes to the expected train time until if seemed to be permanently moving out of reach like a ball on a boating lake.  We mopped up the passengers who were waiting for the next train, therefore it was a packed, rather whiny, rather suitcasey and standing up journey.  You know when you are in a hurry and everyone walks really slowly in front of you?  All right they were two blind people, but even so.  Reader, I almost ran to the taxi rank at Gent.  We did this weird thing of the driver speaking to me in Flemish and me answering in English.  Oddly I think we understood one another.  However I had to commandeer the satnav as he seemed not to have heard of this particular street.  And then he still got lost even after I'd punched in the address. 

So, the apartment.  It was not quite love at first sight.  Even in November, there was a desultory ambling of tourists getting in my way, and the local shops are full of what my dad would call expensive tut.  Oh apparently it's spelled toot.  The apartment itself was lush, though.  The dining/living area is about the size of my entire apartment here.  Nice bedroom, all modern fittings everywhere, loads of storage, dishwasher, cellar.  All essential shops nearby.  Afterwards I went and explored and the area is just gorgeous.  Google Patershol.

The tourists are the only problem - I cannot imagine what it would be like in summer.  I would have to devise ways of not killing them.  They are like zombies in cagoules with cameras.  (So maybe killing them is not strictly necessary).

After much thought, I'm going to go for it.  If I don't get this one, that is definitely the area I want.  It would be nicer slightly off-er the beaten track, but this place is so near the tram stop I wouldn't even need to wake up till the station. 

Mooving On

Autumn has slipped in like a knife and now it's very bloody cold.  I got extremely wet walking home but nevertheless stopped at the most unfriendly Indian (possibly) deli in the world for samosas and dahl.  Actually they may not be so much unfriendly, just scared.  Last time I was in there I asked what was in the samosas.  They said beef and I mooed.  When in doubt, moo at shopkeepers.   

Mr Fixit, the man who put a new lock on my door, has fixed my tap and got all three of my radiators working, so this small imperfect space feels tolerably warm at last.  I have given notice, and it no longer feels like mine.  There will be packing in the near future.  Tomorrow I go to look at the dream apartment on the canal near the castle in Gent.  There is quite a lot of fuzzy anxiety at the moment, which takes turns with mental list-making, and quiet feral excitement. 

Like Doris Day's mother, I can tell you the future's not ours to see.  Well we can see parts of it, between our fingers.  The rest, thankfully, is unknown.  Que sera, sera.