Disaster 101

Disaster 101- a new name for my blog?

No! That would be asking for trouble although it seems to find us just the same.

After a reasonably comfortable seven week stay in a static caravan/single-wide which welcomed us on our first full day in Blighty with a puddle in the sitting room, himself drove 1260 miles to the south east coast of Italy while I alternately argued with and fumed at the GPS.

In hindsight, four days of driving, six days in Italy and a return trip of four straight days of driving was an even more ridiculous idea than the time we flew from Arizona to the UK and set off, jet-lagged to drive to the south of France.

Needless to say on our return from Italy, we were exhausted, grimy, hungry and already in a poor frame of mind when we stepped into the hell that was to be our home for the next two weeks. The curtains hung in loops from the rails, only attached every few feet like sad bunting; it smelled of dog and the carpet looked like he’d made himself right at home. There was a gaping maw where one of only two kitchen drawers had been and the cookware consisted of two small saucepans, enough for a tin of beans each.

We’d begun the tedious but necessary job of disinfecting every surface when I encountered the last straw – the kitchen sink was blocked. I poked at it with a fork and a black Satan’s spew regurgitated into the sink.

After a fourth trip with the various complaints to reception, the maintenance men turned up, disassembled the plumbing, lost a crucial piece of pipe and blamed us for taking it.

FBI Badge & gun. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At 10 minutes to closing time we stood in reception, stunned with tiredness and incredulous with our bad luck, to argue our case with an 18-year-old. The manageress had made herself scarce.

We were given no alternative accommodation, no compensation, not even an apology, just a refund.

At six o’clock on a Friday night our car was crammed with suitcases of dirty washing and groceries with nowhere to cook them. We were shattered and we were homeless. Again.

Our only option was to go to the FBI.

Photo credit: http://www.ferryboatinn.org.uk/index.html

At the Ferryboat Inn (FBI – geddit?), a low-ceilinged, timber-framed seaside pub exuding warmth and comfort, we stuffed our faces with fish and chips and downed large glasses of red wine. On the way to the pub, we’d booked a hotel for the night so felt no further need to molly-coddle the few functioning brain cells we’d left between us.

Dear friends took us in the next day and even offered to put up the marquee for us to sleep in.

We declined the marquee so this is where they made us sleep:

. . . . . to have this view every morning when I opened the curtains:

And this is where they made us eat candlelit dinners night after night . . . .

. . . .and relax afterwards here . . .

. . . . kept warm of a chilly evening by a giant inglenook fireplace:

I had just his tiny garden to play in:

Our friends kindness and generosity kept us from walking into the North Sea – ending our Which Way Now quest forever.

And speaking of the sea, I can feel your sympathy ebbing away.

We are now rested and as sane as we’ll ever be and ready to embark on our next phase – life in a tiny rental house. Our big black Chevy truck is being titivated for the UK roads and our furniture is languishing in a customs shed. We’ve no idea where any of it is other than not at the bottom of the Atlantic.

We have just been emailed and asked to write a review for our “holiday” by the head office of the caravan park – corporate communication being what you would expect. No one thought to question why we had a full refund on the day our “holiday” was due to start.

Trip Advisor here I come!

Welcome to Civilization

Jimmy survived The Green Card Interrogation– no questions asked – at Seattle Airport having been “welcomed” to the United States by Gandalf.  A harrowing drive in a borrowed truck on Interstate 5 – the heavily trafficked north/south corridor of the west coast – in the dark and in pouring rain was Jimmy’s next ordeal. As we’d already been awake for 24 hours, I was feeling giddy. Jimmy, more used to driving an automatic on the left and now required to drive the unfamiliar pickup with manual gearbox on the right, was feeling completely bamboozled. For good measure he added, “My night vision isn’t so good anymore.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring!” A shot of adrenalin jolted me to full alertness on Jimmy’s behalf. Peering as intently as him into a bleak night punctuated with dazzling headlights and blinking brake lights, all reflected in crazy patterns on the slick road surface, I was pumping the floorboards on the passenger side all the way down the Interstate.

When at last we pulled under the apartment parking canopy with a cessation of the thrumming rain on the truck roof, it was with great relief and a measure of amazement that this part of our journey was at an end. We disgorged our suitcases into an apartment we had arranged on a previous visit to Olympia and fell into bed.

The next day, our small two-bed American apartment seemed positively palatial after months of confinement in a trailer. It was fully furnished and equipped – a little treat for our first month until we got our bearings and our belongings in our new country – and we wandered from room to room like novice millionaires inspecting our first mansion.

Deprivation had taught us to appreciate the everyday things we had previously taken for granted so we poked around and played with our new toys – the washer, dryer, microwave, garbage disposal, coffee maker, large screen TV and VCR/DVD and radio/alarm clock (which needed resetting as some bright spark had left it set and it went off at 6 a.m. Cheers, matey).

The monster fridge/freezer (how could we possibly fill it?) was five times the cubic capacity we were used to on our European caravan. The four-ring stove with massive oven, a land line with voicemail, the dishwasher –  it was all exhilarating.

It might be hard for a  normal person (that ship has sailed for me) to imagine how a washer and dryer could provoke such excitement but my undies would no longer share the laundry facilities with dog blankets, greasy overalls and mixed loads of indistinguishable lumps of gray. Each of the ordinary items in the apartment was coveted. The queen sized beds would be blissfully comfortable after our spell on thin hard trailer bunks if only our inner time clocks weren’t eight hours out of sync and we could manage to sleep through the night.

The central heating had a thermostat in every room. For two people with their internal thermostats set at always hot and always cold, to live in a trailer which was essentially one large room had been a constant source of querulous rants. “Turn that heat down!” “I’m freezing!” “Open the door!” “I’ve just warmed up!” “I need some fresh air!” “Well go out and get it!” Jimmy would sit in shorts and a tee-shirt while I shivered under a fleece blanket. The thought of being able to close a door between us and whack the heat up filled me with a tingle of anticipation. Fresh air is meant for outdoors. If himself wants to be an American, he needs to learn that.

These were the first of many adjustments we would make to life in America.