Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Bed shortly; it's been a frantic few days what with one thing and another and I shall almost be grateful to get back to work for a rest. This moving malarkey is not all it's cracked up to be, but still, less than a week from now we'll be in the new flat and that's all that matters.

I have arranged for BT to connect us with a new number from Thursday - there's no point giving the number out yet as they won't give me definitive confirmation that the number I've had reserved is the number I'll end up with.

Hmm.

Now, broadband.

It seems that for reasons beyond my ken, that it may take up to ten days to transfer the broadband connection. What I had hoped in my naivety, was that I could have it switched from this number on Monday night and it would be up and running on Tuesday morning. Same exchange, same provider, flick a switch thinks I. It may, as usual, not be that simple. I find also, that there may be a £40 charge to move the number, though if I agree to stay for 12 months, they may graciously waive said fee.

I know these companies are out there to make money, but frankly they're all taking the piss. Anyway, I can't arrange anything until BT confirm the number.

How slow it is, this digital age in which we live.

I may have to resort to taking my lap top down to the pub to take advantage of their wireless connection. If evening posts are less erudite and more poorly spelt than usual after the move for a few days, you know what's happened.

I fear it, I really do.

I have been looking at the BT website, trying to find out how to order a landline from good old British Telecom. There's lots of information - but significantly I can't find details of the connection charge and I don't know what I am likely to pay as a new customer moving into premises that havfe the wires already in place, but no account with BT (as yet).

I can't work out if, as a new customer, I pay for their reconnection or new line service and whichever it is, what it costs. Such is the system in this bloody country that if I look at one of the competitors' websites, they simply assume that you have a BT line and tell you how to switch to their 'cheaper and more reliable' alternatives. No-one apart from BT seems to actually connect you to the system in the first place. Of course, that then brings me to the 12 month contract. If I pay BT to connect me, I have to stay with the brutes for 12 months before I can take advantage of the 'cheaper and more reliable' alternatives.

Pah. It is to weep.

The line here in the Athenaeum Club is in colonel_maxim's name and is with Talk Talk. I suppose I could get it switched to my name and transferred, but I don't know if that's possible without creating more hassle than it's worth. And it still doesn't get me past the reconnection - new connection problem. My only prior experience in this field is with NTL and frankly I'd rather gouge my own eyes out with red hot spoons than deal with those b*ast*rds again.

What to do? What to do?

I suspect that I shall spend more time than I wish speaking to an underpaid drone in India tomorrow morning trying to find out what fiery hoops I have to jump through to get the telephone connection sorted in the new flat, and how many internal organs I shall need to sell to finance it!

Grumble.

At about 13.50 this afternoon colonel_maxim loaded the remainder of his luggage into the limousine that had arrived and as I type he is on his way to Heathrow, flying out at 17.00 for parts East.

I got up at the usual time, had a little breakfast with ellefurtle and then wandered back to bed for a couple of hours after she left for work. Up again about ten to pootle on the PC and then down for a natter and a cup of coffee. The Colonel and I then decamped to the Whetstone Cafe - the greasy spoon up the road and not the best local cafe, but the one we frequented when first we arrived in the area for one last life-threatening fry up and then very suddenly that was that. The Atheneaum Club as it was is no more.

I have just done a little tidying and the washing up; walked around the flat and turned off various radiators that kept The Colonel at his customary hot house temperatures and then closed all the doors to the rooms we shall no longer need. With the exception of the bath and shower rooms, that is the entire middle floor, though they will still see some use when smokingboot visits and also for as brief spell in six weeks when the Colonel himself returns for the first of his many paid holidays.

But today is the end of an era. We shall give it a week or so I guess and then start the slow and leisurely process of sifting through our possessions to see what will make the move with us at the end of the lease and what can be donated to charity, free cycled, eBayed or plain dumped.

I confess to feeling just a little melancholy at the prospect of it all, but that won't last. Three months from now we shall be in a new flat - hopefully better maintained and cheaper. Whether here in Whetstone or somewhere else entirely is yet to be determined.