England – Page 4 – sendeuros

Hello Melbourne, this is Bedford calling

We bit the bullet this weekend and decided it was time to get ourselves a car. Partially because we are off to Manchester next weekend to visit one off my uni mates and watch some live music (Chemical brothers and Missy Higgins). I don’t think that you miss your father’s so much as when you are looking for a car and trying to work out whether it is worth our hard earned £250.

We looked at a few private sale cars, but weren’t really impressed. There is an amazing amount of rust in the cars here, I think it is because of the salt they put on the roads during winter to break up the ice. So you guessed it, we returned to our trusty aucton house two doors down and bidded on a little Rover Metro 111…which we hoped would go 🙂 When cars are sold at aucton here they are generally sold with MOT (road worthy) and Tax (rego), so we kinda felt a bit confident about its condition. We got to start it and look over it before the aucton, and there didn’t appear to be any unusual noises. After sales tax and credit card premium (how odd buying a car on credit card) I think we were out of pocket £274. Our insurace cost more than the car!

It was great getting behing the wheel after 4 months. Our first destination was Tesco a huge supermarket where we purchased a few bits and pieces to fit out the car. A place looks a lot different when you are driving around, one way streets are suddenly significant and you are trying to find speed limit signs.

We collapsed after a long day of talking with insurance companies, organising parking permits and negotiating English roads. At least they drive on the same side of the road as us. We sat in front of the televion eating leftovers and Matt’s home made pancakes and watching Eurovision. I never thought it but the experience is definately hightened being in a country were we can vote. How does Israel get grouped in with Europe?? Anyhow I took my right to vote very seriously and judged all the performances on originality and entertainment value. Denmark got my vote – the guy had an amazing resemblance to Crown Prince Fredrik and I thought that he is almost an Aussie, so I kept the voting in the family like the rest of Europe does.

Anyhow…I think that it is road trip time…don’t forget to give us a buzz on our new number. Will upload some pictures of the car soon.

The local Fish and Chip shop doesn’t sell deep-fried Mars Bars!!

Phew! I Don’t know where to start! How about “I’m sorry for taking so long to write a post!” I have been sitting here for 10 minutes trying to come up with an excuse – unfortunately there isn’t one!

The past four weeks have been rather exciting, and boring at the same time! Although we haven’t seen any great sights or visited any exciting countries, it has been nice to unpack our suitcases and settle down for a while!

Well, following on from the previous post – we moved into “home” the following day. Somehow we have managed to score a three story, four bedroom semi-furnished terrace house right in the centre of town! At first we where a little worried about renting a place as all the real-estate agents didn’t want to know us (before they will rent out a place, they require proof that you have been a resident for two years); as luck would have it – the boss at Philippa’s job agency was looking for a tenant for their house and was happy for us to move in immediately without all the usual security checks! We had to share the place with a few girls who where studying at the local university for a few weeks (which was fine, except for the mess) – but now we have the place to ourselves! The only downside is the place is up for sale, and theoretically it could go at any time!

Philippa was offered the job she previously mentioned and has been working at the local hospital full time (about a 10 minute walk away) since. She seems to be enjoying it, although she is finding it hard to get back into work mode! That said, she is doing better than me – I have barely even looked for a job, let alone applied for any! I am a kept man!

Setting up the house has been fun! We have had to purchase sheets and doonas (duvets here), knifes, forks, pots and pans etc etc. We seem to purchase a new knick-knack every time we go down the shops (which is only 1 minute walk away). About two doors down is a huge auction house that holds a mixed auction every Saturday – we have been a regular attendee every week for the past four weeks and have managed to accumulate a TV (the big one previously mentioned was one of the girls), a broken portable phone (doh!), a push bike, an office gas lift chair, two really good portable phones and a box of 10 Kensington Locks (for laptops). I was really disappointed when the lot of 90 MP3 players and 37 packs of smokes went higher than I was prepared to pay! Next time, hey!

The rest of our spare time has been filled with watching Freeview Digital TV (so much better here, over 15 extra free channels – better than the Channel 7 test logo back home), eating out at the multitude of pubs within short walking distance, going to the movies etc. Philippa has also been attending some modern dance classes with Alie – she can really cut the rug now! Oh! I also got the internet/phone connected – ADSL 4MB Unlimited – W00T! Speaking of which, I have set up a VoIP phone which gives us a Melbourne (03) number here in England (therefore, if you are in Melbourne you can call us for the cost of a local call) – send us an email if you want the number (just don’t call when it’s the middle of the night here)!

I am woefully homesick and cannot wait to come home! I would love to be at the Star Wars premier with all my mates tomorrow – but I guess it won’t be long until we start traveling again! No ETA yet – but 12-18 months is what we have decided (well, Philippa decided :P).

Better run, Philippa just rang and is walking home from work – she wants to go to the market to get some veggies (today is pay day! Oh how we love the mighty £).

I love you all heaps and miss you a great deal! Make sure you e-mail or call or send a carrier pidgin or something soon!

Home… Sweet Home!

Our last day we spent with Pete and Kate we did the all important visit to Ikea – yep it is pretty much the same as at home, but a lot more of the products make sense in the Swedish environment – especially the meat balls that they sell in the cafeteria. We caught the speed train the Ryan Air airport about 100km from Stockholm (and didn’t get a chance to see Stockholm this time, we’ll just have to go back to visit it). Ryan air is about as budget as you can get – the chairs are primarily made from hard plastic! We arrived in Luton (near London) exhausted and made it to our guesthouse, what an adventure that turned out to be!

The guesthouse owner had overbooked the accommodation, so he offered us his room, which we took – as my recruitment agency had prepaid for three nights and it seemed like a waste of money paying to go elsewhere. We were directed out to the back bungalow, which was a real bachelor pad. This bachelor however had a thing for purchasing clothes, and, other than the bed, you could not see any of the furniture as it was all covered in clothes. We found about 1 meter square to put all our bags, we were almost too scared that our belongings would merge into the chaos that surrounded them. To top off the clutter situation, there was about an inch of dust over everything. After viewing the bathroom, we decided that we were in England now and we only needed to bathe once a week! The owner was such a top bloke though, we felt as though we couldn’t really complain.

We spent the next few days visiting medical centres (trying to get Matt seen as he had a really bad ear ache), checking out the real estate and hassling my job agency. We finally made it to London on the Friday and did the monopoly board tour, while trying to open a bank account. So we have had our highs and lows this week. It looks like I have a job, which is great – cannot believe how easy it is, and we were homeless for a little while and shelling out the dollars (which don’t convert to pounds to well) waiting for temporary accommodation to be sorted out. I also caught up with the uni crew that are over here – there are about eight of my peers here, we had a baby shower for Kerri (for those that know her).

Looks like our home is going to be Bedford for a while. And tomorrow we are going to move into our new place, which is fully furnished, with a big screen TV (I think that was the selling point for Mat).

We have uploaded heaps of photos from Hong Kong and Europe for those that are interested in using the internet inappropriately at work.

Love yall and looking forward to your correspondence. And yes… I’m soon going to get tuff on you guys who have promised e-mails and haven’t delivered yet!