Installation

Our things arrived yesterday. At 9.30am sharp as promised, an army of workers descended, not, apparently, to unload the boxes but rather to direct the lorry as it attempted to reverse around the L shaped bend of our lane. 'Left' 'No right' 'Stop' came the cries (at least I imagine that's what they were saying). The beleagured truck driver eventually threw up his hands and turned off the engine refusing to budge until our driver Mr Guo saved the day by taking charge. Eventually, the truck had got as far as it was going to and the army began to unload the boxes, wheeling them down the lane on a precarious wooden trolley.

The move started well when we couldn't get the book shelves we'd borrowed from our landlord up the stairs to the study and when our altar table failed to fit into the pre-assigned alcove by a couple of mms. Things did not improve when we discovered that a number of our nicesest pieces of furniture had been damaged. Gradually, however, things came in, went up the stairs and got unwrapped. Since then, I have been moving things around from room to room, slowly finding homes for things.

The army moved on to furniture re-assembly. We went to IKEA on Saturday and as we were loading up our bits of kit, two guys came up and offered to load it all up, drive it back to our house and re-assemble it immediately for £20. If only they had been around yesterday. The bed was put together backwards, the filing cabinets have been put in upside down, the wardrobes had to be put together and taken apart three times before they got it right and the brand new bunk beds we'd bought in the UK for the boys got scratched when the ladder got put on the wrong way. As I harangued the workers, the foreman started to laugh. 'I don't see anything to laugh about' I frowned. 'Well the workers are too frightened to carry on' he said.
So much for my maintaining my sang froid and saving face.