Moving House

This the second part in my 'two of the most stressful things you can do in your life' list (the first being getting married). As I previously mentioned, I did both in a year which provides a huge incentive to go on mad rampage with an automatic weapon. Apparently I'm a masochist though as we chose the third year to have a baby. Fun times.

Weddings are fun and so is moving house in a similarly "my-bank-account-will-never-be-in-credit-again" way. Moving in/out of rented accommodation doesn't count, that's child's play. You need to be selling and buying to get hit with the full force of needless hassle and unexpected expense. My personal favourite (aside from £1,700 for a solicitor to fire out a couple of letters), is the Stamp Duty. Now, we all know it's a pointless tax. It's the Government saying the equivalent of "Oh, buying a house are you, moneybags? We'll have some of that action".

I'm not even going to get into the fact that the money you spend on this tax has, itself, already been taxed half a dozen times. At least in 'olden' days you actually got a physical bloody stamp. What did I get? A bill for more than eight grand and it may as well have included a patronising "thanks" and a pat on the head. Actually, thinking about it, any thanks at all would have been nice...

The actual move involves all the organisational hell you think it will, including the packing of all your things. I swear I’d walk into one medium sized room with some empty boxes, survey the task ahead and conclude that one hour was plenty of time to clear it out. Two hours later I would have half a dozen full boxes and the room would look as though I hadn’t shifted a thing. I lived in a Tardis.

Of course the issue with the actual move is timing. When you’re selling one house and buying another you need the money from the first sale to go towards the purchase of the second (unless you’re considerably richer than me). This means your old house’s sale goes through and the money is released to purchase your new house. This sort of happens at the same time (well, within minutes). It also means that the house all your furniture is in now belongs to someone else and they’d like you to move it all. Preferably within the following ten minutes. That’s fun too, especially when you need about five trips in a fair sized van to do it with a half hour round trip.

Anyway, I’ve been in my detached house for several years now and the neighbours haven't been round to complain during the noisy sections in The Dark Knight. Seriously Chris Nolan, sort your volume levels out. It's not helpful having your actors sound like they're whispering half a second before letting off more explosions than a Michael Bay wet dream. Sitting there with the remote control shifting the volume up and down constantly kind of took away from the ambiance. Yes, that did actually happen.

Anyway, the diminished chances of annoying people with noise is a good thing. I like noise. I can now bellow at the dog when she drags her arse across the carpet without fear of giving someone a heart attack next door. Still, I’m never satisfied (you’re shocked, I can tell) so once the pain has subsided from memory and I’ve spent the time considering how to avoid as many costs as possible, I’ll doubtless look at doing it all again. After all, this house doesn't have a swimming pool or a shooting range.

Getting Married

Apparently two of the most stressful things you can do in life are to get married and to move house. I did both in the space of a year, and I've addressed moving house here (because the joy should be spread around equally).

I can vouch that the organisation side of a wedding is not the most pleasurable experience. And by “not pleasurable” I mean “I’d rather perform surgery on myself with a rusty spoon and a junior hacksaw”. Of course the whole process would be less intrusive if you didn’t need to lube yourself up with a family sized tub of Vaseline and bend over ready for penetration before embarking on the adventure.

What do I mean exactly? Well, buying anything for a wedding is amusing, in a masochistic "are-you-sodding-joking?" type way. Conversations go along these lines:

Me: "Hello. I'd like to arrange some invitations to a party, for probably around a hundred people."
Shop assistant: "No problem, prices are £45."
Me: "Excellent. On the website they look they'll match the wedding colours."
Shop assistant: "Oh, it's for a WEDDING? Sorry, WEDDING invitations are £500."

And so on.

I was quoted £1,650 for four hours use of a Rolls Royce. That’s over £400 an hour. I dropped the phone in shock so I’m unsure whether they were providing Lewis Hamilton to drive us to church too. Luckily I managed to find someone who had a Bentley which wasn’t made of solid gold, otherwise it might have been a Ford Fiesta (and I imagine that a flowing wedding dress creates a few problems getting in one of those).

Nothing for a wedding costs less than £500. It’s a well known fact, and the list of things you need is endless. You apparently need to buy things that I’ve never heard of (and I’m pretty sure I still didn’t see on the day itself either). Then, of course, you must feed people that you’ve never met before and relatives who you don’t like. And I don’t mean pop down to the chippie and grab fifty large portions of chips and some mushy peas either; they expect decent food. I’m pretty sure the hotel where we held the reception wouldn’t have allowed a ‘bring your own’ takeaway food option either. They’d have missed out on the eleventy billion pounds per head it cost. It’s more than I’d spend on a meal for myself, let alone a bunch of freeloaders who all thought it was funny to give us the same cheap toaster from Argos as wedding gifts.

I made the mistake of getting involved and trying to appear committed during the build up, the worst example being me accompanying my soon-to-be wife to a florists to talk about ideas for the big day. After ten minutes if it had been possible to commit suicide with a daffodil I’d have taken the option. It probably didn’t help that I was hungover but I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. I’m unsure when, or where, they both suddenly learned Arabic, but it sounded like the preferred communication protocol. The two of them talked through ideas (I think) for what seemed like a week and I didn’t have a clue whether the words they were using were flowers or placements or procedures or arrangements... Anyway, it’s irrelevant what the words meant, I understand numbers and they added up to more than £500.

The vicar only had the cheek to come round and meet us when Liverpool were playing Chelsea in the Champions’ League. It might have seemed rude to her, for me not to turn down the TV, but I think I pulled it off by looking over her shoulder and just randomly grunting in agreement every now and again. Actually I didn’t pull it off at all because she mentioned it in the service, which was actually kind of a blessing because it momentarily distracted me from the screaming kid I was fantasising about stringing up next to Jesus on the cross.

But of course, as everyone says, the day flies by. Regardless of how much free alcohol is pushed in your direction, it’s impossible to get drunk because you’re pulled from pillar to post until the point where everyone else is drunk and you’re expected to dance romantically. Really? What are these people doing at my wedding if they don’t know me better than that?

Before you know it, it’s all over and you’re simply left with a scrap of paper to confirm your partnership, a bill for your soul and a wife suggesting that maybe a baby should be next on the list.

The Nope Badger

Not much of a rant, or even a post, but I can't resist posting this simply because my childish mind finds it hilarious.