Isn’t it good when a plan comes together! Today I moved a mile down the road from an end-terraced house to a studio flat. I was quite looking forward to it because the house was too big for just me and the studio flat is a lot better that the bedsit I lived in when my parents went to live in Wales many years ago. I remember entertaining my first wife-to-be there so it must have been in 1972. I remember getting a stiff letter from the landlord when he discovered from one of the other tenants that I was frequently entertaining a guest overnight!
Browzers had already picked up the furniture I didn’t need last Saturday so today was just about moving the furniture that I needed for the new flat. I paid the deposit and first month’s rent for the flat yesterday as with David Seymour this has to be done after 1pm to allow time for the paperwork to be prepared and Browzers needed to start the move at 10am. They arrived at 10am today as promised and I didn’t have much time to disconnect the laptop & TV accessories & devices before they had finished loading the other stuff. There a Virgin Tivo box, a Virgin Router, a Sky box, a DVD player, a connection with my laptop so I could use the TV as a second screen for working smart or playing films, a mouse because I don’t like using a touch-pad, a special USB sound card with connection to a speaker that fits into my pocket (because the sound card/speaker in the laptop doesn’t work for more than 9 seconds) and a few extra wires where I worked out a way of recording movies directly from the scart of either the Sky or the Virgin box and routing sound to the speakers for higher quality.
At the last minute I had decided that the old mattress had to go in favour of the one David Seymour had installed in the drop-down bed. Apparently this was necessary in any case because a sprung mattress doesn’t work well on a sprung base because the springs of each may not meet where they need to. I had already tested the installed mattress and it was very comfortable even though only half the thickness so no worries there! It was a shame to see a mattress disappear which has witnessed such an interesting period in my life from wife number one, to various girlfriends including a wild Jamaican for 3 years, to wife number two for 6 years and lately a girlfriend who revitalized my passion in no uncertain terms!
I was thinking of replacing the fridge freezer which was a bit old and used around 400kw per year as opposed the the 120kw that modern fridges boast. I don’t need the freezer part any more because I don’t eat meat except when Katie comes to visit when I buy fresh meat and she cooks for me. Batswana eat goats and cows – it’s as simple as that! On the other hand while I love eating meat I am able to make do with something just as nutritious if not more so but a lot cheaper as you will see if you look at My Menu.
Then I remembered how noisy the fridge was from time to time and realised that it just had to go! It’s one thing when there’s a noisy fridge downstairs in the kitchen but another when it’s in the same room. I therefore resolved to buy a new fridge for around £70 (approximately the amount I will save on electricity by using it for one year instead of the old one) but discovered that this was only enough for a table-top fridge with around 70 litres capacity which is not a lot as I am used to having twice that amount of space. Having investigated Argos, Currys & eBay I found a shop called South Coast Appliances in Gosport and resolved to pop in and see what they could do for me. At first the salesman thought that he couldn’t competed with the £69 for the table-top fridge from Argos but then he remembered a slightly used under-the-counter fridge in the other shop across the road – they have two shops at 7 & 14 Stoke Road! This was £75 for a 39db A+ energy classified under-surface fridge with a capacity about the same as my current fridge. I bought it on the spot as is my wont and when I got it back to the flat I realised that there really wasn’t a suitable surface for a table-top fridge anyway. I put the new fridge where the tumble dryer was to go and will put the tumble dryer in the bathroom next to the heated towel rail. The tumble dryer and washing machine aren’t being moved to the new flat until tomorrow (Friday).
Unfortunately Virgin can’t install my broadband & TV until 16th August so I have to make do with the nearby BT Wifi hotspot and Freeview until then. I was hoping to play some online movies from my Sky account but it turns out the hotspot was more of a warmish-spot which gets cold frequently! I wish I’d known that before I paid £39 for 30 days but it is better than nothing.
I can’t play online movies from my Virgin account from 30th August onwards in any case because when they disconnect the service from your previous abode the service becomes unavailable until they install your service at the new one. (That’s one up to Sky!) However, I have a 10 inches pile of films on CD kindly donated by an old friend several years ago so that should keep me going for a while as I do like to watch movies when I’m not out salsa dancing or writing my blog. Why do I still have a Sky account? Because every time I ask them to close it they come up with a new offer – the last one being free basic usage for 12 months which comes to and end on 9th August so I will have to pay a few quid to keep the service going and extra month before I close it once and for all . . .
The picture below is a snapshot of the spreadsheet I used to design the layout of the furniture & facilities to their best effect. It’s been updated to the final layout achieved which wasn’t much different from the original design – mainly
- the fridge displacing the tumble dryer
- the tumble dryer being moved to the bathroom
- putting the second tubular iron glass tower in the bathroom and replacing it with a chair
- moving in the cushioned conservatory bench to make better use of the space available when the bed is up during the day
- moving the bean bag and shaping it like an armchair for a smaller footprint
Each square is a tenth of a metre.
