So, obviously, that didn't quite work out as I had hoped.
A few months ago, when we first decided to move, I phoned my mortgage provider and asked them if I am allowed to rent my property to students. 'No problem' the guy said. 'You can rent it out to anyone you like. It's your property. You just need to fill in a form when you do it, and it'll be fine.'
Well that was pretty clear, so we started the preparations for Operation 'Turn-Our-Home-Into-A-Student-Dosshouse'. We started scouring eBay, freecycle, and all the local charity shops for acceptable, cheap furniture. Each room requires a bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a chair, a chest of drawers, a life-size cardboard cut out of Eamonn Holmes and a set of at least 5 standard orange traffic cones. OK, so I made those last two up, it's not like I'm bitter about this or anything...
We spent weeks (I say we, I mean B) looking for furniture. To be fair, B did an amazing job and she found practically everything those finickity women from the Uni demanded we obtain for their precious, oh-so-delicate students. All we needed was a couple more bits.
'This would be a good time to sort out that paperwork' I thought to myself. So during another one of my super exciting days at work, I phoned the mortgage company once again.
'Yes I need to get a form to rent out my property please' I said.
'That's no problem sir, but we have changed things slightly recently. Can I just ask, you won't be renting the property out to students or DSS will you?'.
Hmm. I could actually taste my heart when it jumped into my throat.
'Erm...actually, yes, I want to rent it to students. I phoned a couple of months ago, and I was told this was absolutely no problem.'
'I'm afraid you've been misinformed sir, we can't let you do that as the property wouldn't be insurable for us.'
Tunnel vision set in at this point, I could feel my whole world fading to grey. I tried arguing, but I was met with a brick wall to bang my head against. They told me I needed to inform them exactly who I intend to rent it out to, wait several weeks for them to decide if they deemed them worthy, and if they did, then hand over a fairly large sum of money for the privilege of daring to rent out my property to someone else.
All I could think of now was exactly how I could break the news to B that actually, all her hard work had been in vain, and worse still, I might not actually be able to move on the 30th July.
Now, I would consider myself an extremely lucky bugger most of the time. I've never had to look hard for work, rarely have I struggled to find the money to feed myself and heat my home, and the love of my life moved in next door. I would call that pretty damned lucky. But now I was cursing my luck. Or rather my inadequate planning skills. No, let's say my luck.
At the weekend, B and I had use of a hire car, as we had to take care of some things. We'd taken care of a few errands and B could see something was on my mind, so I summoned up all my courage to tell her the bad news. Needless to say, she was pretty devastated. All that hard work, wiped out with one phone call. There were some tears, from both of us, and for the next few hours things were pretty tense. We discussed our options, and seemingly it looked like we would have to rent out through an agent, or sell up. We were running out of time and options. I needed time to think about it, but we didn't have time on our side.
The next day, Sunday, we'd been invited up to see my Auntie L, Uncle M and Grandmother in the small village where they live. When we arrived, my cousin K was there with her boyfriend G. My auntie said she had an announcement to make. It turned out it was an annoucement on behalf of my cousin, she was pregnant. Ever the opportunist, instead of saying the usual congratulations I pounced and asked her if she needed a bigger place to live. They'd had some problems with their current flat and it seemed like a good time to ask. She said that they might, and we arranged for them to come around with my Auntie L to have a look at the place. I warned her that it was a bit of a state due to various work being done and the excess furniture we no longer needed.
They came up to see us in the week, and as luck would have it (I told you) they loved the place. We discussed a lot of things, potential rent, what work still needed doing, etc, and told K & G to have a night or two to think on it. A couple of days later, and I got a text to say that they still loved it, they wanted to rent it from us and they couldn't wait to do it.
Pure relief flooded through my blood. Sure, we still needed to do a hell of a lot, but now it looked like at least it was possible I could make my flight on 30th July.
In the next couple of weeks, we pressed on and in a whirlwind of activity, the work commenced. The shower got re-tiled, the bath re-paneled, the roof was mended, stairway re-carpeted and a few last minute touches of paint applied. We sold a few of the excess furniture supplies, and gave some away free. Things were looking good. We even had sorted out most of the paperwork and passports for the cats to travel with me.
A week before my flight, B set off to Hungary to prepare our new home in Budapest for my arrival, but more importantly, the cats. We knew it would be a stressful time for them so we wanted to make sure it was as cat friendly as possible when they arrived. So this left me on my own with a week to go, to clear out the last of the rubbish and make any final touches to the place to get it ready for my cousin.
Now, let's get this straight. When you look around your flat or house, it's probably quite organised, things are tidy (ish) and everything is in it's place. But when you decide to move to another country, you start to question what you actually need, what is actually precious enough for you to take with you, and what, frankly, is crap you don't need.
We had a lot of crap.
I started to panic, how the hell was I gonna clear this place out? Every time I turned my head, I discovered a new corner, a new shelf, a new drawer with a load more stuff to sort through. So I formulated a plan. In a nutshell, it was this: if it's not packed by now, it goes in the bin. With huge help from my mate J getting a sofa, armchair and double bed down two flights of stairs (thanks J, lifesaver) and from my mum (thanks Mum, you were amazing), we set about clearing the crap pile. Bags and bags and bags of the stuff. I estimate that we probably cleared out 30+ binbags of rubbish in the few days before I left, along with odd bits of unwanted furniture, pictures and knick-knacks. Three trips to the dump, and with a day and a half to go, the place was practically ready.
I still can't believe it.
The next 36 hours were a flurry of cleaning activity. Now I am not saying it was perfect when we left (sorry K & G) but my Mum and I got the place looking pretty good. Amazing how much you can get done when you don't have a bed or a sofa to sit on. And I have to say once again, a huge, huge thank you to Mum. I could not have done it without you, I owe you a massive birthday present when we see you in October.
So that was that. Ready to go. And then it hit me. I am moving to Hungary. Moving to another country. Moving to a place where I don't speak the language, where I don't have a job, and where I don't have any contacts. By the time my Auntie L arrived to take us all to the airport, I was pretty anxious and fair to say, not on my top form. I think I barely said anything on the ride to the airport, the stress of the move and transporting two live animals was getting to me.
The airline had informed me that when transporting animals, you MUST get to check in 3 hours before your departure time. Fair enough, I thought, it will take time to process everything. We got to the desk and they promptly informed me that there wasn't anyone to deal with it now, and we would have to wait until one hour before the flight before we can get them checked in. Great! I had a feeling this wasn't going to go well. Thankfully Mum and Auntie L were still there with me, and said they would stay with me until they were sure I could get the hairy little bastards on board. So we waited. And waited. And waited. To me, it seemed like an eternity. I already wanted this day to be over, and it wasn't even 8am.
Finally the time came, and we got in line, waited a bit more, and eventually, got the critters a space in the hold. I then had to take them to a special security zone to have them scanned, just to make sure I wasn't smuggling heroine or cocaine via the medium of catbum. I got the all clear and finally, it was time for me to say goodbye to Mum and Auntie L. I had been so caught up in the moving, and moreso making sure the cats were ok, that I hadn't really thought about what it would be like to say goodbye to Mum. I don't mind telling you that, all of a sudden, I was fighting back the tears. I gave her a big hug, a kiss, and said goodbye.
It wasn't like I was moving to the other side of the world, only Europe, but at that moment it felt like I wouldn't see her again for a long time. I went through to wait for my gate, and I couldn't stop myself from crying. I'm not one for public displays of emotion usually, but I couldn't control myself. I was walking through one of the busiest airports in the world with tears streaming down my face. B called me, but I could barely talk, so I managed to tell her I was ok, and I was about to get on the plane, and I would see her soon.
Boarding time came, and I got my seat. Now all I could think about was if the cats would survive the journey. We even had a connecting flight in Frankfurt to make, so I was trusting the airline to make sure they got on board that second flight too.
The engines fired up, I felt that familiar push as we sped up for take off, and then, finally, I was no longer on British soil.
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