Trouble with Electrics
Just a few minutes before taking the kids out to Wallace and Grommit. Busy busy busy. Had a nightmare last week when the rain came down so heavy and the gutter overflowed and overflowed and water ran down the wall and soaked into the wall and through the wall and into the electricity supply and…
Nothing happened when I turned on the kettle, no hot water came out when I turned on the shower, and memories of returning from our honeymoon came flooding back. We got married on the cheap. We’d been meaning to do it for a while, but I’d got pregnant and money was really short. In the end we thought we’d better do it and had a quiet do in the registry office in Hove followed by a small reception in a local pub. It was great fun and unexpectedly moving and everyone enjoyed the informality of it. Afterwards we stayed in a hotel on the seafront with a group of friends, ate fish and chips in one of the rooms, and took a married walk in the brisk November air the next morning.
Then we went on honeymoon to Malta. It was a last minute deal and we didn’t quite know what to expect, so we weren’t particularly surprised to be in a Saga hotel with a bunch of 90 year olds as well as the Moldovian football team and all their hangers-on. Having a two-year old and a pregnancy to take care of, it wasn’t the most carefree of holidays. Finding good vegetarian food was difficult; even though we tried a lot of the local fish we weren’t really impressed and felt hungry a lot. It was worse for our son because the food was quite unfamiliar to him, and after a few days he caught Salmonella from a badly boiled egg at the hotel. Luckily the shits didn’t begin for a few days, but he was quite weak and poorly for the rest of the holiday.
One day we were walking around and were approached by someone offering us a free lucky dip which we accepted and then she told us we’d won the first prize, a gold pendant. I don’t know why we were sucked in, we must’ve been incredibly distracted, but we followed her to a hotel where we were supposed to pick up the prize. After waiting a while in the hotel she came and told us that we would be taken to another hotel to collect the prize. By this time we were a little suspicious and our son was getting disruptive, but we allowed them to persuade us into a dodgy car with a dangerous driver who drove us what seemed miles through the bumpy dusty streets of Malta to another hotel. We got out there and had to wait again. We were wanting to go back to our hotel by then, but were determined to see this ‘prize.’ In the end someone came and gave us a hard sell on a time-share. Gave us a tour, schmoozed us good and proper. Despite the fact we had no spare money at all he persuaded us this was our dream, and it was possible. We were just about to sign on the dotted line (really) when common sense intervened.
‘Let’s go and have a sandwich and think about it over lunch,’ I said to my husband and after some hard negotiating with the salesman who didn’t want us to get out of his clutches, we extricated ourselves and he left us in the restaurant downstairs.
We sat and ate our sandwiches and drank our drinks. An old man sat near us, and we got into a conversation. We asked him whether he had a timeshare here, and he advised us not to touch it with a bargepole. Some might say he was an angel or a messenger. He saved us thousands and thousands of wasted pounds, but in the end we pissed off our salesman, didn’t get a lift back to our hotel and had to carry our exhausted and ill child many miles back in our arms.
We’d almost reached home when the shits started. I didn’t know until we got there. It was dark and we were tired. It had been a long journey. We’d had trouble getting a connection from Gatwick, had to wait around for a bus, then had to get a cab from Heathrow. When we reached the front door there pinned to it was an A4 piece of paper with small hand writing all over it. We pulled the note off and entered the dark house. The note was from our friend who had been house-sitting. We read it by the light of the streetlamp outside. It explained that the water and power were both off as the boiler had gone very wrong, there had been water pouring down it and another friend had suggested turning everything off.
It was clear that our son had exploded somewhere between Heathrow and home, so I took him upstairs to change his nappy. This required candles and many many baby wipes as well as some careful manoeuvrings to avoid getting shit on the sleeves of my lovely fake fur coat which I was regretting not removing.
After a few frantic pleading phone calls we arranged to stay with friends for a few days, which turned into a couple of weeks, and by sheer good luck or blessings from on high, our friend won a lot of money on the lottery and was able to hep us pay for the repairs we needed so we could finally move into our home for the first time as a married couple.
It didn’t feel like a good omen for the start of our marriage, and things certainly got hard for a while, but we’re still together, and the house is just about still standing too.
We got the gutter sorted out and now we have to face up to the damage that was done by our tendency to bury our heads in the sand, or in wasting time blogging.
Nothing happened when I turned on the kettle, no hot water came out when I turned on the shower, and memories of returning from our honeymoon came flooding back. We got married on the cheap. We’d been meaning to do it for a while, but I’d got pregnant and money was really short. In the end we thought we’d better do it and had a quiet do in the registry office in Hove followed by a small reception in a local pub. It was great fun and unexpectedly moving and everyone enjoyed the informality of it. Afterwards we stayed in a hotel on the seafront with a group of friends, ate fish and chips in one of the rooms, and took a married walk in the brisk November air the next morning.
Then we went on honeymoon to Malta. It was a last minute deal and we didn’t quite know what to expect, so we weren’t particularly surprised to be in a Saga hotel with a bunch of 90 year olds as well as the Moldovian football team and all their hangers-on. Having a two-year old and a pregnancy to take care of, it wasn’t the most carefree of holidays. Finding good vegetarian food was difficult; even though we tried a lot of the local fish we weren’t really impressed and felt hungry a lot. It was worse for our son because the food was quite unfamiliar to him, and after a few days he caught Salmonella from a badly boiled egg at the hotel. Luckily the shits didn’t begin for a few days, but he was quite weak and poorly for the rest of the holiday.
One day we were walking around and were approached by someone offering us a free lucky dip which we accepted and then she told us we’d won the first prize, a gold pendant. I don’t know why we were sucked in, we must’ve been incredibly distracted, but we followed her to a hotel where we were supposed to pick up the prize. After waiting a while in the hotel she came and told us that we would be taken to another hotel to collect the prize. By this time we were a little suspicious and our son was getting disruptive, but we allowed them to persuade us into a dodgy car with a dangerous driver who drove us what seemed miles through the bumpy dusty streets of Malta to another hotel. We got out there and had to wait again. We were wanting to go back to our hotel by then, but were determined to see this ‘prize.’ In the end someone came and gave us a hard sell on a time-share. Gave us a tour, schmoozed us good and proper. Despite the fact we had no spare money at all he persuaded us this was our dream, and it was possible. We were just about to sign on the dotted line (really) when common sense intervened.
‘Let’s go and have a sandwich and think about it over lunch,’ I said to my husband and after some hard negotiating with the salesman who didn’t want us to get out of his clutches, we extricated ourselves and he left us in the restaurant downstairs.
We sat and ate our sandwiches and drank our drinks. An old man sat near us, and we got into a conversation. We asked him whether he had a timeshare here, and he advised us not to touch it with a bargepole. Some might say he was an angel or a messenger. He saved us thousands and thousands of wasted pounds, but in the end we pissed off our salesman, didn’t get a lift back to our hotel and had to carry our exhausted and ill child many miles back in our arms.
We’d almost reached home when the shits started. I didn’t know until we got there. It was dark and we were tired. It had been a long journey. We’d had trouble getting a connection from Gatwick, had to wait around for a bus, then had to get a cab from Heathrow. When we reached the front door there pinned to it was an A4 piece of paper with small hand writing all over it. We pulled the note off and entered the dark house. The note was from our friend who had been house-sitting. We read it by the light of the streetlamp outside. It explained that the water and power were both off as the boiler had gone very wrong, there had been water pouring down it and another friend had suggested turning everything off.
It was clear that our son had exploded somewhere between Heathrow and home, so I took him upstairs to change his nappy. This required candles and many many baby wipes as well as some careful manoeuvrings to avoid getting shit on the sleeves of my lovely fake fur coat which I was regretting not removing.
After a few frantic pleading phone calls we arranged to stay with friends for a few days, which turned into a couple of weeks, and by sheer good luck or blessings from on high, our friend won a lot of money on the lottery and was able to hep us pay for the repairs we needed so we could finally move into our home for the first time as a married couple.
It didn’t feel like a good omen for the start of our marriage, and things certainly got hard for a while, but we’re still together, and the house is just about still standing too.
We got the gutter sorted out and now we have to face up to the damage that was done by our tendency to bury our heads in the sand, or in wasting time blogging.
posted by Firegoat @ 6:42 pm
1 Comments:
At 9:05 pm,
Anonymous said…
It is a shame that there are still people in Malta allowed to destroy an already weak industry like that of tourism with these hard selling tactics. My partner and I almost fell for their charms too. But there are still things to enjoy in Malta. Valletta's charm, Mdina and the three cities, the helpfulness of most Maltese, the sea and the rocks, the history and so on.
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