All in Favour say Ayi

This morning, S has been to make one last visit to our new house to meet with the Host (Chinese term for Landlord) before he moves in next Saturday. While the idea of rented accommodation might normally suggest lethal gas fires and mismatched sofas, our house is furnished with beautiful Chinese furniture and priceless antiques. S was trying to clarify what was needed in terms of house and contents insurance. The Host looked blankly at S when he put forward the idea of theft - after all, the estate is manned by security guards 24 hours a day, and surrounded by an 8ft high fence. S tried again with accidental damage to contents. He asked Amy (the lovely, but not-quite-with-it Estate Agent) about a particular vase that stands, 3 feet high, in the corner of the dining room. It is apparently hundreds of years old and is the only one left in the whole of China.

"How much is it worth roughly?" asked S. "10,000RMB?".
"Ooh no," replied Amy. "Much more than that".
"50,000 RMB?".
"Ooh no, much more than that.".
"100,000 RMB?".
"Ooh no, much more than that.".
"A million RMB?".
"Ooh no, much more than that.".
"3 million RMB?".
"Ooh no, much more than that.".
S gave up at this point, assuming if it really was worth nearly a quarter of a million pounds, it would be in a museum somewhere and not sitting in a rented house.

Since discovering that children (the youngest being 8) would be coming to live in his house, our Host has spent the last two weeks making the house as safe as possible. He has taken out the glass in the internal doors and put in toughened safety glass, put a new high railing round the roof terrace and replaced the work tops in the kitchen so they now have rounded edges. I assume he thinks J will be too busy falling off the roof and through glass doors to have time to knock over his priceless vase.

The Host has also arranged for our Ayi to start on the 20th March. Ayi (pronounced Aye-ee) is Chinese for Auntie; they cook, clean, do laundry, shopping - everything - and I had read that quite often they end up being one of the family. Since I discovered today that she works from 7am till 7pm, I can quite see how. Apparently she is also keen to learn all about English cuisine. S needs to sort out the Fire Insurance - I'll be taking my Chip Pan after all.

Those were the days

I am in the final stages of emptying B & D's room. The last thing that had to be done was getting the Scalextric down from the top of the wardrobes. It turned out to be not one set, but THREE - all covered in a thick layer of dust, all massive sets, all still in their original boxes. This remarkable discovery did nothing for B however - he was far more interested in an old carrier bag he'd spotted in the far corner. 3DO games! For anyone who doesn't know, the Panasonic 3DO (circa 1994) came after the Sega Megadrive, and always seemed to me to be far more interesting - mainly because it didn't appear to involve Sonic the Hedgehog.

B was in paradise. For him, THIS was what mattered - these games were the triggers to his childhood memories, not some dusty boxes of Scalextric. Less than 10 minutes later, he was up in the loft, unearthing further treasures - the Phillips CDi, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega Saturn. Heaven.

The Scalextric will be sold of course. But for B's sake, the 3DO and its games are going to be packed in bubble wrap, boxed up and carefully stored for the future.

Another Brick in the Wall part 1

Today I received D & J's class lists from their new school in Shanghai.

There are 10 children in J's class, including her. This is not a class, it's a sleepover! Nora (from Finland) is starting on the same day as J. There are two other little girls in her class, Olivia (from Australia) and Victoria (from the UK). D's class is slightly bigger - 16 including him. There are 5 children from the UK and 2 from the USA. There is Frida from Sweden, Felix from Austria and Alienor from Holland. The other children in their classes are from Taiwan, Canada, Japan, France, Korea and Malaysia.

We chose this school because it teaches the UK National Curriculum, in the hope that the lessons would not be too unfamiliar for D & J. What made the parents of Felix and Amaury and Ji Won and Seuk choose this school? The high standards of the British Education System?

I shall get the World Atlas out tonight, and between the three of us we will locate the home countries of their new classmates. We know where Australia and France are anyway.

The One Where Phase 1 Ends

My Goal can be summed up quite simply - to empty our house and ensure that the few things we want and need are moved to our new home in Shanghai.

This task has been on-going now for the last three months. When I first started with this at the beginning of December 2004, like Chandler Bing making it up the aisle, I had to take it one step at a time - a drawer here, a cupboard there - if I had stopped to consider the amount of work I had to do as a whole, the enormity of it would have simply been beyond comprehension.

Since I started, thanks to the close proximity of the tip (only 5 minutes by car) and the willingness of the people at work to devour my "For Sale" lists (currently on list 15, sent to approximately 50 people), I reckon I must have removed the equivalent of around 700 bin bags of stuff. For what felt like an eternity, there seemed to be a kind of magic about it - like one of those dolly bottles that starts off full of milk, tip it up and it's empty, put it the right way up again and hey presto - full to the top again. In as little as two hours, I could fill 10 black bin bags with 'rubbish', pile it up in the hall, and take it to the tip. The house would look no different. I would pile up enormous amounts of stuff in the living room, fill my car with it, and deliver it to work. The house would look no different.

But I'm finally seeing an end to all this.

I have 11 black bin bags of clothes in one bedroom which I am delivering tomorrow (at 6am) to J's school (Bags2School - they pay 20p per kg apparently). I have 12 black bin bags of rubbish in the hall (created since 4pm last Sunday when the tip closed) ready to be dumped on Saturday. I have a car full of toys from B & D's bedroom to take to work tomorrow. Once these three collections are disposed of, I can safely say I have done enough clearing of the decks, and it's time to move onto Phase 2 - PACKING.

To herald the beginning of Phase 2, TNT efficiently delivered 30 tea chests this afternoon and put them in the shed. I also received a large, thick white A4 envelope containing two bundles of forms to fill in (one set for Air, one set for Sea) from the removal people.

I think I need to start thinking like Chandler again.

Ahead of their Time

The Visa application is well under way, the School have emailed with D and J's class lists, S is busy booking flights. Even though things are clearly moving with an efficiency beyond belief, I was still surprised by the phone call I received on my mobile at 9.35 this morning.

"Mrs C?"
"Yes?"
"It's the House Clearance people here."
"Oh, yes?"
(Confused silence at the other end)
"Are you somewhere else?"
(Confused silence at my end now)
"Er, well, I'm at work at the moment - is anything wrong?"
"I'm outside your house with a large van and two men."
I found this a bit strange.
"I see. Why are you outside my house with a large van and two men?"
"We've come to clear your house, Mrs C."
"Well, you're four weeks early. You're not supposed to be here until the 22nd March."

Hilarity and mirth abounded, as you can imagine. He finally agreed that since he was outside the house with a large van and two men anyway, he might as well take the broken Fruit Machine from out the back garden. At least his day wasn't completely wasted.

I hung up and tried to evisage what would have happened if I'd left a key with him for some reason. It doesn't bear thinking about.

The Piano

G was due to arrive at 6.00pm straight from work to collect the piano. I checked with B that he would be around to help load it into the car.

"Help him take the piano?" he replied. "I'm not going to help him, I'm going to hinder him." I understood how he felt - I was very fond of that piano too.

Nevertheless, half an hour later it was safely in G's spacious boot. There still seemed to me to be plenty of room in there - it was too good an opportunity to miss. I looked round the house to see what other large items he might be able to take with him, and suggested he might like to have a look at J's bike. This was duly removed from the greenhouse and inspected. After G had put the chain back on, J went for a last (and approximately third ever on that particular bike) ride round the block. J did not seem unduly concerned that her purple Beach Babe bike was being taken away, although D was now looking warily at G as if he were some bizarre reversal of Father Christmas.

G's final task was to take the tropical fish with him. J clung grimly to a plastic bag half filled with tank water, as G gamely attempted to catch the thrashing fish with a tiny blue net. After fifteen minutes, his total was three Neon Tetras, one Tiger Barb, and one very large, very indignant Angelfish. He called it a day.

B and I watched him drive off with his haul, his suit covered in fluff from the back of the piano, his shirt covered in oil from J's bike, and bits of slime from the fish tank stuck in his hair. Somehow I felt that we'd had the easy end of the deal after all.

Counting Down # 2

Tonight D is having a farewell party for his friends. This seems a little premature, given that we still have four weeks and five days to go, but D was adamant. His choice of party was a sleepover. While under normal circumstances, the prospect of seven thirteen-year-olds sleeping on the living room floor would have filled me with dread for weeks in advance (in fact, I think I would have refused point blank), I seem to have so much else going on in my head that I never gave the situation a second thought. Other that is than buying 4 litres of Pepsi and 24 bags of crisps in Morrisons last night.

The evening started innocently enough, the porch full of shoes, and the hall full of sleeping bags and rucksacks, the living room full of extremely large teenagers (was I that big when I was thirteen?) with everyone playing X-Box games. However, my suspicions were aroused when D came in to ask if he could have some money so he could go the the shop to buy me a Mother's Day present. Do I really look that stupid? In this age of Proof of ID, how do young teenagers manage to buy bottles of WKD?

I began to wish I had given a little more thought to this party, and abandoned the idea of retiring to my bedroom with a bottle of red wine and a DVD. I have decided instead that NOW is an excellent time to pack my Royal Doulton ladies and Wedgwood glassware that that I have so recklessly left in the living room.

Only 14 hours until they all go home.

Welcome to my world

In four weeks and six days time, I will be starting a new life in Shanghai. While I didn't start this blog in time to capture all the will-we-get-there/won't-we-get-there events over the last 4 months, I can at least write now with (almost) complete certainty that yes, we will get there!

I have decided to start with a list of things that I expect I will miss when I get there. Obviously, I also need to have a list of things that I don't expect to miss. I will try to remember to go through this list in three months time...it should be an interesting exercise.

What I don't think I'll miss:

Getting up at 4.50am to go to work
The cat
National Insurance and other rip-off taxes
Television
Spending 2.5 hours every day on the M6 in the dark/wind/rain/roadworks
The nanny state
Waiting 9 months for summer and summer not arriving
Filling the car with petrol
Cleaning out the hamster
Phone calls from people who start by assuring me they're not selling anything
Sell-by dates

What I expect I will miss:

The Trafford Centre
Doing a Function Point count on a nice HLFD
Waking up in a tent on a hot August morning
Photo shoots for Matalan
Looking through the Next directory
Walking into any shop and finding clothes that fit me
Alta Rica coffee
Getting water out of a tap
Central Heating
Waterstones
My car
Reliable internet connections
My tumble drier
Phoning up for an Indian to be delivered
The Daily Mail on a Saturday

I was discussing my impending career break with M, she felt it was a good idea "in case you find you just don't like living there".

For whatever reason, this was not a possibility that had ever entered my head. I put the idea to S, who has of course effectively been living there for the last six months. He looked genuinely mystified before replying, "What is there not to like?".

I shall soon find out!