Sunday was a day spent mostly at home with a poorly boy, and when we eventually attempted a walk up the coast path, it became apparent that Ned's tummy wasn't as settled as we hoped, so we cut our losses, came home and crossed our fingers that all would be well for Monday's visit to register at the tax office, but more importantly Tuesday's Even More Epic Drive to Norway for Easter.
I think we were feeling fairly confident that Ned would be okay, until 5am on Monday morning when he came into our room looking for some water. Quick bedding and pj change, which Maisie slept through, and he was back asleep.
We decided the best course of action was to let Ned sleep whilst we pottered about, and about 2pm, leaving lots of time before meeting our relocation lady who would be assisting us at the tax office, Ned threw up again, this time all over himself, Jim, the wooden floor, door and glass tv stand.
A frantic 30 minutes of tidying, cleaning, washing on and clothing changes and we were off. I think it's fair to say that Jim and I were a little bit fraught by this point; we needed to go to the tax office, our previous visit had been called off due to incompetence (not ours you'll be pleased to know), and in order to be able to get a bank account we have to be registered, so for every day we're delayed it means we have to keep using our UK bank accounts. Ned was clearly poorly and should we even be taking him? I will point out that we had quite a lot of stuff with us just in case he was ill again.
So this is the part where it all went a little bit wrong 😖
We found a car park, I got a ticket. I put the ticket in the van, only the passenger door was also open thus causing a through draft which sucked the parking ticket down between the dashboard and the windscreen, trapping it with no way of reaching said ticket (well only if you remove the windscreen and that seemed a little extreme!). So with various angry shouty words from Jim ringing in my ears, I went back to get another ticket, handed it to Jim.
And the van locked itself.
With the keys inside.
And my keys were at home.
Not in my bag.
But at home, in the locked house to which we had no way of gaining entry.
I can laugh now, and indeed there is a little smile playing on my lips as I write this, but you can imagine there wasn't much laughter going on at the time.
The kids and I left Jim shouting at the van and trying desperately to see if the window would unwind, whilst thinking it was probably a good job I'd 2 hours of parking rather than 1, but it seemed prudent to keep that comment to myself 😉
We headed off to the tax office in stony silence, each of us, I think, trying to be grown up and not get all shouty.
The only logical solution was to call the breakdown people and see if they could come and sort us, but before we could do this, the lady from the relocation agency arrived, and after a flurry of 'hello, how nice to meet you's', Jim explained that we weren't really having the best of days, but at least we were here.
Once we'd explained what was going in, her response was perfect. We had an actual responsible grown up adult with us, who said, oh I'll just call your landlady she'll have left a spare key with someone.
Now why the hell hadn't we thought of that? 🤔
Whilst we completed various bits of paperwork, she called the owner, found out who had the spare key, yes they were home and expecting us, she would take Maisie and I home to collect the keys, then bring us back to rejoin Ned and Jim with the van.
It's clearly quite simple, but we just couldn't see it at the time
So once our applications were in, she did indeed drive Maisie and I home to collect the keys and drive us back again.
My keys now live in my bag. Like they're supposed too.
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