The Exodus (Part 4)

“Here it comes,” shouted Mike down the stairs, as he viewed the removals lorry pulling up outside his house, from his vantage point of his bedroom window.

They had been up north for four weeks since leaving the Isle of Wight the last time, and in that period they had been extremely busy. They had crammed in four weddings, three joint leaving do’s, two gigs, numerous leaving drinks with numerous different people, a recording studio session, and the packing of their entire possessions into boxes.

The friends, acquaintances and hangers on that they had said goodbye to reached into the hundreds and the response from them all was overwhelming. Mike and Claire had not appreciated how much people loved them, and how many lives they had touched along the way, and now that it was coming to an end there were a number of emotional moments. However, they had observed that the other people were commonly more emotional and upset than they were, and this was put down to a theory of Mike’s, that the good gentleman will not mind being stated in this journal as he is a subscribing member.

‘Life is about moving. One must move from one place to another, one must meet different people, one must busy themselves with different activities, one must in general experience new stimuli in order to grow and develop and truly live a full life. Each time you try something different it will always feel uncomfortable at first because humans inherently feel comfortable with what they know. This is the defence mechanism that we are born with and the wall that must be overcome in order for people to live the fullest of lives.

When a person tries something different their focus is on the destination, their energy is concentrated on achieving something good, and this generates an amount of excitement and enthusiasm. When they say goodbye to someone from their existing life, that person holds a certain amount of envy because someone else is being brave and making a change, but also the sadness comes from that person concentrating on the emptiness that will be caused by someone leaving their life, as opposed to the excitement being felt by the leaver.’

Anyway… let us continue with the main plot.

The main nub of this initial prose is to put across to the reader that Mike and Claire were extremely busy in the month between leaving the Isle of Wight and then having to return to the Isle of Wight.

Mike finished work a week before they left, and so Claire was charged with completing most of the early packing, which of course the honourable lady carried out with minimal fuss and efficient delivery. They then both concentrated on the completion of the task in the last week together. To paint a picture that would provide the witness with a sense of scale of the packing mentioned, it could be said that they had enough boxes to build a replica ‘Wall’ that Pink Floyd used in their presentation of ‘The Wall’ when performed live in London when the album was released. They could have built a copy of the Berlin Wall if East Berlin and West Berlin were the size of two Penalty Areas. I think you will have the picture now, needless to say that they filled a big lorry with their contents.

And it is with the lorry appearing that we re-join our intrepid travellers. It was around 3 o’clock when Mike had shouted downstairs, and by six o’clock the removals men, of which there were two, had closed the lorry for the day and made their beds within it. They then spent the night parked outside Mike and Claire’s house, sleeping in relative luxury in some built in beds in the cab.

Mike and Claire’s evening was somewhat different to this. Up until eight o’clock everything was fine, and then Sophie, their daughter, chose to violently vomit all over herself, her toys and her blanket. It would have been just one of those things if the washing machine hadn’t been packed by then, and then throughout the night Mike and Claire were on an all-night vigil as Sophie could not settle and then had a seizure at four o’clock in the morning. They all slept on the living room floor as all of the beds had been packed, and a scene less like Trainspotting had never been seen before.

When the removals men knocked on the door at eight o’clock the next morning, Mike and Claire had slept for roughly two hours each. They then had to muster enough energy to continue to pack the rest of their belongings into the lorry, and also once the lorry had departed, they then had to clean the house from top to bottom in order to leave it in a desirable state for their successors into 439 Manchester Rd. This would have been achieved with less effort if Claire had then not caught the bug that Sophie had, and was then also laid out on some bags in the now empty lounge, in a scene compared to the fateful end of Lord Admiral Nelson.

Through grit and determination, and the help of one Mother-in-Law, they managed to vacate the property by four o’clock and make the long drive down to Southampton, made longer by the lack of sleep and sickness that followed them like the Grim Reaper. As Mike laid his head upon the pillow that evening he reflected on the past 48 hours, and considered that all in all it had been an incredible trial, but one that they had ridden through and now they were surely on the downhill finale.

The foursome had become a five, with a tribal elder joining their party, as they sat on the ferry the next morning. The tribal elder with all of their wisdom and generosity had supplied Mike with a bacon sandwich which he was now tucking into, in this hour of respite before the next onslaught began. For once they were off the boat he knew that they would then have to empty the contents of the lorry, which took them about eight hours to load in the first place.

After collecting the keys from the estate agent and signing the necessary papers, and more importantly paying the first six month’s rent, they then hot footed round to their new abode to remind themselves of exactly what they had done. They weren’t disappointed. The house seemed bigger than they remembered and the sea views were better than they remembered, and this encouraged them to get settled in as quickly as possible so that they could enjoy living there as soon as possible.

All of the boxes and furniture were off loaded in five hours, which was slightly quicker than the time it had taken to get them on in the first place, but the reason for this was the state that they left each of the rooms in. This of course was not the removal men’s fault, but there were boxes piled high everywhere you could see, and the eventual clearing of these boxes took the next week to finally get through.

The exodus from the North was complete. The Isle of Wight was now their home, and a list of endless opportunity waits to be seized. This is being written from an attic room whilst gazing through the window at the English Channel, and watching boats travel to and fro in the background. This is the dream that I’m now living, and it’s now up to us to take as much of it as we want. 

The Exodus (Part 3)

The Holley family endured the next few days of their busman’s holiday much in the same vein that they had survived the first day. They viewed another three houses and ruled out another two houses due them being situated in the completely wrong places, and by the end of this they had finally come to a conclusion. The Victorian-semi that they had viewed on the first day was the choice that they had opted for and they made their way to the estate agents in Newport to sign the necessary paperwork and make it official.

They had heard in the week of another family that were relocating from Jersey, and had proved to be their nemesis on another property, and they were concerned that this could happen again if they didn’t act quickly. So, this was seen to be very much the final act.

“What’s this admin charge for?” asked Mike, dressed in a casual yet smart shirt and jeans combo, the type that he assumed yachters and entrepreneurs would carry off.

“That’s for us to complete any contracts, and file documents, and liaise between yourselves and the landlord etcetera,” replied the estate agent quickly.

“What, £200?”

“Yes, Mr Holley, it’s quite a normal rate.”

“Oh, just seems a little high that’s all,” resigns Mike raising his eyebrows and looking across at his wife, who reciprocates the look with a bit more anger included.

Claire was an estate agent for what seems like about three years, I am sure that the said good lady will confirm that this is incorrect, but for the sake of this journal and my recollection of my past, three years seems about right. Throughout this period Claire would single-handedly dispel any myth that estate agents were money grabbing, lying, vindictive, double faced arseholes, and actually carried through a crusade of honesty, integrity and reason. This was still her assumption of this profession as she ventured in to the house selling and renting process.

This is why every act that an estate agent completed that was against this moral code went like an arrow straight to her conscience. At the beginning this was met by confusion and disorientation, but as the process wore on the arrows seared through her soul, so that every lie crippled her roots and every made up statement was like an earthquake to her foundations. This was just the first of these statements in the next couple of days.

As Mike, Claire and the kids arrived back at the holiday chalet, where they were residing for the week, they were in high spirits and jubilant. Mike even found time to play football outside with Dylan and some neighbouring children. Everyone was having a blast and the scene of family bliss had been restored. This lasted an hour, and like a cloud sailing across the sun on a summer’s day, Claire received an email from the estate agent that was handling the sale of their house in Stockport.

“The absolute wannnnnnnnnnners,” was the first Mike heard of it, as Claire shouted and then supressed a certain swear word.

“What’s up my beautiful princess? What could possibly have spoilt your pleasant mood as we sit in the metaphorical rose garden?” asked Mike curiously.

“That t%@t of a damp specialist has filed his report and stated that the whole house is damp and it’ll cost two grand to sort it out.”

“What?”

“I went round the house with Steve and his damp meter and the only bits were in two alcoves and Steve had quoted a few hundred quid. I never liked that bloke when he came round, he had a shifty look. And he was the one that when asked what it was like, he didn’t tell me because ‘I wasn’t his client’.”

“Right, well, all we have to do is get Steve’s quote and counter it with that. Have we got Steve’s yet?”

“No, but we should. He’s hopeless with getting paperwork in.”

“Let’s tell our estate agent that we’ve got another report that is more realistic before we let the vendors know.”

“Too late, they’ve already sent this to the vendors and now nobhead wants two grand off the price.”

“Well, he’s not having it.”

“Let’s just tell them we’re taking it off the market and see what they do.”

“But, we can’t afford to do that. If we lose this buyer we’ll never get another one in time for when we move, and the amount of money that it’ll cost us if we end up renting ours up north will be worse than just making sure that this sale goes through. Ring the estate agent back and tell him that we’re going to submit another report because we don’t believe this one.”

Half an hour later once Claire’s face had returned to a normal shade for the second time, the new villain was the estate agent rather than the damp specialist. It had turned out that the estate agent was a friend of the damp specialist, and an argument had ensued where Claire’s stance that the damp guy was full of shit had been countered by the estate agent defending an upstanding member of his profession. A conclusion to this was that the estate agent was all for knocking two grand off the price because his motive of shifting our house off his books sooner rather than later was much more attractive than a long drawn out sale where he would actually have to earn his commission by doing something.  Obviously Claire disagreed with this and made sure that he knew that.

As the evening came around all they could do was wait for their builder to send in the report and see how that would influence things. This would unlikely happen until the week after, and so the attention came back on to the present location.

Mike began to look at Rightmove to remind himself of the property that they had just committed to for the next six months of their life. As he was scrolling through the properties in the relevant category, he suddenly noticed a house that he had not seen before. It was exactly in the area that he wanted to be in, with the right number of bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs. After raising his surprise to Claire they then deduced that this had been added today.

What was more surprising to the honest duo was the realisation that the letting agent concerned had confirmed that very day that there were no new properties to view. This conundrum then led to speculation through the night regarding the Machiavellian schemes of the said agents.

The morning brought with it a new day and a new hope. The sun came up to greet them over the wooden chalet balcony as it blasted through the missing balustrade. The warmth met their faces and the confidence surged back in to Mike’s veins.

“Hello, is Sam there?” Mike said as he rang the letting agent that they had committed the next six months to the day before. 

“Sam speaking, can I help?”

“Oh, hi Sam, just want to let you know that we may have possibly found a new property to view this morning, and I just wanted to ask you to put our contract on ice for a few hours, and then I’ll ring you to let you know one way or another. Is that alright?”

“Yeah, that’s absolutely fine, but you will still be liable for the admin charge.”

“What do you mean I’ll still be liable? We left your office at 4:30 yesterday afternoon and it’s now 8:30 the next morning. You can’t have processed anything yet?”

“I’m afraid it’s written in the contract that you are liable for this sum if you pull out of the agreement.”

“Well, that’s fair, isn’t it?” said Mike with the largest amount of sarcasm he could muster.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, right. Well I’ll ring you later this morning,” and Mike pressed the ‘End Call’ button, disgruntled.

But, not a man that is easily perturbed by one phone call on such a glorious morning, the family all piled into the Holley-mobile and sped off in search of the other letting agent before anyone else could nip in beforehand. The car screeched to a halt outside the office at 8:58am and Claire went up to the door that was locked, and was then kindly opened by an office incumbent.

The next minute Claire was back in the car and the red faced warrior was back. It had turned out that the property had been let already, but they were given the number of the owner of the property next door to the one they had seen. Information had been exchanged that divulged that the two properties had indeed been built by the same person but now one of them was owned by another party. This other party had let his out, whereas the initial owner was still holding on for a sale. It was worth a shot.

Unfortunately, the other property owner still wanted to sell his outright, so he rejected their offer, but was also surprised to hear that the other property had already been let, as the new owner of this property did not know yet. This again led to their suspicions of the letting agent and a conspiracy of an inside job, but surely life was too short for all of this doubt. Claire and Mike agreed that they were better out of this system as early as possible and went back to the original letting agent and confirmed that the Victorian-semi was still the choice of champions, and that they very much still wanted to live there for the next six months of their life, which could actually prove to be their last days.

The Holley-trolley then rolled out into the distance in search of a park and a beach, and a few hours to enjoy as a family before having to get back on the ferry and return to the North of England, for the last time in a long time.