Old King Coal

There are some aspects of moving house that should be and are really simple. Getting the electricity account on in my name was simple. The gas was even more simple as all I have to do is give the final reading when I move out, and once that bill is paid, in the new house the gas will be free. Well until they actually supply gas to the village. Until then I need to use solid fuel, Coal or Wood.

The day that I went to sign the lease and get the keys, I stayed on the bus to the main habitation, a large village or small town. I am not sure how the locals would describe it, but its only a fifteen minute walk from my new habitation. However its where the community facilities are and while looking at what there was there, I noticed in two shops numbers for people supplying logs, so once there I will be placing an order. However, as the heating is an open fire with a back boiler for central heating and hot water, I also needed to get an order of coal. Now never having ordered coal before, I was a little lost about how much or how little I needed to get. But one of the two local coal merchants was very helpful and I will be getting just 100kg to start with. That's two sacks, and as half a tonne is twenty sacks I am glad that I did not need to buy in that volume just yet. So I need to go down on Friday to accept that delivery. That way I will have heating and hot water for when I move in.

However, of all the services that I will most need, was the most difficult to arrange, that of the telephone. I was after all just transferring my existing service to a new address. Oh no not to them, I was having to set up a new account, and I will be charged over one hundred pounds for the privilege of them allowing me to have a telephone. Not only that, but with my existing contract I get the Broadband as part of the package, not any more, I will now have to pay extra for this.

While in some ways I will end up with a better service an average speed of 6MBS, currently I am lucky to get 2MBS, I do feel rather cheated by the way that these costs and charges have been imposed upon me for something that is a necessity. Also it was ironic that it took over two hours to get them to fully explain how and why the charges were calculated. For a communications company, they don't like to communicate. Well not with their customers.

It was rather interesting to see that last night where I am moving to was minus four C. I will be taking the talking trees advice and moving the sofa by the fire and curling up with a close friend. When she comes up to visit that is.

Although I think I will avoid trying the head in the oven trick, unless I have icicles in the hair.