Move complete, second time within 6 months.

A pretty bouquet from our Estate Agent David Cliff

We took some time out today from unpacking, and took the girls to the local park and explored some footpaths local to our house.  The snow arrived last night in a big flurry and laid about 2 inches thick on the ground.  Knowing that the snow clearance in the UK no way matches the Swiss standard, I know I could be in for an interesting drive/ice skate to school tomorrow, as the snow was melting this afternoon and creating pools of water on the roads.  The scenery was beautiful out,  and even Laura could not resist making a snowman and creating a snow angel, you are never to old to have a little fun in the snow.  It did make me laugh, I do feel when good snowman snow has fallen, all the dads come out to show their prowess in snow modelling skill.  At the park, one dad was chamfering the edges of his childs figure with a plastic snow shovel.  One dad produced a large snow dog complete with tail, whilst another created what can only be described as a snowman inspired by an Easter Island figure….!  Not sure whether or not that was intentional..

I love taking pictures in the snow, it has a magical quality to it, but can be quite tricky to get good results, so I had to play around with the white balance a little.  The snow lay on these red berries, they looked like they had been a left over from Christmas.  

We also did a little exploring down what must be an ancient drovers lane to the south of Wokingham.  We emerged at Grays Pick Your Own fruit and vegetable farm.  It is certainly nice to have countryside within walking distance of our new home, and to be 5 minutes away from town.  We will have to wait and see what happens with this countryside, as they have been planning for years a Southern relief road for Wokingham, and a mini town to be developed to satisfy the government building targets for the South East, a great loss if that section of green belt is swallowed up by homogenous estate housing.

The temperatures here are nowhere near as cold as in Switzerland.  I took a sneek peek back at Reinach, BL just to see how cold it was.  Wow! -15 Degrees Celsius.  It’s been over 0 to about +2 degrees C. It is no wonder that our Swiss house was so well insulated.  That is one thing I really missed initially when I came back to the UK.  Our rental house was as cold as sin, but then it was no real surprise when even though the cavity wall had been filled, albeit retrospectively, the insulation in the roof was just a layer of dust really.  Thankfully our new home even though it was built 18 years ago, has a decent layer of insulation in the loft.  I have also started to lag some of the pipes (all done as standard in our Swiss house).  The boiler room in our new Swiss home emitted very little heat.  The hot water tank did not feel even remotely hot from the outside.  The pipes, the outside of the house was externally insulated with thick polystyrene blocks, the floors thermally insulated and underfloor heated.  The windows protected by shuttering and thick glazed composite frames.  Energy wise, it was a real low user.  The UK is lagging behind in this respect really, and these aspects are now only just starting to become important here, particularly as energy bills have risen sharply over the last 5 years.  Now having to energy rate your home at the point of sale is making some people realise how leaky their homes are.  We are currently losing 20% of our heat straight out the window.  It does not help however, that our vendor took all the curtain and track fixings off every single window, and there is a 6-8 week lead time for our new curtains and blinds!

I think that the novelty of packing the contents of our house into cardboard boxes and then emptying some or all of their contents into a new abode has finally worn off.  I felt there was sufficient time in the run up for the Swiss to UK move to plan that everything run with Swiss efficiency and Swiss timing.  I knew that everything had to be wrapped up and officially stamped before leaving, so our departure would be as smooth as possible.  Our move on the 25^th-26^th January we felt suddenly crept up on us, and suddenly found ourselves a few days prior scrabbling around sorting mail redirections and changing our addresses.

We decided to reluctantly go with a local mover to save a bit of money, and boy you get what you pay for.  I am not sure our crew really liked each other that much.  Instead, the 2 days was spent with them tolerating each other.  I tried to sweeten them up with Hot cross buns, fried egg rolls, bacon and sausages rolls, but little seemed to make them happier.  Our international movers loved my food, and they were a good laugh too, making a stressful event go a little easier on the nerves.

A week on, and Steve set the challenge for us to empty all the local move boxes. We were pretty amazed to learn they will charge 5 GBP a box if we retain any, no wonder they are able to keep their quotes so low. We retained some of the international move boxes, as these weren’t unpacked for 6 months.  Luckily these boxes are white and our local move boxes brown, so it makes for an easy ID. I am now facing the demons of all the things that I failed to get rid of in Switzerland.  However, I do have a much wider range of charity shops here in the UK to send it all to!  My wardrobe was something I had been meaning to spring clean for some time, it’s one of those jobs that I would do anything to avoid.  I still have stuff I wore years ago.  I admit, I do have too much sentimental value attached to things.  I need more will power to throw it out.  I did do this with some cheap skirts I bought yonks ago for teaching in.  Now I have not been in the classroom for 8 years, so I thought it was finally time to let them go.  I did feel strangely better for loading it all into a charity bag, taking it to Cancer research in town before I could change my mind and think I could wear it again.

I do also admit to being a terrible food hoarder too.  After seeing how much food came out of the rental place (and the kitchen was not that big either) I was embarrassed.  However, I do have a lot of 'from scratch' ingredients and herbs for cooking.  I did vow that I would reduce the amount of excess food in the house, after about 10 or so big removal boxes came into the new kitchen, and I had to figure how an earth I was going to cram it all into the limited storage space I now have……!

Off to unpack a few more boxes no doubt...and hoping to find yet more miscellaneous missing items, and today found that the desk has been put back together with fewer screws that it was originally.  Same goes for the cupboards, let's just hope it won't all fall apart...

The calm before the storm....

This week is relatively calm, then week starting 23rd January is when you just don't want to look at the calendar because so much is written on it.  This week, all being well we get the keys to our new home in central Wokingham.  It has seemed a long time coming since exchange of contracts back in November and the offer made in September.

The process of buying a house in the UK seems very slow compared to the speed of contract writing in Switzerland.  In fact, I doubt we would have bought a house in Switzerland had we had the amount of documentation we have just waded through for this sale.  Although the Swiss have restrictions for those on some residential permits, as an EU citizen, on a C-permit, buying a house for sole use was a fairly straight forward process.  Even though I was working in a different language, I managed to understand and translate all of the communal rules and regulations, and understand the contract that we signed..  Here in the UK we have come across way more paperwork, and of course with 1 solicitor dealing with each house sale, this slows the process down.  Swiss house sales can be done through a private notary, however we found the public notary in the community in which the house was designated in Arlesheim very efficient.  The added bonus being that the land registry and the notaries are all under one roof, all the information just gets passed around the same building.  Within 4 weeks we had our Swiss sale contract complete.  Both parties meet and sign the same contract, rather then passing them backwards and forwards between solicitors that often happens here in the UK.  Then the searches with the Land Registry have to be done, and this may throw up small issues like extensions and conservatories that do not have planning permission.  In our case, the search showed that we may have some liability for Chancel repair of the local church, owing simply to the age of the land that the property sits on.  Before the summer, I had never even heard of this before.  It is best to be prepared for any liability by having an insurance policy.  This follows a case where a couple were asked to foot the bill for Chancel repairs to their local church.  These repairs totalled 1/4 million, then with legal costs of their fight ontop, the final costs were approaching 1/2 million.  It is fine in areas of land that have been well developed, like town centres, as the costs are split between the community, but in smaller settlements, a sizeable bill can land at your door and you have no choice but to pay it.  This is down to an archaic medieval law.  By 2013, all churches will have to register their interests, this could lead to a rash of claims in various communities for churches where the chancels are in poor state of repair.  It probably does not help that in many communities throughout the UK, the sizes of some church congregations are falling, and so the finances of some churches are being affected.

So, week after next for the second time in 6 months, we pack our belongings and get the house straight again.  We still have 2 rooms in a rental house that are full of packing boxes from our Swiss international move.  With such a short time lapsing, I still have not forgotten the mountain of stuff that greeted me in the kitchen once the crew had departed.  It took 3 days to get most it away.  I think its worst at the start when there is just so much of it lying everywhere, you don't know where to start.  As a reminder of just how bad it looked, I just had to take some pictures.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

I still remember a UK move that I did when Steve and I bought our first house together in Aylesbury.  We had been unpacking most of the day.  I recollected that the crew very helpfully said, would you like us to unpack your clothes?  We thought this was wonderful, so of course agreed.  We staggered upstairs at the end of a long and stressful day, and were about to collapse on our bed were it not for the pyramid of clothes resembling Mont Blanc that appeared before our eyes.  Thankfully, that night we had space on the guest bed.  Now after moving 3 times, since then, we say, 'No thanks, we'll unpack the clothes, please leave them in the boxes.'  At least that way we know what we are facing when we get to bed at night....


Once we have the new house in process, the handover of our rental property ensues.  We have to ensure that all the light bulbs are functioning, otherwise we get charged for the bulb and for contractor time to change it.  I suppose that is where the Swiss are quite sensible, when you rent, you are just supplied with the bare wires coming out the ceiling unless you arrange to buy the previous tenants lights.  This means no lights or bulbs to check.  We made the mistake of not buying the previous renters lights, forgetting that the ceilings are made of reinforced concrete, and a mighty drill of great power is required to get through that stuff.  It cost us the same price as the lights were worth to get them installed!
My UK checkout should hopefully be fairly stress-free as I have to supply the property back in a 'professionally cleaned' condition.  This helps me out, as it means I do not have 2 properties to clean simultaneously!  The house, the oven and carpets will all have to be done.  However, the prices are perhaps a little less than in Switzerland, I know some expat friends of who spent almost the same as their deposit to  ensure there were no deductions on handover.  I spent 3 days with my mum, and got about 180 CHF in deductions, mainly for picture hook holes in the wall, costed per hole and a dishwasher service.  In Switzerland, the tenants have to service the appliances before return, however in the UK, the landlord has to ensure they are in working order.

It will be nice once more to get our own space back....