Day 80

Monday May 10

I’m up at 6am today. No idea why, just felt like it. So there I am at the kitchen table looking at what cars are on the market. Cris, who leaves for work early every morning, comes down and is surprised to see me already there as he prepares to have breakfast. ‘What are you doing up this early?’ he asks. ‘Looking at what cars we could buy,’ I reply. ‘You want to buy a car?’ He sounds shocked although I remind him, ‘Yeah, we’re hoping to move to Ireland tomorrow.’ He kind of knew this, but is a bit shocked to hear it put in so many words. ‘I’ve been thinking of selling my car,’ he says. Now it’s my turn to be shocked. ‘Would you be interested?’ Hell yes. I know his car very well and me and Maja were both in it when the three of us drove in it for that trip to Crystal Palace a few weeks ago. And I know it very well. I’ve been on many drives with Cris for many reasons. It’s huge. A Mazda Sport 5. A seven seater in which all the back seats can be laid totally flat. Essentially a minivan and way bigger than anything we were thinking of. I’m almost scared to ask how much and can’t believe it when he tells me. Well within budget. Ridiculously within budget. Oh wow. I’ll have to check with Maja of course, but yes. Just yes. This is the car we decided we couldn’t ask to use to move all our stuff out of Sarah’s to here. Now we could be looking at owning it and then using it to move everything we have from here to Ireland. In a bit of a state of disbelief, I go outside just to have a look at it again from a totally different perspective. This could be ours. Really ours. While I’m out there I see Luca who’s also having an early start preparing his restaurant for the day. He comes and says hello and we have a chat about the car and our imminent move to Ireland. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘So there’s a room coming up in your house?’ Yep. One of the small upstairs ones. Luca knows the house. He’s taken rooms in it before for workers of his restaurant. He says he’s now looking for a room again for a returning worker. A guy called Mike who we know well in the house. He lived with us before, was a great housemate and friend, and is apparently now thinking of coming back to work in the restaurant again. And just as Luca is thinking where he could house him, along comes a room in the very same house. This would work out very well for us; the move has come a bit sudden so we’re not leaving with the requisite month’s notice, meaning the rent really should be paid for this coming month even though we won’t be there, and there is every intention of honouring this. But if we are able to replace ourselves in the room almost immediately, this empty expense disappears. So it’s not even 7am yet and it looks like I’ve solved two of our big issues – a car big enough to move in and very within budget, and a new tenant to take over from us and save the next month’s rent from having to be paid.

I go back inside and ask Cris if I can borrow the car key for a few moments. No problem. With that, I go upstairs and into the room where Maja is sleeping. I gently wake her up and wave the key and fob in her face. She shakes the blurriness from her eyes and what is obviously a car key comes into focus. ‘What the hell is that?’ she asks. ‘That’s not a car key?’ ‘Yep, but not any car key. This is Cris’ car key. He’s said we can have it for a ridiculous price.’ Maja shoots up in disbelief and takes the key in her hand, regarding it in wonder like a precious, fragile treasure. She looks up at me again in something like shock. ‘And there’s more,’ I say. ‘Looks like we’ve got the room sorted as well.’

She says I should go downstairs right now and confirm the sale of the car with Cris. With that I say, ‘We’ve started the move haven’t we?’ 

‘Yes.’

While I was up very early, Maja also has to be up early enough herself for a phone call to check on a date for wrist surgery. This gets booked for June 3, three weeks and three days from today. This means that we now have to be in Sweden a few days before that, so three weeks from today. Which means we definitely have to have a house in Ireland sorted by then and already be moved there so that we can book a return flight to Sweden from Ireland. Oh this would normally be a huge ask, and it really is a huge ask, but mentally, and in real terms, we are already very much on it.

There’s a formality for the car before it can be sold, which is that Cris has to take it for an MOT. He says he can organise this for tomorrow, adding, ‘My worst fear is that I sell you this car without checking and it breaks down on you on the motorway. No way. No way. My reputation is to do things in the right way and of course I want to do that for you.’ This all means that we probably won’t be able to leave until Wednesday now, but yes, he’s obviously right. So now we almost have a car, which means we can make a solid(ish) plan to leave. Just to remind you, it is now Monday. Have I mentioned we still don’t have a house to move to?

Day 81

Tuesday May 11

Mark:

Insurance. Damn. I’d forgotten about insurance for the car. With things developing until close of office hours yesterday, this morning is the first chance we get to have a look at this. Maja begins the process and all of a sudden it looks like being a real thing and it starts to look unrealistic to think we could be leaving tomorrow. 

The insurance becomes a bit of a complicated, involved thing and we’re starting to think we might have to leave the car in Northern Ireland and rely on rentals for the Republic, but Maja discovers a Green Card system that we could apply for which would at least get us on the ground so to speak. Calling around and being recommended from one company to another and researching options becomes a full time project. 

While Maja is on this, I go into total denial of all possibilities of failure or setback and get on with the business of packing. I mean, there’s no point being ready to go and then looking around at all the stuff we have to organise. Might as well get as much in hand as we can. It’s a bit of a fraught day as Maja goes through the contortions of trying to secure insurance and Cris is having the car checked out. Somehow, semi miraculously really, by 5pm, the MOT and insurance stars have aligned and we have a car ready to go and legal for Maja to drive in Ireland. We’re not covered for the UK in terms of any pickup or roadside assistance, but we’ll have it here for just one day for the drive to Liverpool for the ferry to Ireland, so what’s the point?

With all that sorted, we’re truly on it now as Maja goes ahead and books the ferry from Liverpool to Belfast for 10pm tomorrow. She says she’s going to book a cabin so that we’ll at least be able to have a shower on the boat. Afterall, once we’re into unknown territory in Ireland there’s no telling when we’ll be able to have a shower again. Or a comfortable bed. We really are throwing ourselves out into the world here.

Now I have to get on with trying to make sure that doesn’t go as wild and feral as it could. I call the people with the house in Mayo to tell them we’ll be there Thursday morning. So with that commitment to being there, could they please hold it for us now? I speak to the husband/ owner’s father this time who tells me it’s gone. Balls. So now we really are going to Ireland with nowhere to live. We think about getting a tent and just camping where we can, and looking at houses that way. We discuss not getting a house at all this side of Sweden and just camping until then, and then resuming the search when we get back. We really don’t know. This is starting to look like a real adventure with so much unknown as we prepare to step into it. As we’re starting to organise the car for ourselves – cleaning it and such as Cris used it for work in his job in construction – Maja insists I call the house again, this time trying to speak to the lady who seems to know a bit more. She suspects the husband just told me it was gone out of assumption. OK. She was right. I speak to the lady again who says it is still available but that a lot of people are seeing it, but yeah, we can see if we can get there on Thursday and throw our hats in. So much for holding it. This really is starting to feel like a lottery. 

We have a kind airy dreamy delusional not-really-thought-it-through thought of arriving in Ireland on Thursday and then doing nothing but sleeping for two days. But the more likely reality is we’ll arrive in Thursday morning, rush to see the house sometime early afternoon, then have to wait a few days to see if we have it, in the meantime sleeping somewhere we have no idea of in a tent we might just be able to buy on the way. Or a B&B somewhere. Oh. Did I mention, Ireland’s still in Covid induced semi lockdown mode so no hope of getting a B&B there. Probably a tent somewhere then. Or, and we’re quite happy with this idea, if the initial house attempt isn’t successful, we could drive back to Northern Ireland, book into some kind of cheap hotel there and use that as a base from which to go into Ireland during the days to look at places that we’ve secured a viewing for. Oh, there’s seat of the pants, and there’s…this. As you can see, we’re making this all up as we go and we really have no idea. Absolutely none at all. And the clock’s ticking. Our ferry to nowhere leaves in less than 24 hours.