Monday: bed delivery day. Today we should get our own bed (as opposed to the guest room bed that we’ve been using hitherto). Since the bed delivery men had my mobile phone number, I was tasked with waiting at home for the call announcing that they were on their way. Meantime Francine – yes, you guessed it – would go shopping again. This arrangement suited me fine; anything that got me a day without dragged around shops was fine by me.
Actually, I did have an early morning flirtation with the shops, to a local building supply hardware store called “Tot Util”, known affectionately as Totty’s. I was in search of sandpaper to smooth down my glued dead table, a protective sheet to stand the oak furniture pieces on whilst oiling them, some drill bits and a solution to my drawer cabinet’s problem of screw holes that are too big. I returned with a bag full of goodies from Totty’s whose assistant happily spoke enough English to be able to understand my needs and help me.
Francine hit the shops. Her only task that I was particularly interested in was her trip to Moraira to visit Telitec to see if we could arrange for some Internet access. Telitec offers a Pay-As-You-Go Wi-Fi service by radio dish, no landline required, that sounded ideal for occasional visitors to Spain. Phone ‘em up when you arrive at Alicante airport, or wherever, and get them to switch the service on. Tell ‘em when to stop it as you leave and just pay for when you’re here. 40€ for four weeks gets a 2Mb service, 50€ for four weeks gets a 4Mb service – both plus IVA [VAT], of course. The only alternative would be paying for a full 12 months which, whilst cheaper per month, would still mean paying for the whole year. The PAYG approach seemed most appropriate.
Francine returned with a booking on Wednesday morning for a site survey to make sure that a signal existed, plus a Spanish PAYG mobile telephone. also from Telitec. There were a few other items in her bag of goodies but they were incidental, a thermometer for the balcony, for example. Incidentally, today has been quite cool topping out at a disappointing 11°C. Spain, warm?
While Francine was out doing good works, I amused myself assembling the remaining four dining chairs. Two more cardboard boxes bit the dust. OI also opened the dining table’s extension leaf fully expecting it to be just a slab of oak that required no assembly. Wrong! There were three pieces of wood to screw to it. I duly screwed them to it and another cardboard box bit the dust. 3 more down, 4 to go.
Just as Francine was returning, my phone rang. It was the bed delivery men saying they’d be here in 30-40 minutes. Great! I sat with a beer and watched. Eventually, a white van dawdled along a narrow lane down in the valley and turned up a dirt track just before our development. It reversed back to the narrow lane and continued into our development. The white van disappeared from view but I then spotted the roof of the van between some houses getting closer. It didn’t seem to get any closer and I feared they’d stopped too soon, perhaps wondering where we were. Since Hobble-along Cassidy was incapacitated, Francine went down to show them where we actually were. She was gone a long time. I then saw the suspect white van exiting the development and turn towards Alcalalí. This was either the wrong van or the driver was completely confused. I jumped in the car to rescue Francine from climbing back up the countless steps.
A dark blue van appeared and headed for us. This van was definitely the correct van ‘cos we could see that it had “Bed Specialists” emblazoned across its side panels.It almost made it but, as I went out to greet it, it reverse into our parking area and used it to turn around rather than coming on in. It drove back down the hill and turned up the wrong road, a blind alley. I gave chase in the car, met them and beckoned them in. Finally, two guys delivered and built our new bed along with a very sexy headboard and the bedside cabinets which is what we really wanted. [The headboard and cabinets came as a discounted bulk purchase, ex-display, but we’d seen none better.] We have a bed and very splendid it looks, too. We’ll be trying it out tomorrow night. Too tired to change rooms tonight. 😉
I’m saving the last four cardboard boxes for Wednesday which is forecast to have horrendous rain all day long.
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