When someone says, ‘Let’s go down town now and get some money out,’ and you’re looking at the weather and thinking, ‘Well, there’s a break in the rain and I can see a bit of blue sky,’ and you say, ‘Let’s go.’ Don’t.
A quick bit of exercise, a walk down the Kali Strata and then back up again for exercise, turned into a couple of hours sheltering at Pacho’s and a taxi, followed by drinks at the Sunrise and dinner at Georgio’s. (Two plates of spaghetti with mince, some cheese balls, two jugs of wine and a glass for Lefteris, all for just €20.00.) That’s what I call my sort of exercise.
But all was not lost, and the treat of going out to eat paid off as we had the chance to chat with our current landlord about how we should leave the house. Now then, I know you are following our house moving progress avidly, and I know that a lot of folk are genuinely interested (as opposed to what, James? Being falsely interested? Pretending to read this blog?) in how the process of moving from and/or to a Symi house actually works. Well, with the on-going assistance of The Symi Estate Agent it’s going very smoothly – the fantastic Dora has now arranged for us to sign the contract next week. We are packing up in earnest now…
But back to leaving this house. When we moved in we paid a deposit and in theory you get this back when you move out, minus any bills that need paying to cover the cost of repairs your landlord might have to carry out after you, etc. In our case that’s going to be a complete renovation of the house, but as that’s not our fault, we’d expect to get our deposit back. Only we know that it doesn’t actually work like that in practice; and there will be some electricity and water bills coming in after we’ve gone so he can use it for that. And the rent’s not gone up in 11 years so we’re happy about that too.
We’re also happy about the fact that he’s said that we can throw everything, leave nothing and not do any repairs, no need to fill holes in walls made by shelves, paint walls or clear the garden, or anything. We can even take the furniture that came with the house, not that we want to. He double-iterated that we don’t need to do any painting (‘Why? I am going to rip it all out.’) and we don’t need to fill any cracks, and we can dump the furniture for him. Well, we may leave it behind just in case. And I am putting this here so the if you hear that we left the house in a mess you will know that that is what we arranged to do. We even told him how black the kitchen was getting due to the damp and mould, and the hall, and the bathroom, and the bedroom where the window and shutters need fixing, and how the front and back doors don’t fit any more… And so on.
So, the way ahead is paved for signing contracts next week, picking up the keys on 16th February, and then using that week to move house. Neil is, as I write, packing the kitchen things not currently needed, into his smalls not currently needed and then into boxes – many currently needed.
And on that note (the boxes, not Neil’s smalls) if anyone else would like to volunteer to help move said boxes (and smalls) on the weekend of 21st and 22nd of February, please feel free to drop me a line.
