Moving day.\u00a0 Finally.\u00a0 I thought the day would never come.\u00a0 Managed not to give birth over shabbat so was around to supervise the removal men.<\/p>\n
Having promised to give us a heads up [which they didn’t] we find them at our new house, waiting outside impatiently.\u00a0 You would have thought the sight of a 9 month pregnant woman hoofing it up a hill in 31 degree heat would elicit a little sympathy but no, they announced they had been”waiting for us.”\u00a0 Why does everyone in this country make you feel like they are doing you a favour, even when they are being paid to work for you?\u00a0<\/p>\n
So they start unpacking the truck and thankfully we had colour labelled our boxes so we could direct the operation.\u00a0 Unfortunately they weren’t brilliant at listening, so I had to repeat instructions like a nagging wife.\u00a0 They also dumped our boxes with a little more force than necessary.\u00a0 At one point\u00a0I definitely heard a smash,\u00a0 I checked and sure enough it was a box of ornaments.\u00a0 After that I stopped looking.\u00a0 I decided it was best not to know.\u00a0 They kept asking me for cold water, even though I explained we had no fridge yet\u00a0and that\u00a0some bright spark\u00a0had dumped boxes directly\u00a0in front of the kitchen sink.\u00a0 “Couldn’t you go to the makolet?” they asked me.\u00a0\u00a0“Er, its a 15 minute walk, I’m\u00a09 months pregnant and its a bit hot outside.\u00a0 So\u00a0 no, not happening.”\u00a0\u00a0They suggested I send my husband who said not bloody likely…in the end our lovely new ethiopian neighbour came to the rescue.\u00a0 God bless him.<\/p>\n
\u00a0What really annoyed me was there were 2\u00a0boys bringing stuff in to the house, and another bloke called Chaim\u00a0in charge of shlepping some of it upsetairs.\u00a0\u00a0 Every so often the pile for upstairs would build up and I would ask them to move it so\u00a0we would have somewhere to put the new stuff.\u00a0 “Chaim, Chaim – he will sort it out they tell me”.\u00a0 Er yes, but Chaim is on his phone isn”t he? Or whinging about something.\u00a0 Or standing around\u00a0scratching his balls.\u00a0\u00a0Whatever he was doing it wasn’t shlepping.\u00a0 In fact Chaim was incredibly slow and complained about the heat, lack of cold drinks and then\u00a0claimed there was no way he could get our sofa bed up the winding staircase, despite it somehow making it down our narrow stairwell in London.\u00a0 Then the other boys start saying it will never fit and get me to sign a disclaimer that if anything happens to it, then it’s my problem.\u00a0 As its a fairly robust secondhand sofabed, I wasn’t too bothered, so I wiped the guys sweat off the form and signed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I have faith in you.” I told them.\u00a0 “I think you can do it. \u00a0Just use your brains.”<\/p>\n
It took all 4 of them [2 to shlepp the thing and the other 2 to stand around and watch] but they managed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watching them engage in the backbreaking task of shlepping our electric sofas and chest of drawers upstairs, [I was quite fascinated by how they use their backs to bear loads] I actually felt a bit sorry for them until it dawned on me that at the end of the day they stop <\/em>shlepping and go to sleep.\u00a0 I still have a watermelon that comes with me absolutely\u00a0everywhere I go.\u00a0 Can you imagine if men had to have babies? Get over it boys.<\/p>\n The\u00a0crowning moment was at the end, when the chap in charge of unloading the lorry [looked like one of those dodgy fellows you see on Tel Aviv beach in charge of the outdoor bar tables] asked me to sign a load of forms, and then informed me that I could tip the boys, if I wanted.\u00a0 This was after I had filled out an evaluation form [in front of them] saying how they had done, with the 2 younger goodlooking ones smiling at me hopefully.\u00a0 I told them they could have been more careful with our stuff, explaining my entire wordly possesions were in these boxes.\u00a0 I sent for the husband to explain why we wouldn’t be tipping them, who then wimped out and told them he would send something to their head office.\u00a0 Well, I suppose\u00a0he might have done if they hadn’t ripped a hole in our divan and had a better attitude.<\/p>\n Jewish boys just aren’t cut out for manual labour, as the old saying goes.\u00a0 And people say we built the pyramids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moving day.\u00a0 Finally.\u00a0 I thought the day would never come.\u00a0 Managed not to give birth over shabbat so was around to supervise the removal men. Having promised to give us a heads up [which they didn’t] we find them at our new house, waiting outside impatiently.\u00a0 You would have thought the sight of a 9 … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aliyah"],"yoast_head":"\n