And Then There Were Five

We are now all officially here! The house is full now that the final two have arrived and finally we can get everything sorted. Today has been a particularly busy day what with chasing bits of paper and trying to make sure that everything is sorted. As expected, we still have a broken vacuum cleaner, no one has phoned re my deposit cheque and the letting agency is being generally awkward about doing anything.

One of my housemates went down this morning to collect his key only to find that there was no one there to give it to him (other than a receptionist who "didn't have the authority" to sign out keys). This means that he now has to go back later on this afternoon to collect it so that he doesn't have to rely on someone being in the house in order to get in - which seems like a fairly reasonable request in my opinion. I phoned them this morning re my deposit cheque and was told that he would have to check with his colleague before he could let me have it, this being the colleague that I spoke to on Friday by the way. As usual, he said he would ring me back when I could collect it and as usual, I heard nothing however, luckily they gave it to my house mate when he went back to collect his key so at least I have it now. They also promised to personally pick up the vacuum cleaner if it hadn't been picked up by the end of tomorrow.

A reminder for the gas bill arrived on the doorstep this morning, much to my surprise because as far as I was aware, we had set up a direct debit to cover the gas and electric and money had been taken from my account in respect of this. I had arranged this over the phone on the day that I first set foot in the house - having learned from last year when we were fined for late payment (owing to the fact that no one was living in the property at the time). After checking online, it turns out that the direct debit only covers electricity and that gas had been given a separate account. I subsequently set up the direct debit and was horrified to find out that they are going to charge us £90 a month! Hastily, I phoned the company in question and asked them to review it but of course as I had set it up only minutes before hand, it hadn't 'filtered' down onto their systems yet and I now have to wait a week before phoning back.

The next thing on the agenda for the day was an eye test. Another shock followed shortly after my arrival at the opticians at being charged nearly £20 for the test - something I expected to be included in my contact lens care package. Then as my prescription had changed, I was stung for another £70 for new lenses. That's without a new frame - just changing the lenses in the existing one. I was horrified, especially as up until now I have been young enough to have and NHS voucher to cover the cost of my everything. Now I know how the rest of you feel!

Whilst I was in town, I had decided to buy a new duvet. The mattress in this new house is the most uncomfortable mattress I have ever had the displeasure of sleeping on. I woke up the other morning with spring marks in my back and decided that something had to be done. After looking online for mattress toppers, I quickly decided that they are ridiculously expensive and decided that a thick duvet would probably do just as good a job. I will let you know the outcome tomorrow.

The rest of the jobs that were on my to-do list have failed to be crossed off. I'm not allowed to collect my Spanish results from last semester until next week because they are "too busy" despite sitting around drinking tea when I saw them. I have also had to leave my module add/drop form with my department over night to be signed so I will then have to take that to the other department tomorrow when I collect my glasses.

We decided to sell the tickets that we'd bought for the Union event tonight as it has sold out and the new arrivals are unable to get tickets. Instead we are going to Leadmill in town which is cheap and cheerful and therefore a good time should be had by all.

No-one could be bothered to cook tonight and we have decided to treat ourselves to a Chinese. The local one is shut on Mondays so we made our way into Crookes and came across Little China. I decided on a red Thai pork curry (I know its not Chinese but it sounded nice!) and as an added bonus, the woman in front gave us her prawn crackers as she "doesn't eat them".