Turbulent times

It's been a shaky week here at The Hookery.  My landlord gave me notice last weekend and since then, I have alternated between fits of packing and organising, and sitting on the floor, head in hands, rocking slowly back and forth.  Even the cats look at me with a slight whiff of concern on their faces: 'Ooman is clearly coming apart at the seams like the last toy mouse she bought them from the vets.

Anyway, as the week has worn on, there's been a bit more packing and a bit less rocking and I think I'm coming to terms with the enormity of the task ahead.  It's just that things aren't quite going my way at the moment.  I went to view a property last night and as I was passing near to The Beloved's and a storage unit I already use, I thought I'd put my books and baking tins in storage and stop at The Beloved's for dinner.  Easy, yes?

No.

I hired a car to take stuff up to the storage unit.  Except when I got to the car hire, they didn't have the type of car I'd booked, so they offered me a bigger car.  Great.  An automatic.  Not great.  So they gave me a van.  All fine and dandy, but this took a bit of time to sort out.  

I got the van home then started to load it up.  It took me an hour.  By the time I'd got it all packed I was seriously behind.  Then I plugged the sat nav in.  It was in French.  I considered driving in French, then decided against it.  Finally worked out how to get it back into English and set off for Bletchley.  Immediately, sat nav told me to go down a wrong road.  I overrode satnav, but a bit later, in the horrors of Henly's Corner at just-after-rush hour, I decided to do as it said.  Error.  Sat nav took me down all the back roads.  It dawned on me that I wasn't going to get to the storage unit and on to the cottage in time for 8pm.  I decided to abort destination Bletchley and adopt destination Tilsworth.  

Arrived in Tilsworth at 19:57.  Met estate agent.  There are two one bed cottages to rent on the same road, estate agent had wrong set of keys.  I looked round the other cottage, decide it's miniature but adequate if the original cottage is not what I'm after.  Arranged to meet estate agent at 9am on Saturday to view original cottage.

Back in van, back to Bletchley.  Arrived after 8pm at storage unit.  Storage unit is 24hrs, but if you want access after 8pm, you have to tell them in advance.  This wasn't the deal when we first hired the unit and there has been no info to tell us of this change.  Can't get into storage unit.  Have 13 boxes of books and half a kitchen in a hire van and nowhere to put it.  Drove to The Beloved's.  Hauled everything up to second floor flat and collapsed.

Had dinner.  

Drove home.  Sat nav was clearly allergic to motorways as it kept telling me to do u-turns and take every exit on the M1 until I finally got fed up of it and turned it off.

I have clearly annoyed some malicious deity recently.  

Edit: in the midst of all this chaos, I have a number of crochet updates to share with you.  If only life would stop getting in the way...