An Aerial View

We moved into our new house this morning. It took four trips in the car to move everything and everyone to the new house. Phoebe was most concerned that I'd left her car seat out while I was shifting all the suitcases and the bunk beds, but I promised I'd take her when there was nothing else left, which seemed to calm her down.

I was busy assembling the first of the bunk beds which had been pulled to bits in the middle of a horrendous downpour and thus needed a little concentration in the absence of any instructions, so I hadn't noticed my mobile ringing. The outlet place had been trying to confirm that we were ready for our delivery. Bring it on down I said when I rang them back. There was too much stuff for one truck, so they had to make two trips. Everything arrived and was carried in - the double bed being the most challenging, since the 4 bedrooms are arranged two either side of a narrow corridor and manoeuvring the bed through the door required it to be swung into the bathroom first.

Fortunately the fridge did indeed fit into the space in the kitchen, but it is a little bit too deep - not much but it's a couple of inches proud of where it ought to be. The major disappointment however was the TV. It arrived without an aerial lead, which necessitated a trip out to find one. We tried the Mount first, but this area seems devoid of any electrical type shop. We ended up at Bayfair, and were heading for Farmers, when we bumped into one of the beach party expats from Tuesday. She pointed us across the road to Dick Smith who were able to supply us with the required lead (same as in the UK which is annoying because I have several) for the princely sum of $13. I also picked up a cheap ($20) telephone as there wasn't one in the house.

There was a fruit and veg shop adjacent, so Di scored a massive sack of spuds for $3 and also picked up some mirror dory which was very pleasant with home made oven chips and home made batter (Craig putting his chefing skills to work!)

Having plugged the aerial into the wall socket, and then tried the other three wall sockets, there was a distinct lack of anything looking like a signal. Doing the auto tune thingy found just one analogue station, which looked like a snow storm and without sound. A quick look around the house did not reveal anything looking like an aerial, and as the house is a bungalow, the potential hiding places are limited. There is a monstrous satellite dish lurking on the roof, and its cable pokes out next to the aerial point. I'm wondering if the aerial was removed in favour of the satellite carbuncle. Our rental agent didn't know either. There is a small loft hatch in the garage which may prove worthy of further examination, however as I have neither a torch or a ladder, operations were brought to a premature end.

On a more positive note, Telecom have indeed connected our phone and it is operational for incoming and outgoing calls. Moreover, broadband is working! It wasn't supposed to be enabled until tomorrow. It's only working at a pedestrian 18K/S, which looks very much like the throttled speed they put you on when you've used up your allowance but as it's not supposed to be on at all, then I'm not minded to complain. Tomorrow may be a different story.