Murphy’s Law and a Crazy Week

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Have you heard of Murphy’s Law, “if anything can go wrong it will”. Well I sure have and this week has ironically felt a little like that. In fact as we move closer to our goal of migrating to New Zealand, things are starting to go right but also wrong and it has been a tad stressful.

pickfords cargo from england to new zealand

Focus on the Positive

One thing I have learnt over the past seven years is to focus on the positive and not the negative, so I will begin by sharing 5 positives for this week. I’ll then share the crazy things that have happened and have a big old laugh because it’s all I can do. I certainly can’t cry!

So this week we managed to complete the following:

  • We finished packing our whole house and Pickfords have taken a full container of our belongings which is now in transit to New Zealand. That was one stressful hurdle which took months to prepare and now the hard part is over. I am so pleased, we can now focus on cleaning up the home and removing everything that is left over.
  • We cancelled our TV licence and sent back the Sky Box. That is a positive. One less bill to worry about and the reality is we don’t have time for TV right now.
  • I have a friend who I was able to spend time with, under covid rules, and it just cheered me up so much.
  • We sold our lawn mower and the wardrobe and shelves.
  • We were able to donate food to a few families in need and the local food bank.

Anything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong

Now I will share the things that went wrong this week which stressed me out. It has seriously been the most stressful week in years but I am glad it is over.

Congestion at the Ports

Due to the pandemic, there is congestion at the ports in Auckland New Zealand, this means the shipping company was given a hefty congestion bill which was passed onto us, for £590. Just what we needed. We paid the fee as we needed to ship our belongings and honestly we didn’t have much choice. On the up side, they rang up three days later and said the fee had been reduced to £390 so we got a £200 refund!

pickfords uk to nz

Getting Knocked Out With a Block of Wood

Whilst the packing was going on at our house, I was sitting on the floor sorting through a suitcase, trying to downsize the weight when a large piece of bed fell over and hit me in the head. Being someone with adrenal insufficiency, my body can’t take sudden stress and so I collapsed on the spot and we had to give me emergency medication to help me cope with the added stress. If my body produced cortisol, it would have been okay but I do not make that hormone and so It made me ill for the rest of the day.

The Kitchen Flooded

When John unattached the washing machine, he placed a stop tap on the pipe but there was damage on the pipe and so the kitchen began to flood quickly. Water went everywhere and John had to turn the water off and rush off to Wicks for something to stop the leak. It took two hours to sort but I was low in cortisol due to my head being knocked and one of the symptoms included puking and the runs – and with no water to flush this away, it was not very pleasent.

Caspers Flight Had to Be Cancelled

We have spent almost a year preparing our Bichon Frise Casper for his trip to New Zealand and it included permits, quarantine, flight bookings and hundreds of pounds worth of treatments, vaccines and blood tests. In fact it cost around £4000 pounds so far and today we had a stressful phone call.

The Vet had made a mistake. One of the treatments Casper needed for his flight next week was missed out. It was a genuine error but the consequences are massive. We had to argue on the phone with the vets and discuss things with passports for pets for around 3 hours. I was told to ring back Monday morning but if we left things till Monday, we would have to start the whole pet process again and have to pay out so much money.

casper the bichon frise dog

Eventually after much talking and a number of stressful calls and emails, we managed to speak to the Vet who made the mistake. She agreed to treat Casper the same night, as an emergency case (for free) to ensure he had the treatment which was missed.

As Casper was able to get treated, he can still fly out to New Zealand as his permit which we applied for is for ten days. If we had waited until Monday we would have had to start again. You can imagine the pressure we were under.

The Flight with Singapore airlines had to be cancelled and we have to pay a rebooking fee on Monday. Hopefully we can get him on the next flight which is one week later. I rang New Zealand hoping to switch the quarantine dates and not get a huge fee for this. Luckily they have not got many dogs flying into New Zealand and they agreed to change Capser’s quarantine for free.

The only issue is our plans for taking Casper to London for his flight are interrupted. They cut into the dates we are supposed to be doing other things like handing back the keys on our home, dropping off the car to the car dealers and so forth. I have to change around five appointments due to this one error made by the Vet.

It was upsetting and stressful but finally after five hours I sorted most things and with only a few hundred extra to pay for changing dates. Still money is money, yet it could have been way worse I guess.

COVID Testing Rules

The airport rules changed two weeks ago and so we had to book private Covid tests in order to leave the country and go to New Zealand. That’s another £300 but we managed to book the tests for the day before we fly. This means we needed to change where we were sleeping and the date the taxi drives us to Manchester airport… Again…. more changes…but luckily no additional costs.

suitcases

John’s Residency

So we got an email saying John’s New Zealand Residency was approved, but then we got an email a few days later saying there was a problem. As John’s wife I have to sponsor my husband to become a resident and when the forms were signed and witnessed, it wasn’t done correctly. Therefore we were asked to redo the forms. This involved spending a day trying to find a lawyer or notary public in Lancashire who could witness me sign a form during lock down.

We found someone after a morning of rejection but it was not cheap, another £80. We sent off the forms and then found out that this Notary Public had ticked the wrong box. We are waiting to hear back. We won’t be able to do the forms a third time in the UK as we have no printer or scanner and I am shielding, so we may end up having to sort this out once in New Zealand.

The final issue was my divorce. After approving John’s residency, we were then asked for evidence of my divorce the day before Pickfords came and it was not fun going through boxes searching for this one document but we eventually found it thank goodness!

More Things Going Wrong

In our efforts to move to New Zealand which is home for me, we have had so many hurdles and mountains to climb. It has been far from easy. In fact it’s been incredibly difficult but I am not one to give up or give in. I’ll keep on pushing, planning and doing all I can to get us to NZ, the whole family and our belongings and when we are finally over there and out of quarantine, we can start the next uphill battle which will be getting the correct health support and settling down to a new way of life.

It’s been a crazy week, an expensive week and one that has been very testing but we got through and we will get through the rest of the things which are about to happen because moving overseas is not a breeze, it’s flipping hard work!

Angela

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2 Comments

  1. Oh my!!!! What a horrendously stressful week!!!! I’m looking forward to following you on your journey back home.

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