Erieversible

Today was a chill-out day.  Roads closed for the final day of TT 2008 and all preparations for handing over the keys to the house on Monday are ahead of schedule.  So, a day of peace and quiet (except for the motorbike engines in the distance).

Having had such tremendous luck with flights recently (see earlier posts about Euromanx going bust) I have booked flights off the island for both Wednesday and Thursday next week.  I hope to use one of them.  As with all budget airlines the seat price continues to rise as the plane fills up and rather than buy a very expensive ticket at the last minute, or even risk the flight filling up, I’ve bought two cheap tickets now with the expectation that at least one will be thrown away.  Ridiculous, but that approach should end up being cheaper.  Let’s hope my luck with flights changes!

One small hassle today is that the payment to the removal firm for shipping our effects to the US has not gone through.  Apparently due to the value of the transaction the firm has to use their approval code, and they have omitted to do so.  It would be nice to think the belongings will turn up in the US without having paid, but…  I’ll sort that out on Monday.

No post today as it is now being diverted, so if there’s any bad news in the mail it will have to keep for a couple of weeks.  As I said, a chill-out day.

Today I paid the invoice for shipping the personal affects we are keeping.  They are now officially on their way to Erie.  Okay, they are still in the warehouse and will be for a week or two but the process is rolling.  Definitely no going back for those items now.  It turns out that transatlantic shipping isn’t too expensive - compared to the marine insurance.  Of the total bill one third of the cost was the insurance, which is optional, but when you are shipping all the stuff that turns a house into a home it would be terrible to lose it all with no recompense.

Not much further progress at the Isle of Man end today as it was a TT race day and the roads were closed for much of the day, restricting travel somewhat.  An early run to the tip cleared out more rubbish from the house, and arrangements have been made to sell the second car.  Even though it was only small progress today, I’m now one day closer to being able to travel to Erie.

Meanwhile the credit card company is quite happy with me living anywhere in the world, as long as the address on the account is a UK address.  That isn’t an option, so our main UK credit card will have to close.  And that’s another nuisance - why doesn’t credit history, or credit rating, work on a global basis?  I currently work for a bank (RBS) that likes to remind everybody all the time that it is a “global” bank, yet moving within that global environment is full of disconnections as far as the financial world is concerned.  In the UK we call that ’spin’.