Wednesday 6th February 2008

I think all the things for moving are proving just as difficult in English as they did in Flemish. The office to register the dented car has no parking spaces. It is the car that needs registering as English not the dent, I’m not sure what nationality the dent claims to be – Italian car, Belgian registration, happened in England, Polish driver! It also had some unhelpful people who simply gave my mistress a form that had no explanation of what went where and asked for lots of technical information. I was quite proud of her in the end. She refused to budge from the seat she was in until someone helped her. I don’t think the system is designed for ordinary people as it covered everything from whether the vehicle was articulated, to which she nearly put that the Polish driver hadn’t hit it quite that hard, to the weight of its trailer. My mistress said the other office she went to for our other car had done it all for her to which the woman said “They couldn’t have done. We aren’t allowed to do it.” The moral of this story is that people in Northampton are much more helpful that the ones in Stockton on Tees – particularly within this particular government department!

Getting a broadband line connection is not proving any easier. Despite the phone line being in, they can’t tell us whether it is ok for broadband for another 48 hours. However the man said that all lines support broadband now. I’m only a dog but I can spot a flaw in the logic. If all lines support broadband and we have a line then why do we have to wait to be told whether it will work? Then there will be 5 working days for it to be connected. Why couldn’t we just order it in advance? Is it really that difficult?