One of those days!

I woke early this morning and decided to check my e-mail inbox before starting another hectic day. There was an e-mail from the UK, just a simple sentence that was to send us into total chaos.

It read 'Have you arranged a different collection date?'

This was from our Plumbers merchant in Sheffield who we are getting our shower doors and central heating system, boiler, radiators etc from - which should have been collected last Wednesday by a removals company. It had already been delayed from the week before when they had cancelled driving to the UK through Northern Spain because of the flooding caused by the torrential rains.

We have been trying to contact the removals people for the last few days to see when they would be arriving with it, but with no success. But at least we believed the heating system was on its way - so this e-mail was a major shock.

As soon as we could ring the UK, we did and confirmed our worst fears - they had not been to collect the stuff. Now, without this we will have not only no heating, although we do still have the electric oiled filled heaters we used last winter, so although expensive to run, we will not freeze - what we won't have is hot running water. In summer that would not be a problem, but the thought of cold showers now - is not appealing!

So, we needed a quick solution. Neil had previously talked with a company that does domesic sewage systems about shipping one to us in Spain and they had mentioned a company they used - Palletways - so it was worth a shot. I rang them as soon as they opened and sure enough, they could pick up in Sheffield and deliver to us here in Spain, to the door - no matter how remote. All it needed was for the whole lot to be loaded on a standard pallet, no more than 2m high. We rang the Plumbers merchant, and they said that it could be done - and so we set the wheels in motion. By 1pm this afternoon we received a very welcome phone call. They had just arrived to pick up our stuff and it would be on it's way to the Palletways hub in Birmingham. From there it gets sent to the hub in Madrid and from there delivered, by prior appointment, to us - possibly as early as Friday.

If only we'd known about this company 3 weeks ago, life would have been a lot less stressful.

We still don't know what has happened to our removal guys, who previously have been so reliable - but this also meant we couldn't rely on them turning up to move our furniture on Monday.

And so started the second panic of the day - can we move ourselves this weekend?