Friday, February 10, 2006

Who you gonna call?

It’s been very handy having Garry at home these last few weeks. He’s been able to sort out all kinds of household challenges as we continue establishing our own Swiss Cottage. Every day we find the most simple of tasks taking on a life of their own. Take for example, organising home contents insurance. What started as a ten minute task, has taken a week to finally sort out.

We can’t just call the insurance company and make it happen. The first problem we encounter is simply, “who’s the best company to use?” Being new to the UK, we don’t know who the local players are, or which have a good reputation. As a result, we end up doing a lot of research and asking work colleagues a lot of questions.

The research all takes time and drags out the entire process. Then, as you start preparing an application, you encounter interesting questions like, “what’s the age of your building?” or “are your door locks compliant to British Standard XYZ?” All of which requires more research.

If you’re curious, the age of our building is somewhere between 1881 and 1884.

No comments: