Catch up

Since the end of exams two weeks ago I've been in the position of having nothing to do until tomorrow when the results come out (when there'll probably be a short flurry of activity and then, ten minutes later, I'll have nothing to do until October).

The weekend before last, Kevin came with me to look at the lovely flat which I'd seen the previous week. We ooohed and aaahed and made other suitable encouraging noises, and the estate agent gave us a couple of application forms to fill out, should we want to.

I went to stay with Kevin all of last week, which was lovely. Apart from watching the original Star Wars trilogy after having finally seen Sith at the weekend, a lot of the week was spent running around trying to sort out application forms though — since Kevin and I were in Essex, and things like my proofs of ID (passport) and address were in Surrey with my parents, who also (as my guarantors) had to fill out a form, which was in Essex, and had to wing its way to the letting agents in Coventry. Fun fun fun.

We managed to get almost everything sorted (as much as we were able to) and decided to drive back up to university on Saturday, pop into the agents in the afternoon, and make a formal application. We got up earlier than usual and ran around trying to do lots of last-minute things before setting off for the 3-hour drive during the hottest portion of the day, on one of the hottest days of the year so far.

When we finally got back to my halls of residence at around 2:30pm, Kevin phoned the agents to ask about suitable parking spaces round their way, and discovered that they'd closed at 1:30pm. Damn. After all the rushing around that day, and being worried all week that someone else would make an application first, it seemed doubly galling. I asked Kevin to stay until Monday so that we could go in to the agents together. And so we did.

Sunday passed without incident, but on Monday morning everything else seemed to be going wrong. I visited the Academic Office first thing to collect an official letter confirming my student status (for the application), which I had 'ordered' last Wednesday through a website form. The system apparently hadn't worked, they couldn't find the email, so please fill out this form and come back tomorrow. Yay, another thing we don't have to show the letting agents.

Even with directions from the AA, we had a little bit of trouble and panic finding our way around Coventry's ringroad system, not helped by the fact that Kevin's gearbox had started playing up in the heat; putting it into fifth gear was tricky, and first gear was unattainable, leaving him having to start in second at the many traffic lights we encountered.

When we got to the agents they did all but "tsk tsk" us, telling us that they needed more details and documents than either a) was noted on the application form, or b) they'd told us when I phoned to check last week. They also told us that the flat we wanted had a viewing booked for that day, and if those people decided to make an application for it, obviously there'd be nothing they could do about it.

All of this meant one of two things to my sometimes superstitious brain: 1) all the things going wrong so far were a bad sign, and we wouldn't get the flat, or 2) we were going to get the flat, and the badness was just balancing karma pre-compensating for it.

At the moment I'm thinking it's #2 (hopefully), based purely on the fact that the agents called today to say they've received most of the extra documentation that's been posted/faxed to them, and that the people who booked the viewing for Monday had never turned up.

My fingers are still crossed.