Well, last week was fun…
As you know, last Thursday, my van went ‘kaput’. On Friday I was meant to move my fridge/freezer and was let down by the removals boys: twice. Luck didn’t seem to be on my side.
But this week it got worse.
Over the weekend, I’d spoken to Vitor to see whether he could get the large van from his Brazilian mates. He’d spoken to them and they’d said ‘Yes!’.
It meant that we’d have to do some heavy lifting ourselves, but we would be able to get the large fridge/freezer from Fuseta to Olhao. Fantastic!
He said that he and Vitor No 2 would be with me at 8am on Monday morning.
At 8:14am my phone went. It was Vitor.
“We cannot have van. Brazilians need.”
Oh, bloody hell! Bollocks! and any other swear word you can think of…
Would I ever be able to get this bloody fridge/freezer to Olhao?!
For now, I had to forget it… I had other stuff to do. I had to keep moving forward.
So what other stuff did I have to do?
I had to collect a couple of shower screens from Leroy Merlin, and I’d borrowed a small van from my mate to do just this.
So I’d driven to Loule, and parked up at Leroy Merlin.
I’d queued up at the collection point down by the ‘construction’ department, handed over my documentation and the girl asked me to wait.
So I waited… and waited.
After about fifteen minutes, my phone went. It was a Lisbon number that I didn’t recognise.
Now normally I don’t answer phone numbers I don’t recognise. People can leave a message if they really want to get hold of me. But on this occasion, I had nothing better to do, so I answered it.
A lady spoke.
“Bom dia!” followed by lots of Portuguese.
“Desculpe, nao falo Portuguese, Ingles?”
“OK, no Problem. Mr Elliott?”
“Yes?”
“This is Leroy Merlin.”
Eh? I was standing in Leroy Merlin and Leroy Merlin were calling me – very strange…
“Sorry to tell you, but your items cannot be collected today. They are not ready. You can collect them on Friday.”
It was after midday on the day of collection, and they’d only just decided to phone me… great.
“Excuse me? Not ready? I’m here at Leroy Merlin in Loule waiting to pick them up. I won’t have a van on Friday. I have borrowed a van specifically to collect these things. I have a plumber waiting back at my house to install the items. And you call me now?!”
“I’m very sorry. If you want, you can cancel the order and go to Albufeira to collect the items yourself?”
WTF?
They’ve had the order for nearly three weeks, and she’s telling me that the items are sitting in Albufeira. Couldn’t Leroy Merlin have transferred them in the last 20-odd days?
I really wasn’t happy, but it was just the way that things were going for me right now.
I knew that I had no choice. I didn’t have time to go to Albufeira. I simply had to accept that I needed to return on Friday. I just hoped that my mate could lend me his van again.
What bollocks…
To make matters worse, there was now a queue at the collection point, and I needed to retrieve my documentation. Nobody would stand aside and the lady at the counter ignored me until it was my turn once again.
Twenty minutes later, I had the documentation in my grubby little hand.
As you might have guessed, I wasn’t happy.
But then matters took a turn for the worse – yes, things went downhill even further…
The sink that I’d purchased for the main bathroom had proved to be slightly too big, so I needed to return it.
I took it out of the back of the van, placed it on a trolley, took the lift from the car park to the shop floor and went to the ‘Returns’ counter.
There was no queue, which was a bonus.
The lady looked up.
“Bom dia.”
“Bom dia. Desculpe, nao falo Portuguese, Ingles?”
She looked doubtful.
“Pouco.” A little.
I somehow explained that I wanted to return the sink and the cabinet that came with it.
She looked at the trolley with the two boxes on it. She looked at the paperwork. She looked at the two boxes.
“One minute. I phone.”
She punched in the numbers and was soon chatting away.
She ended the call and said:
“Yes, you can return, but only if you have three boxes.”
“Three boxes?”
“Yes, the item has three boxes. Needs a mirror.”
Oh shit… the mirror. I’d forgotten all about that. I’d purchased an all-in-one solution (the sink, the cabinet and the mirror) and I’d completely forgotten about the mirror.
And to make matters worse, Vitor had fitted the mirror in my house in Fuseta, using ‘special silicon’ as he’d called it.
“Very good, very strong, can even use underwater!” he’d said.
Oh bollocks – my chances of returning the sink and getting my money back were now permanently stuck to the wall of my bathroom in Fuseta.
As I’ve said before, it never rains but it pours.
I thanked the lady for her time and dejectedly took the two boxes back to the van.
It really hadn’t been a good day.
I just hoped that things would get better.
They didn’t.
When I got back to Olhao, Vitor told me:
“Carlos no here.” Carlos is the painter.
“Why isn’t he here?”
“He is in the place for mad people, near the prison, in Faro.”
WTF? (again!)
“He is in an asylum?”
“He is in the place for mad people. He went mad over the weekend.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. You really couldn’t make it up…
And then Vitor made my day.
“But the big van? We get it at 2pm!”
Oh yes! Be thankful for small mercies! Maybe we could yet make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!
The only problem was that I’d made plans to pick up a hire car at 2pm. Sue and Lexi were coming the next day. Last time they’d come, it had taken us 90 minutes to pick the car up – not great after a flight. So this time I’d agreed to pick the car up the day before.
Bollocks – I should know by now that you can’t make any plans in Portugal, at least none that you want to keep. Simply just let things flow… the reason I love the place.
I explained my predicament to Vitor, and told him that I needed to go to the airport.
“No, you go tomorrow!”
“Yes, I go tomorrow, but today I go too – to collect a hire car.”
This seemed to confuse him, and I’m not surprised. But he accepted it graciously.
“No problem! Me and Vitor will move fridge!”
And so finally, we had a plan…