The most exciting thing we did today was a trip to Barclays Bank - woopy doo, how exciting - but it means hubby now has a bank account, and I managed to extract £300 from my Australian Mastercard and then deposit it into my Barclays account using the ATM machine inside the branch. It’s a bit scary putting a stack of notes in a machine and hoping like crazy it counts all the notes correctly. But it worked! Hooray... another hurdle jumped.
The second most exciting thing we did today was... the WASHING! It only took me a whole week to research how to do the washing in this hard London water!!!!!
What's Hard London Water, you ask? Well, it originates as lovely rain water that lands on the ground and then filters down through all the rocks and collects magnesium, calcium and salts on the way before being tapped for delivery to our homes. But magnesium and calcium are good for us, I hear you say. Yes, that's true, but not so good for appliances because the minerals stick to surfaces and become scale and white scum. It also makes lathering soap difficult so our skin, hair and clothing become affected. For example when I washed my hair for the first time, the shampoo didn't lather, and then because there was no lather it didn't rinse off. So now my hair is dirty + shampoo residue + minerals residue = disgustingly limp greasy hair. Gross! I'm absolutely NOT posting a photo of this.
^ Hubby now has a "legitimate" address and can open a bank account. Finally!
^ Checklist for the new laundry routine.