Today started
ridiculously early. We have to get a letter from our UK motor
insurers sent to Canada so that we can get our insurance for the
motor-home. Until we know that that is sorted we will not release
the money to buy it. If we can, we want to get it all sorted by
2:30pm UK time which is 9:30am in this part of Canada, as that will
then enable us to pick up the motor-home tomorrow. We know its tight
because of the time difference but we decided to give it a go
anyway.
That
meant an alarm call at 3.30am to get on the phone to our insurers. Bearing in mind they are a major clearing bank and their
insurance is underwritten by one of the UK's main insurers the
process was painful. Their staff are not allowed to make outbound
calls or to send email or to send faxes to non UK numbers!! Added to
that they have a multi level auto attendant and if you cannot
remember which menu options you selected first time round you have
no chance of getting back to the same person the next time you call.
Olly
did his best and said that in three to five days he could
send us a letter. I explained that we needed the letter today and
that he could not send it to us as we have no address in Canada. He
cannot send a fax to the broker in Canada so were were stumped until
Stef remembered his efax number. All seemed OK but then he remembered
that he cannot then forward his efaxes on to someone else unless
they also have the software to read them. At 3:30 in the morning we
were not at our sharpest thinking of other options. Thoughts went to
home and solution. My sister Beccie gets to work early and works as
a fund manager so an international fax should not be a problem. As
expected, she saved the day but was probably a bit stunned to get a
very groggy call from me that early.
The
real hassle started when I tried to get back to Olly to ask him to
send the fax to Beccie too. The first chap at the insurers was curt and
could not put me through to customer services, could not tell me
what number to call but eventually put me through. The next lady was
also abrupt and could not understand my surprise that she could not
find my motor policy. She finally said she was home insurance not
motor. Aaarrrggghhh!!
Eventually, getting Olly, he had already done the letter for us and
sending it to Beccie was no problem. This second call took sixteen
minutes and, for the first time in two months, made me think about
work. Having been responsible for a call centre at work I know what
an impossible task they have to know the answers to all the
questions people ask them. Even so I think my insurers put on a
pretty poor show. I did not get back to sleep until about 5:00am.
My
new Panama hat
The
alarm went off again at 8:00. We want to make sure the insurance
letter has come through and been accepted by the Canadian insurers
in time to send the money through before the 9:30am Canadian time
cut off. Our hotel has no internet access, printer or fax for us to
use so at 9:00 we were waiting for the internet "cafe" to open - its
is a coffee shop with a PC in the corner. Fortunately it is run by
North Hatley's IT consultant and he let us use his office to print
and fax our letter to the bank. The insurance has been confirmed
but not in time to do the money transfer until tomorrow. It has been
along and tortuous process but it looks like we will have our motor-home on Friday.
We
decided to head back to Magog today and to spend the time at the
lake. The town is busy but we got space at a local B&B. We have the
"suite", really designed as a family room it has a double bedroom,
lounge with a sofa bed and a big bathroom with a claw foot bath. The
owners are from Provence and are tiny. The lady hardly speaks and
the man is like a munchkin but they are friendly enough and the room
is comfy and clean - and it is hot!!
Going
via a depanneur (convenience store) to pick up bits for a picnic
lunch, we headed round the bay to the beach at the other side. Here
we spent a couple of hours just sitting and gazing out at the water.
We were meant to be catching up on diaries (woefully behind again!)
but both kept staring into space. Our uninterrupted lake view quickly
got added colour - three local elderly ladies decided to set up camp
in front of us with their very hot little terrier dog. The family to
our right also encroached Stef's personal space as they moved to
follow the sun.
Bob at
work had bought me an inflatable beach ball globe as a leaving
pressie. We blew it up and reminisced about the place we have
been to. I have bought a marker pen so we can track our progress
across the globe as we go and we update out trail. It started to
cloud over and started to get very muggy. There were distant
rumbles of thunder. We decided to head back into town and go for the
boat cruise on the lake - abandoned when they wanted $57 (almost
£30) for the privilege.
Informative laundromat
As we
are both running short of clean clothes I persuaded Stef that as I
had seen a launderette in town, perhaps we should go and do our
washing rather than wasting the afternoon. We played dumb at the B&B
asking if there was a launderette, hoping they would say we could
use their washing machine. They did not! The launderette took us
back to student days. Its amazing how complex a simple thing
like washing clothes becomes when you use unfamiliar machines. I
have not seen a top loading washing machine since we went to
California in 2000, and stayed at beach apartments in Pajaro Dunes.
Most of our clothes are
synthetic, wickables (quick drying) and we are wary about putting
them in a tumble dryer. Before we had gone to the launderette I had
done a quick reccie of our suite to assess whether I would be able
to hang it all up to dry. We have clothes draped absolutely
everywhere drying. I just hope they all dry in time for us to pack
them in the morning.
We
headed our for dinner about an hour or so later. As we sat on a
terrace outside there were streaks of lightening off into the
distance behind the clouds. The lightening got brighter and came
closer and the pub moved everyone inside. For the next ten minutes
we watched really heavy rain pour down outside. Lightening flashes
continued for a while after the rain had stopped. The storm had not
completely cleared the air. It was still muggy when we went for a post dinner stroll by the lake. Stef's testing of the water was
short lived. It was nice and warm but the mossies were out in force.
We ambled along the boat jetty and up a small observation tower,
built in memory of the lakes equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster.
The lights of the town twinkled below us.
On our
way back to our hotel we stopped at the pub we ate at two nights ago
for a night cap. We had a friendly welcome from the waitress,
unfortunately not matched by the flavour of the beer and wine. It was
after midnight by the time we left.
