Things are moving forward slowly but surely on the boat front. We've got all the cash together, which is sitting in my bank account. Unfortunately when I tried to transfer the money to the Seller yesterday, I was informed that suspicious foreigners like me need to show their passports before being allowed to spend that much money at once. I know that this has some nominal justification to do with money laundering, but it's a pain in the ass nonetheless - how seeing my dog-eared passport is going to prevent money laundering, I really don't know. And then of course in my rush for the train this morning I completely forgot my passport, so it will have to wait until tomorrow anyway.
Tomorrow is a big day - we sign our mooring lease (or, I'll sign for both of us as Triton has a parents' evening at school), and pay our first month's mooring fee, pooled utilities fees and the 3% commission to the pier. They tried to characterize this as a "re-registration" charge for the lease but since we are signing a new lease (and it's not for a lease of property on land) there's no registration needed at the Land Registry, which is what a fee like that would usually go towards. From what the Seller has told me the pier might need some extra ready cash to finish up a few construction projects - here's hoping they don't involve more ugly floating blocks of flats like the one that has ruined our view from the stern of the Charles William (we've dubbed it the Death Star). It's a shame as it really lowers the tone of the pier to have an ugly thing like that wallowing off the end, but there's nothing we can do about it so we might as well learn to live with it (for now). I'll put a picture up if there's enough light tomorrow evening.
