So here we are, housed, fed, clean and jet lagged. With the exception of the jet-lag, the necessities of life were covered. This left quite a bit of time to explore our neighbourhood, our new city and our situation. Perhaps a bit too much time.

Our first Sunday in London, we acted like the gringo tourists and headed for Trafalgar Square. We had seen on the news that there was a Dutch inventor was demonstrating his self propelled walking machines. He had designed has creations on either a Commodore 64 or Atari 2000 computer and constructed them out of the cheapest material available, namely PVC conduit. They had been tested against each other with the successful ideas being transplanted to improve less successful. He referred to it as "evolution". I would call it trial-and-error engineering. Very complex and clever.

There is a scene in the second Austin Powers movie in which Mike Myers as the eponymous hero gets a golf cart stuck in a corridor while attempting a "K" turn. He can go about two inches forward and backward, colliding with the wall each time. Bear this in mind as I tell you about our first week in London.

We had arrived with a little money to get us started. It had been brought over in the form of two bank drafts drawn on a British bank. It seemed to be a reasonable way to transport our funds. The thinking being that an account could be opened close to us at any High Street Bank.

It turns out that you only need two things to open a bank account according to the Bank of England rules. 1) Proof of Identification. Valid passport or driving licence is entirely sufficient.
2) Proof of Residence in England. Utility bill, bank statement mailed to your home address.

Chicken? Egg? We may never know which came first. Not important. Address? Bank account? Well this is a little less theoretical and more thorny practical problem. As you can plainly discern, without the bank account there would be no residence with which to open a bank account. The mind does not necessarily boggle, but it goes round and around. A lot.

We had rented our short-stay accommodation for two weeks and it was a very acceptable temporary living arrangement. Key word = temporary. There did not appear to be a solution. The nice people in the bank were very sympathetic. "You understand, Mr and Mrs Wingate, we must be wary of people trying to launder money." I'd be lucky if I could launder a sock at that point.

This stumbling block - no, brick wall - left Joanne and I very frustrated. We also had, as I said, quite a bit of free time. In that free time we walked around from bank to bank trying to open an account with no luck. We were working on the old try-to-catch-them-napping theory. The rest of our plentiful free time we discussed our situation and tried to find a solution. Those were some very circular conversations.

When you have something that is weighing on you it's bad enough. When you have LOTS of time to sit around and think about the problem, the stress increases logarithmically. There's no apparent solution so you and the problem just sit around staring at each other. Sometimes all night long. Not fun.

After a week of this we decided the solution was to just go and get what you would call an apartment. Here it is called a flat. If you live in Oakville, what we got is called a closet. We walked into a letting agent on the High Street near where we were staying and told them we were new in town and needed to rent a place to live.

A letting agent is like a real estate agent, but they concentrate on rental accommodation. London has more letting agent's offices than Hamilton has Tim Hortons. Must be a lucrative business.

The salesman makes his commission by selling. He took us around to a couple of flats and we decided to rent the one we could afford. After much negotiation (read whinging on our part), we had a deal. Then came the action that anyone takes in a jam. Out came the trusty credit card and we charged our way to a solution.

The fine folks at the bank took our tennancy agreement as proof of residence. Somewhat hesitantly, but again, my negotiation skills saved the day. Bank account opened, money deposited, heroes relieved.