Day One

It was day one of my new life. Day one in Deutschland. Day one of being a proper wife to Whisky. It seemed to take forever to get to that point, between the packing and paperwork and saying goodbye to the country that I’d lived in for my whole life, plus my favourite people in it.

I’d flown to Deutschland alone. Whisky had flown over a few weeks before, because that’s the way the military cookie crumbles. The flight itself only took a little under an hour, but the whole journey, airports and all, was long and exhausting, especially alone. Still, I had my trusted iPod Nano in bright pink, fully charged and filled with my favourite music – a going-away gift from my Pops.

It was late by the time I landed, found my driver, then arrived at my new married quarters and reconciled with my new husband, so we ate takeout pizza, drank a couple of beers, and got an early night… after some I’ve-missed-you sex and a quick new home tour, of course.

Technically, my day one was day two, but day one wasn’t long enough to count, you know?

Whisky had already left for work by the time I woke up the next morning, but he’d left me a note in the kitchen along with instructions on where to find tea, coffee, sugar, and all the rest of it. He’d gone out of his way to make sure that I had everything I would’ve wanted back home. Sometimes, he could be beautifully romantic like that.

After one cup of tea, one cup of coffee, then a brief hunt for a new roll of toilet paper, I felt ready to tackle my new wife duties: laundry. The first thing Whisky had done was buy a washing machine and TV for our apartment, from the store on camp that squaddies could get good deals on. He hadn’t used it yet, though.

“I plumbed it in and got it ready for you,” he’d said.

Twat.

To be fair, though, I didn’t mind much. The military had paid for my flights and VISAs and even moving a load of boxes from the UK to Deutschland. I didn’t have a job yet, and it would be a minute before I would be able to get one. I stepped into that housewife role happily, fully prepared to do my bit at home until I could finally get a job and contribute financially. I definitely wasn’t planning on being a trad wife for long, though.

Anyway, I put a load of laundry in, switched it on, then went into the living room to find something to watch on our somewhat lacking BFBS box. I didn’t get to watch for long, though; the loudest bonking and clunking noise started coming from the kitchen. I investigated (with a hardback book behind my back to whack an intruder with) to find my washing machine dancing across the floor with a split pipe and water gushing out everywhere.

Fuck.

In my highly distressed state, I somehow managed to find the tap that turns all water off, despite not having the stopcock-fuse box conversation yet, and shoot off a handful of texts to Whisky at work who, of course, didn’t/couldn’t reply.

So, I introduced myself to my downstairs neighbour, Sally. She was a wonderful girl, younger than me and pregnant, and she rushed to my aid with a mop and bucket, even going as far as to help me with the cleanup operation despite her mum visiting and waiting downstairs. After a while, even her mum came up to my apartment to help.

The three of us worked together to decipher the washing machine issue, eventually discovering that my darling husband hadn’t removed the stabilising blocks from inside the damn thing before plumbing it all in. By the time he got home, a few hours later, me, Sally, and her mum had removed the stabilising blocks, cleaned up a whopper of a kitchen flood, wandered over to camp, purchased a new pipe to replace the one that had split in the dancing machine debacle, and replumbed the whole thing. We had even redone all of the laundry.

Sisters are doing it for themselves, and all that.

Also: something-something men are fucking useless.

“Well, you met the neighbours and made a friend, didn’t you?” Whisky laughed, once I’d told him all about my eventful day one in Deutschland.

“Probably could’ve done without flooding the apartment on my first day, though,” I sighed.

He wasn’t wrong, though; that neighbour would end up being a much better new friend than either of us could have anticipated… but we’ll get to that in due course. 

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Grandparents.