You know how, when you’re moving house, you feel like an injured fish in a pool of ravenous piranhas? The lawyer, the estate agent, the mortgage lender, the surveyor, the man who turns up to put in the new carpet and make the place look so nice, you’re wondering whether you should be moving in the first place – each of them tears off an unfeasibly large chunk of cash.

At some point, usually towards the end of the whole financial blood bath, you decide that enough is enough. For me, that point came just after the survey on our new place and just before we got the quote from the removal men. I shelled out £700 for the pointless “mid-level survey”, the one that tells you that, although everything might be riddled with mould and damp and woodworm, you haven’t paid enough to have it investigated further. But I drew the line at the £800 required to have our furniture removed by an official removal company.

“There isn’t that much stuff. We can do it ourselves,” I reasoned. “Tim will help. And we’ll hire a van. It will be fun.”

Harriet looked suspicious. “Just make sure you get a big enough van,” she said.

Related Internet Links

• Property guides

A guide to househunting on the web

Househunting goes high-tech: technology is transforming the way we search for our next home. Our buyers test-drive top property websites

• A step-by-step guide to selling your home

• Gumtree founder, Simon Crookall, puts his £1.5m home for sale online

BACKGROUND

• Why can’t we sell our home?

• ‘I didn’t want a profit; I just wanted out’

• How to sell your home in a hurry

BACKGROUND

• Overseas property: where, how and what to buy

• How to get onto the property ladder

• Guide to buying above a shop

BACKGROUND

• How to sell your home

• Buying a property at auction

• Home improvement

• Eco homes

• Step-by-step guide to buying your first property

I phoned three van companies, each of which quoted in excess of £200 for a van that was big enough. So, when Harriet wasn’t looking, I phoned the dodgy one that didn’t have a website and got a quote of £120 for a van that was almost big enough.

“Does it have a tail lift?” I inquired of the fairly aggressive chap at the other end of the line.

“Na,” he replied. “Dyuwannitornot?” “Yes, marvellous.” A week later, Operation Budget Move swung into action. I collected the van from the man and, after two hours marking all the dents, I set off for the flat. Miraculously, it made it, but I and it were still greeted with disapproving looks from Harriet. Then Tim turned up looking sullen, because the wind direction was perfect for kitesurfing. Inevitably, we got off to a slow start. By lunchtime, the van was half full, but the flat was much less than half empty. “It will be fine,” I said, wondering why I always have to be the flat-is-half-empty guy. Then the bed snapped in half.

It happened because I went right when Tim said left. A simple mistake. The bannister acted as a lever and the balsa-wood main frame splintered. The bed had cost £400, but it was worse than that: for six months, Harriet had been on about how we should get a bigger one, even though we were still happily married and the one we had was fine. Now she would get her way. I wasn’t to know it, as I stood holding two pieces of bed in my blistered hands, but the new one would cost £1,800.

Then my back snapped in half. It happened because I went left when Tim said right. He’d meant right as in okay, not right as in right, when I asked: “Left?” Whoever’s fault it was (his), it resulted in my spine acting as a lever against an environmentally unfriendly Indonesian chest of drawers. I didn’t know it then, but the snapping sound was something important, and would require eight sessions of physio at £35 a pop.

“It wouldn’t have happened if you’d got a van with a tail lift,” said Tim and Harriet in quick, unsympathetic succession.

By 9pm, the van was full and the flat was four-fifths empty (or two-thirds if you asked the flat-is-half-full people). A glass lamp shade (£50), a porcelain vase (£35) and my favourite whisky glass (priceless) had all gone the way of the balsa bed.

There was not much paint left on the stairwell and we were all tired and emotional. It was inevitable that the recriminations would begin.

“I told you we should have got a removal company.”

“Don’t start, Harriet.”

“Eight hundred pounds.

I would have paid double to avoid all this.”

“Don’t start, Tim.”

And so on. By 11pm, we had repacked the van and filled up the Corsa, which we would collect after work the next day. Tim skulked off and we pointed the van in the direction of green belt and our new harmonious countryside existence. Two bickering hours later (“What if it breaks down in the Blackwall Tunnel?”; “Why isn’t there any heating?”; “You said third exit, not fourth”), we arrived at the house. By 3am, we had unloaded. By 3.05am, we had passed out.

I was up by five to drop the van off by seven. Then I rushed off to work and spent the day trying not to fall asleep on my stapler.

That night, Harriet went to the new house and I went back to the flat to get the car. Except it had been stolen. I called the police and found out the thieves were from the Islington car pound. I had, it appeared, parked in a residential bay without a residential permit.

I explained, quite calmly I thought, that the residential zone had arrived in our street only last week and, since we were moving, we’d not been allowed a permit. So we’d been parking round the corner, but I’d simply forgotten on this, the last ever occasion that I’d ever in a million years be parking in Finsbury Horrible Park.

The policeman said there was no use telling him. He didn’t make up the rules. And he wasn’t a policeman, anyway. He was just a police phone operator.

There was no use telling the people at the car pound, either. They too had no role in the implementation of road legislation. And, just when I thought my last resort was abuse, I was referred to a sign Blu-Tacked to the bulletproof-glass partition saying that abuse would not be tolerated.

“It’s £40 for the fine,” said the partitioned person with the dead look in his eyes. And for a moment it didn’t seem too bad.

“And £200 for the tow.” Wishing death on every traffic warden in the country, because this is a democracy, and nobody is forced to be one, I collected my car and drove off.

Then I realised that the car pound was in the congestion-charge zone.

THEY HAD TOWED MY CAR INTO THE CONGESTION-CHARGE ZONE. The final £10 nail in my budget coffin.

Instead of £800 for a removal van, I had accumulated £735 on breakages, medical help and thieving council daylight robbery. Plus £1,800 for the bigger bed. Plus my whisky glass. Instead of £800 to have made all this go away.

Next time I’m the injured fish in the house-move piranha pool, I’m going to skimp on the survey. I mean, how likely is subsidence, anyway?

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Cool In Your Code

• Specials

• First-time buyer

• Rental Market

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers