Our New House

Well, strictly speaking it is not new, but it's new to us. It became ours on Tuesday, so on Wednesday morning with a Land Rover full of stuff and towing the box trailer, we mooched eastwards to explore our new house.

Two things will stick in my memory about our first visit. Firstly, the boiler would not light and we spent a very cold night huddled together in the bed we had taken. Fortunately the fire in the sitting room was fully functional and there was an immersion heater so we had some heat and lashings of hot water. A phone call to my ex-employers got a Service Engineer to call and withing 15 minutes, he had the boiler working and the house slowly warming up. So, Mick joins Gary as one of our heroes.

Secondly having introduced ourselves to our neighbours for 2 houses each side, we were struck by their niceness. They are a genuinely welcoming group, one of whom who lent us a portable gas heater to take the chill off the bulk of our house.

Some photos:


two of the front



























One of the garage:

it's beginning to look like a muddle already.













The back of the house in sunshine...















The sitting room....















the kitchen....















and two views of the conservatory..































That's it for now.

A good number and a bit of a gap.

Yesterday was my birthday and it passed in a relaxed and pleasant fashion. Most of the Children phoned to wish me a Happy Birthday and my beloved cooked me a delicious dinner, while I took pleasure from reading a most enjoyable detective story.

I am now 61, and I'm minded to remain 61 for the rest of my life. It seems a respectable number and implies a decent degree of wisdom and experience without seeming unduly ancient. Nothing annoys me more than little old ladies who pepper their conversation with "I'm 84, you know!" Who cares? If I ever do this then I hope someone will dispatch me to the hereafter very promptly.

I am looking forward to having the kids home again for Christmas. It has been nice, not having them, but after 30+ years of having them around, I miss them more than I thought I would. It is rather like having a hole in a tooth, one's tongue keeps feeling the offending tooth, but one can do nothing but wait for the dentist to fix it. After they have been home for a week, I've no doubt that I shall be longing to see the back of them again.

I thought we'd never get there.

At long last, yesterday we exchanged contracts on the house we are buying. It becomes ours on Tuesday, so today as been busy so far getting money to the solicitors for the balance. However, that has been done, so there should be no more hiccups. Now all we have to do is move some stuff over there.

What a nice lady

Two years ago, I was asked by a friend who happened to be a Headteacher, if I would be prepared to audit the school fund accounts. I was happy to agree to do so.

The job of bookkeeper had just been taken on by a new lady who works part time at the school. On the days she does work, she acts as doorkeeper/receptionist and bookkeeper. If there were ever two roles that do not go together it is these two. When counting money and adding entries to the accounts book, one needs a period of uninterrupted time in which to concentrate on what one is doing. The school bookkeeper does not get that because she is constantly interrupted by the buzzer and the need for her to activate the door opener.

The poor lady has had no experience of keeping a set of books and no training, other than some mentoring by me. In this set of circumstances it is not surprising that she has made a number of errors. It is so unfair of any organisation to expect people to do a job without giving them the skills and tools with which to do it. I do hope I get the chance to tell the Headteacher and the Governors that they are being so unfair to this nice lady.

One down, one to go

Property transactions that is. The sale of my late mother's bungalow completed this morning. It is no longer my responsibility.

Our proposed purchase is a different story. The documents have proved very elusive, but as of lunchtime, everything seems to be in order. So, we should exchange contracts on Monday and complete some 10 days later. Surely nothing can go wrong????

I took myself off to have another look at the house today. It is as good as I remembered and some of the jobs I thought I would have to do have already been done.

Our Hero..

We had just got all the stuff from the van in the house and the heating expired. We only really noticed yesterday evening, so a call to British Gas Services was called for, and to our great relief our hero Gary was available this morning. He called at 9 a.m. and by 10 we were warm again. Who could ask for more?

It's all gone in!

This morning was one of work. The roof rack holder in the garage had broken, the box trailer was full of wood and there was a big van full of furniture on the drive. By 1:30, the roof rack holder had been mended, the trailer emptied and was in use as a temporary store and the furniture and boxes had all been taken out and put into our garden room. It means the garden room is out of action for a few days, but it all went very well. My thanks to Alan for his help with the beds and mattresses - I shall pay him back by helping put his freezer back tomorrow.

This afternoon has been an opportunity for a big zizz. Zzzzzzzzzzz.

What shall we do with it all?

It is the best part of a week since I managed to be sufficiently calm and well organised to set down some thoughts, so what's been happening.

At long last, after some shouting at the solicitor, we finally managed to exchange contracts on the sale of my mother's bungalow. It ceases to be mine next Friday. Next Friday is the 13th and Friday 13th may not be an auspicious date, but there it is. Having got to this point, a van was rapidly hired and we decamped to Gerrans to get the place cleared. It was always going to take two van loads. We have arrived back in Solihull and outside sits a full van which will get emptied tomorrow as I see the weather is going to be nice.

We drove down to Cornwall on Tuesday afternoon and worked hard yesterday to pack stuff up and get it loaded into the van. It is a very long time since I have undertaken such concentrated physical labour for so long. We were both knackered.

On Monday, we're off to shout at the solicitor again to get him to exchange contracts on the house we are hoping to purchase, and the whole process starts again. We are currently wondering where all the stuff is going to go, but hey, that's a problem for tomorrow.

There must be a better way.

We are in the process of conducting a property transaction. We have had a complete chain in place since the beginning of August. The chain involves three houses and four families and so it involves 4 solicitors. Every one of these so-called legal professionals shows a complete disregard for the wishes of their clients who simply want the transactions completed, accurately and quickly. The legal eagles are slowly blundering their way through the error strewn debris of these transactions with a motivation that no-one but themselves seem to understand.

The legal profession needs a bomb putting under it. Now. They choose to operate a cosy cartel which the rest of us have no option but to use. The first political party which commits to end this and then executes the promise (preferably violently) gets my vote for life.

Why didn't I find this before?

Until today I have been ambivalent about forums (or is it fora?) for people with common interests on the web. I have never envisaged joining one or initiating a thread. What a dummy I have been. My ancient Land Rover has been increasing difficult to start in recent days, well, it's probably weeks now. I have been too idle and had my thoughts elsewhere. Yesterday evening however, I registered for a Land Rover enthusiasts forum and started a thread by describing my problem. By the time I look this morning after my swim, I had six suggestions of what might be the problem and proposed solutions. Having looked at them, one looked like it might be the solution so I tried it. Bingo! Land Rover now starts.

Thanks to those people who were willing to give of their time and expertise to help me by making their suggestions. I am now a fan.

A small milestone

My beloved and I went for a drive in Miss Ella Judd this morning and on the way home she passed a small milestone. A nice palindromic number of her mileometer - see photo below.


She still pulls hard, so is going well and after a lot of driving down very narrow lanes, we finally found a ford with some water in it in which she could make a good splash.

It is easy really....

Student Finance England and I have been having a war of words since February over Chris's application for Finance. Following one letter containing a completely incoherent paragraph, unfortunately the one which purported to tell me what I had to do, I wrote to my MP to complain about the appalling service and included the letter they had sent me as evidence. Today a very sensible and positive gentleman phoned me to resolve the situation. Yes, he explained, he was working on a Sunday to catch parents when they were likely to be at home. We agreed what would happen, I read some numbers from my computer over the phone, and bingo!, the whole dispute was resolved. seeing how easy it was to get the thing sorted I am at a loss to understand why someone didn't phone me weeks ago.

A Feeling of Achievement

In my other blog Allotment Times I have documented the progress I've made with my relatively new allotment. In a steady drizzle this morning I completed the digging necessary to get my planned configuration in place. The sense of achievement is huge.

Earlier in the morning, I had spent a perfectly enjoyable period in the company of my beloved wife going to the Library and to a shop or two. As I walked home with her, I had the sense that this interlude had achieved nothing - OK, we had bread and a paper, but that, it seemed to me, did not amount to much. As I've mulled over this feeling I had earlier this morning, I began to think that I am perhaps an addict for achievement. I have to feel that I've done something useful, otherwise I've considered the morning or day to have been wasted.

Perhaps I have not quite shaken off the work ethic that kept me going for 35 or so years of paid employment or perhaps I just feel that if I don't get something done in the morning, I can't justify the snooze that I seem to have most afternoons!

Get your heads out of the clouds people, there is a world out there.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that people are becoming more and more wrapped up in their own worlds and thoughts. MP3 players and mobile phones are contributing to this phenomenon and I am struck by the fact that people seem to care less for their own safety than their privacy. Secure in their own little world, people go about their daily activities increasingly oblivious to the impact those activities have on others and seemingly without a thought for the consequences for themselves.

In recent days I have witnessed two "near misses" where pedestrians have stepped off a pavement without looking and been lucky to escape injury. Some cyclists ignore traffic lights and put themselves and pedestrians at risk.

Wake up, people. There are a lot of us around and we literally need to look out for each other.

Nearly there.

Eleven of the twelve growing beds at the allotment have been dug. The remaining bed may get dug this week if the weather remains fine, but the weather forecast is not good until Friday. The Council kindly provided the Allotment Association with a number of water butts and having asked I was given one of these today. Thus tomorrow involves a trip to a DIY superstore to purchase gutters and downpipes - thinking about it, this will wait until Wednesday, because being over 60, I get 10% off on Wednesdays at B&Q.

The progress at the allotment gives me considerable satisfaction and pleasure. It was a real mess when I took over the plot and it is looking a lot more loved now. Some of the onions, beans and peas I planted have put their shoots above the surface, so I shall need to watch to see that they are not attacked by pests. The sense of satisfaction from seeing these plants appear is out of all proportion to the effort involved - it's just brilliant.

A Bit of a Nut?

This story on the BBC News website caught my eye. As regular readers will know, I ride a Brompton and admire its design. The recent Brompton World Championship event at Blemheim Palace had in attendance a film crew and their film can be seen here. During the film, one of the contestants explains that we Brommies are a bit of a community and a slightly weird bunch to boot. The description of Andrew Ritchie's dedication (well, obsession might be a better word) with trying to improve the design of his folding bike gets well publicised by the award he has received today. I admire anyone with that dedication, but I find it just a little scary too.

Congratulations Andrew Ritchie on the Award.