Caroline’s Birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Cal. As you can see, Cal gets very wrapped up in the region she inhabits. She speaks Irish and worships Newcastle United.
18th May, 2009
Got an email from Jane today. She’s been on this madcap scheme to raise money for Breast Cancer – The Moon Walk – She sent me this picture after she had finished. She said she was off to a Health Spa to recover.
This is what I wrote to her:
Thought you were supposed to be in your underwear. Pauline’s niece, Mandy, was doing the same walk. She’s off to a Spa today as well. It’ll be full of women with sore feet and jogger’s nipple. You could all have saved yourselves a lot of pain and donated your Spa costs instead.
I thought that was fair.
Got this other photo – at last – of Jane Georghiou. Only the top half. I don’t know if she’s self conscious about her legs. You notice she’s so green she even chooses the correct colour car as a backdrop. I have tried to give her some brotherly advice about using up her lifetime’s supply of heartbeats and footsteps before she’s ready to go but on she runs and what is that she’s holding? Ugh! Can’t be good for her. Come in No. 245 and put your feet up with a good glass of wine.
19th May, 2009
For a week our cooker – a double built in AEG – has been turning itself on at strange times. 11.30 pm I was just setting the burglar alarm when the oven flicked into life. Again 2.30 pm it did the same thing. We thought we must have accidentally set the automatic timer when we put the clock forward. I reset everything. It made no difference. We have a service agreement on the oven so we called a little man out but we had forgotten this when, at 11.00 am today, two big, red fire engines roared into Quarry Court and stopped right outside our house. At that moment, the little oven man arrived in his car thinking, “Oh no! I’ve got here too late. It’s set the house on fire.” Fortunately for us but not for our next door neighbour, it turned out that her dishwasher had started to throw flames out of its door and she panicked and called the fire brigade.
Our little man couldn’t stop shaking as he told us he would have to order a new thermostat for our oven. Before he comes back, we’re going to get another little man in to clean it.
20th May, 2009
Got a cheeky message from Ruth asking why I didn’t clean the oven. It’s filthy. I am a tired old pensioner and this little man has been coming to clean our oven twice a year for the past nine years. I wouldn’t be so heartless as to begrudge him employment. Besides, for £50.00 he gets the oven, which is six years old, looking better than when we bought it. It takes him three hours or so. He dismantles it and takes each section down to his van parked on our drive where he has a bath of caustic soda to dip things in plus a steaming hot vat of soapy water which just does the job. I couldn’t do anything like that.
Can’t quite decide if Cal is building the Cath Bennett Wing or the Lily Coghlan Wing or two wings each by those names. However, she is a big girl doing a big job as you can see from this photo:
22 May, 2009
Estate Agent called today confirm House would go on the market at just under £400,000.00. The brochure was ready apart from the detailed floorplans and the photographs. The Hip will not be ready for another ten days and it can’t be advertised until it is. My camera was much better than the Estate Agent’s so I was delegated to take photos and email them to him. Sunday looks like being a very sunny day so I hope to take the photographs then. In the meantime, I have been practising.
Which shot of the lounge looks best? Answers on an email.
23 May, 2009
More photographs today plus we received the draft of the brochure. The agents appear very enthusiastic and optimistic about selling reasonably quickly. If they do – and we are trying to separate the sales pitch from reality – we may have to cut our long holiday short and/or fly home temporarily in order to settle our affairs and find storage for our furniture. We bought this house as a trade-down almost exactly nine years ago. We always said it was ‘just somewhere to live’ and that we would not get attached to it. However, not only has it proved a good investment but we have grown to really enjoy it. Still, got to move on!