6th March, 2016
Mothers’ Day. Forget it! Pauline & I haven’t got one.
We’ve had a pleasant day reading the Sunday papers. We had a session at an empty Health Club and came home to a steaming bowl of Revithia – or chick pea soup. Pauline made it this morning. This will tide us over until we go out to eat this evening at the local Trattoria – That’s Amore. …… Lovely meal. Pauline & I both had a starter of Kalamari with Tartar Sauce followed by a main course of steamed sea bass with steamed vegetables. A nice bottle of chilled Trebbiano helped it all along.
We drove home and downloaded Call the Midwife so I could have a good cry and Pauline a good laugh.
7th March, 2016
Magnolia buds are bursting.
Well in to Spring already. Today is beautifully sunny with blue sky and fluffy, white clouds. Daffodils are still flowering. The birds are beginning to believe it’s Spring as their pace of life quickens. Camellias have been in flower for a few weeks now and magnolias are just about to burst into their full glory. We are looking forward to seeing Spring in Sussex.
We are pushing hard to get a completion/’move-in’ date and so are many of our suppliers. We will have the blinds fitted on Friday and hope the completion date will be no longer than a week later. Pauline is ordering her new kettle in readiness.
8th March, 2016
Turkey 10 – Greece 0 is the score from the EU leaders’ meetings last weekend.
Greece has been given a task which means harbouring all their migrants as borders close or returning them to Turkey. How they could possibly do the latter, it is impossible to know. They are hardly going to volunteer to go back to Turkey. Turkey gets billions of euros and a planned process for sending ‘legitimate’ migrants to Europe. The Greeks get their historical enemies being offered visa-free access to Europe and accelerated access to the European Union membership process. Just to add to Greece’s joys, Wolfgang Schaeuble has pledged to oppose debt relief for Greece as he vies to replace Merkel.
9th March, 2016
Security from Death?
Received a phone call yesterday from someone who had just been informed of my death – and it wasn’t the Poison Dwarf. Apparently, Facebook was alive with ex-teacher colleagues and ex-pupils of mine fuelling the myth. It may have been wishful thinking but, like Mark Twain, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
We were promised torrential rain last night and again this morning. Neither has materialised. I’ll have to pay to have the car washed instead. My main computer was hit by a blackmailing virus yesterday. Many people will recognise a message which popped up to tell me a virus which was disabling my computer could only be removed if I rang this phone number and paid for someone else to clean it out. It’s a well know scam which I wasn’t falling for. I’ve no idea where I picked it up from. I ran my Norton Security which it had obviously got through already but it had no effect. I downloaded an old favourite – Adaware – to see if that would work but nothing doing. As a last resort, late into last night, I chose a ‘restore point’ from a week ago and, ‘Bingo’, with one bound I was free. I’ve had to do a bit of tinkering round the edges but it’s all back up and working.
10th March, 2016
This has been a good news day. Today we learnt that our new house build has been signed off by the Managing Director of our building firm. He phoned us personally to inform us. It has allowed us to proceed with delivery dates for a lot of our new furniture. We will not need to do anything until the end of next week so we have booked a few days in France on the spur of the moment. We will go through the Tunnel on Monday morning.
Things were fairly hectic today so we missed our exercise regime. We did go to Curry’s to collect a new kettle and toaster and tomorrow we will go to the Storage Pod to end our contract after hiring the Furniture Removers next door to move our ‘stuff’ in about ten days. It all feels good – as if someone has fired the starting pistol and set off a long-awaited chain reaction.
11th March, 2016
Celebrations
An absolutely delightful day in so many ways. I am writing this Blog entry at just before 5.00 pm. The atmosphere outside is like an early summer evening – windless, warm and sunny. The atmosphere inside could be described as very happy because the Chief Executive of our building firm telephoned to say that we will ‘complete’ and can move in from next Friday. We have had to go into overdrive with arrangements. We have:
- Gone to The Storage Pod to cancel our contract.
- Selected a removal firm to empty our pod and transfer the goods to our Sussex home.
- Contacted our insurance company to arrange house and contents insurance.
- Arranged for the beds to be delivered.
- Arranged for the Dining Table and chairs to be delivered.
- Arranged for the Lounge furniture to be delivered.
- Opened a bottle of wine and breathed out.
The workers celebrate the weekend and we just celebrate life. We are celebrating it especially because Pauline asked our current insurance company – LV – for a quote for building & contents insurance. They quoted £650.00. She then did an internet search and came up with a rather better terms insurance policy for £232.00. Guess which one we went for!
12th March, 2016
Blog Spot
The morning opened misty and cold but developed into a beautiful and mild Spring day. We were out early to contact the removal firm and check out our storage pod. We are meeting our potential remover there on Wednesday to get an estimate for our pod being emptied in about ten days.
We are having our Study/Home Office fitted out professionally but will need temporary arrangements until then. We have two filing cabinets in store but I have had to purchase a cheap computer desk to tide me over until that can be done. I picked one up from Argos and took it to the pod. It only cost me £40.00 and I’ll give it to the Hospice Shop when my office is fully fitted.
We did an hour or so at the Health Club and then came home to Greek Salad and fishcakes. The latter were Crab & Prawn and Cod, Haddock & Salmon. They made a real change and were delicious.