Thank God it's Friday

It hasn’t been the best week of my life by any means but there have been a few highlights. I shall start with the positive. Yesterday lunchtime I met with Jan and we did our usual walk around the OU campus. It was nice to chew over the shit and the weather was very mild and the sun was shining which made a nice change from grey skies. I left Jan and made my way over to Willen to see Funmi at her new house in Willen Park. After a summer of stress and worry she finally completed her on her house and this is her going into her front door for the very first time as the owner. I don’t think she believed this moment would come and I think I was more excited than she was. The house is a 3 bed semi and has a lovely open plan kitchen with an island and an open plan dining room to the side. All of the bedrooms are double and she even has an en-suite. Sure, the house needs a bit of TLC but it’s not in bad nick really. But Funmi is fastidious and already she has arranged for a man to come in 4 days next week and paint the whole house from top to bottom. I look forward to seeing it finished. Well done Funmi, and I hope you will be very happy in your new home.

My eye is looking much better and I am only left with a little bit of bruising. It’s still difficult to cover with make up but I have some extra heavy duty jollop so I may try this out today. I hadn’t heard anything from the medical test about my blood tests so I summoned up the courage and phoned up to double check. Good news is that everything is okay and I don’t need to go back. This is good but I still find it hard to believe that a few plucks could have caused so much swelling and bruising. Strange but from now on I'm going get them waxed, no more plucking for me!

I had to pay £322 to get my car out of the garage on Monday which wasn’t good news especially after having to pay the best of 800 quid for Phil’s landrover last week. It should have only been £49.99 for the service but I also needed new brake pads and cylinder and other crucial things. Whenever I go to a garage for the first time I always think I’m being ripped off because I’m a girlie but Phil looked at the bill and said actually it was very reasonable.

I’ve already blogged that poor John lost his battle against cancer this week. And yesterday an ex colleague got in touch to say that another colleague we worked with is suffering from cancer and is due to start chemo very soon. This disease just doesn’t let up. It’s all made much worse with Christmas just around the corner.

Wednesday was a very much a mid week day. I cooked a big pot of chilli con carne which has lasted us the whole week. Christine invited me over on Wednesday evening so we could catch up before the funeral next week. It was a bitter sweet evening discussing coffins & order of the service but we did have a few chuckles sharing memories of John.

Yesterday was all rush rush rush. I went to David Lloyd but I was so late I didn’t have time for even a swim because Phil wanted to be at IKEA when the doors opened at the dot of 10am. We made it and were able to pick up some oak laminate flooring for the hallway. While we there we also looked at sofas but they were all so terribly expensive so we’ve decided that we going to look in The Citizen and see if we can pick up a second-hand one. When we got home we discovered that the postman had delivered our India Visa applications and marked them ‘return to sender’. On opening the envelopes we discovered that the High Commission of India is no more and the whole visa process has changed. Very annoying and you would have thought that someone would have shut down the old website or at least put on a message directing you to the new visa application centres. Anyway this meant that we had to do new application forms and spend half an hour in the post office, cashing in the postal orders and buying new ones and paying £33 more for the privilege. I will be interested to see how long it takes for our passports to be returned. They make the postal applications so difficult because really they prefer you to apply in person which also means they can charge a higher fee.

After the post office saga I had a phone call from Harriet saying asking me to pick her up and take her to work because she had locked her keys in the house. Even though I was limited for time I rushed off to Walton Park and slung her out at the OU. She begged me to go to the shop and buy her some fags; I said I would try and get back to the OU later on. Meanwhile I had to get to meet Funmi at her new house. I think because Funmi didn’t really think she was going to complete she hadn’t taken any of her stuff out of the storage unit. She had all of her stuff from the TMA flat which she’d cleared out yesterday morning but that was it. She had a man turning up to quote her for redecoration works and as he walked up the drive I said to her that I would drive to the OU and drop 10 Lambert & Butler off to Harriet and then would meet her at the Big Yellow storage unit in Winterhill.

Unfortunately the man giving the quote took longer than we both had anticipated and I spent what seemed like an eternity in the Big Yellow car park waiting for Funmi to turn up. It was, as I was sitting in the car that I suddenly realised that I had completely forgotten about an appointment that I had made for me and Phil at the medical centre to have our typhoid injection top-up. I quickly phoned Phil and asked him to phone up and make our apologies and re-arrange. Sometimes I wonder whether I have any brain cells left. I must ensure that I take my filo-fax with me at all times from now on in.

Finally Funmi turned up and we loaded all the essentials into the boots of our cars and made our way back to her house. It was getting dark by this time and it was gone 5pm by the time we offloaded. There weren't any curtains in any of the windows so we hung a couple of sheets up at the windows at the front of the house. I have to say I did feel a little bit guilty leaving Funmi for her first night. It would have been better if she had got the keys at lunchtime which would have given her a little more daylight time so she could throw some bleach around and get her things put away. I’m amazed she hasn’t taken any time off work but she says she has important meetings and can’t have time out. Still, she is fairly organised and I know by next week the place will be like a show house.

Today Phil is going to start on laying the laminate floor. He’s very reluctant because he hasn’t got the right tools and also his tennis elbow is hurting him like crazy. Yesterday he ripped off all the skirting which he tells me wasn't an easy job. I suppose when you think that it's been there for nearly 30 years and also the fact that it has been screwed into concrete, its really not surprising. Unfortunately when the skirting came off, with it came lots of nasty buggy things. Phil is also a little but put out because I’m meeting up with my friend Jane today and we are going for lunch at Brassiere Blanc in The Hub. Although BB is not Phil's favourite restaurant, I think he feels he’s missing out plus this will be the third day in a row that he will be eating chilli con carne and rice. But I haven’t invited him for the simple reason that Jane and I only get to meet up once a year and sometimes it’s just nice to do girlie gossip. Sorry Phil!