Catchup !

It’s always a pain when I don’t do a blog for a few days as my senile mind tends to forget what I’ve done. But here I am so I’ll have a go at filling in the last few days. Tina Derry came out on Wednesday to do the HIP survey which I think stands for ‘House Information Survey’ but I’m not too sure. Tina and her husband have done quite a few house renovations so we always have quite a bit to talk about when we meet up with her. Anyway, she did her job and I don’t think she had any major concerns but not 100% certain because we haven’t received a copy of the full report. I seem to remember that it was a fairly miserable afternoon on Wednesday? Early evening I met up with Christine at The Odeon to see ‘The Time Travellers Wife’; it was a pleasant enough film but didn’t bear much resemblance to the book. While I was out, Jim picked up Phil (again) and they went to meet up with George, Alfie and Chris.

Phil spent all of Thursday morning watching travel DVD’s on his laptop and refused to come to the gym with me. He had a couple of interruptions, one was a call from the agent asking for us to install a digital aerial at the OB flat so the tenants can pick up Freeview channels, which is fair enough. We knew we should have had this done before we went away but ever frugal, we thought we’d try and save ourselves some pennies. As is always the case, if you try to cut corners with rentals it always come back to bite you on the bum. The second interruption was a phone call from Georgina to say that she got all ‘A*s’ in her GSCEs all bar PE which she got an ‘A’ in. You can’t get better results than this, so well done to her. Phil did stop watching DVD’s in the afternoon and went food shopping, I can’t remember what I did. We had a viewing on the house accompanied by the agent at 5pm. Two lovely charming ladies who said lots of nice things but we have yet to receive feedback. Other than that, the evening was uneventful – the usual, TV, wine and early to bed. Boring.

On Friday morning I went back to the chiropractor for some more manipulation. Gabrielle says I’m still very stiff so will need a few more treatments. My back is slightly easier so she must be doing something right. Phil went to Northampton to pick up Georgina and they went to see a film at the cinema. After David Lloyd and a quick snack from the market I drove to the OU to meet up with Jan for a walk. Just as Janet put on her walking shoes and got out umbrellas from the boot of her car, the heavens opened and it pissed it down. Then a wasp started to attack me under my umbrella so we decided to abandon the walk and jumped in J’s car and headed for shelter at The Plough in Simpson. There was a rowdy crowd at the bar when we first arrived but luckily they disappeared into the back restaurant and we were able to have a drink and a catch up. We were going to stay for a second drink but then I suddenly remembered I had to be at Oldbrook to pick up Harriet at half past one. Luckily I remembered in the nick of time.

Poor Harriet’s car failed its MOT big time and will be in the garage until after the bank holiday. She’d asked me to pick her up and take her to her dad’s to pick up some duty free fags that he’d brought her. Whilst we were there Chris asked me to type up an invoice for him. Cheeky but I didn’t mind much really. It never ceases to amaze me that in spite of having a top of the range computer and teaching for the last 40 years, Chris doesn’t understand the concept of windows. Anyway after we’d drafted up the invoice, I dropped HH back at the OB flat and headed for home. It was gone 3 by this time and when I checked my ‘to do’ list I saw that I’d tasked myself to paint the bathroom ceiling. To be honest, I didn’t feel luck it much as the air had turned really humid but still I got on my painting clothes and got stuck in. It didn’t really need doing but it didn’t take long to paint and looked much better when I was finished. After I’d put the paints away I gave the bathroom a really good scrub and now it looks really shiny and almost new.

Phil got up at some unearthly hour this morning and we were at Kingston Tesco’s at seven thirty am. We have Steve and Jan coming for dinner this evening so Phil needed to get some fresh ingredients. Phil got cooking some of his recipes when we got home; I cleaned up after him and we just managed to get out of the house before the agent turned up for the first house viewing at 11.00am. Normally we like to be around to suss out any potential buyer but we think its better to get at least one of the cars out of the way to ease the parking congestion which has the potential to put off buyers. We went to Kiln Farm to pick up the PO Box post and went to David Lloyd for a work out. We spotted the second viewer of the day with the agent as we pulled into the cul-de-sac but there was nowhere to park so we quickly reversed and drove from the block. Phil watched the qualifying but the chef spent the rest of the afternoon cooking in the kitchen. More about his menu and our evening later; for now I need to clean up the kitchen and then try and make myself presentable. No easy feat these days.