Moving House - the beginning

Can't believe it's been 2 weeks since I found time to write anything. I'm still in love with a house and hopefully I will get to meet it next weekend. In the meantime I have been busy painting and de-cluttering and now my little tardis doesn't seem quite so bad. Good news is that I dont have to fork out for a HIPS package anymore but I do have to get an energy certificate which is probably not going to be very helpful.

To decide which estate agent to use I sent a blanket email to 10 local ones with some questions about fees etc. In my message I wrote "PLEASE REPLY BY EMAIL" in capitals. Three of them telephoned anyway, one replied but didnt give any indication of which estate agent they represented and one didnt reply at all. Five left. Of all the answers I got, and to my surprise it was Bairstow Eves that gave me the most informative reply. The next day they even hand delivered a welcome package with lots of useful selling information. So far I'm very impressed with them but at the end of the day I expect I'll chose the one that values my house the highest. Of the rest I have chosen the new kid on the block with a very low fee and free energy pack as well as the one that is closest to my house.

So, by Tuesday I will have had 3 valuations and made my choice, my dear little tardis will finally be up for sale. The following weekend we are going to stay in a B&B in my new hometown and view as many properties as possible including my beloved. Then we will just have to wait and hope and try not to get too many grey hairs.

Travellers Tales - Masai Mara Game Park

I was on a camping safari somewhere in the middle of the Masai Mara game park. In the middle of the night I was really desperate to pee and crept out of my tent into the silent night. After seeing a big buffalo grazing by the toilet at teatime I was reluctant to go very far and settled on the row of bushes behind our tents. I squatted down and suddenly realised I needed to fart. Trying to prevent it was useless and what resulted was a series of short loud bursts that resounded long into the night.

The next morning we all sat around the campfire at breakfast when somebody asked "Did anyone hear the animal that was snuffling around our tents last night?". Everyone wondered what kind of beast it might have been while I blushed and said nothing.

I have fallen in love...

...with a house. Unfortunately I don't have the money to buy it so I am going to have to sell my little house first. Who in their right mind will buy it? The more I look around the more things I notice that need urgent attention and I'm terrified that the estate agent will describe it as "in desperate need of updating". Before I get a valuation I think I'd better get someone round to fix the hole in the roof. Last weekend I painted the downtairs loo and had every intention of doing some more painting this weekend. Before I could get started, bright and early on Saturday morning, I somehow managed to put my back out again and have spent the entire weekend shuffling around like the hunchback of notre dame with a hot water bottle tied to my back.

Little bleeder bit me

Yesterday as I walked home from the shop I saw a big mean cat chasing a baby squirrel. The poor little thing was pinned up against the wall screaming in terror. I tried to chase the cat away but it wasn't going anywhere and so I tried to move the squirrel instead. By the time I realised there was no safe place for the poor little thing to hide it had sunk it's teeth into my thumb. I let go and it ran a little way still screaming, the big nasty cat following not far behind. It is nature and there really wasn't anything I could have done to save it but I was still quite traumatised by the time I got home. I do hope that baby squirrel somehow managed to get away.

My boyfriend thought I was quite insane, saying that squirrels were like rats and that I most probably now have rabies. We spent a nice day at the seaside with his parents who also thought I was an idiot and eventually they all persuaded me to go to the walk-in centre on the way home. The nurse on duty said that squirrels are herbivores and therefore it would have been far more serious if I had been bitten by the cat. (My two are always biting me - playfully of course). She gave me a tetanus jab which was long overdue and now my arm aches and I can't sleep on that side.