Wednesday 30 May 2007

Don't you just love the English weather?

After 10 years of throwing parties outside in Lawn Close, the weather finally turned against us. From when we started preparing at 6:30am on Monday morning, it was raining, blowing a gale and temperatures were not far above freezing. When you have 150 people coming over for a spot of lunch, all we needed was a bit of sunshine and a mild climate (similar to the South of France) Well it wasn't to be and throughout the day the Great British Weather continued to batter us and our guests. Although a few people chose not to venture out, we still had a fantastic turnout and I can only guess that the cold and wet made people hungrier as both the pig and paella were well and truly demolished. I believe a great time was had by all and must thank my dad for his efforts with the pig, uncle Glyn for the use of chairs and the sound system, Ross for lugging everything out and Jane for putting up with chaos and stress on top of moving house. I could run off a list of all the people that helped out but this is a blog not a novel and my typing skills keel over after the first 500 words so thanks to everyone for everything including cards and presents.

Sunday 27 May 2007

One less thing to stress about

Friday 25th May, a day to remember. After working for Pete and Maurice since 1995, a whole century ago, I finally threw in the towel and finished my career on Friday. I could not have asked for better employers over that time. I managed to do my second apprenticeship with them gaining skills in electrical installation. Pushing forward with them I moved into both Quality and Health and Safety. Finally, when it was time to leave, I'd made it all the way up the ladder to workshop manager. On the brighter side of things, the stress of being on call and heading up the workshop is now behind me. To make sure I stay in touch, they bought me the most excellent laptop as a leaving present. We're hoping to complete on the sale of the house on June 1st, which will then be one more bit of stress behind us.

Monday 21 May 2007

Not long to go now.

Yet another week has just slipped by and it seems like we're almost ready for the pig move now. This weekend saw the moving of Kirstys bed along with more toys and other stuff. This leaves both Josh and Kirsty sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Hopefully we should get our completion date through today. Then we will be able to start the serious planning of the final part of the move and the ferry crossing to Calais. All going well, this will be my last week at work and I can only say, I'm ecstatic about it. 15 years in the rat race has run me to ruin and the thought of being able to throw in my phone and laptop and become stress free, has got me buzzing. Our leaving party is scheduled for the 28th May and will kick off around 2:00pm. The usual hog roast, combined with a paella, should see all in attendance well fed. We look forward to seeing you all there.

Tuesday 8 May 2007

Where did it all come from?

Another bank holiday weekend and yet again we're sorting stuff out. This time we took on the mammouth task of clearing out the loft. No one could ever have imagined the amount of stuff we have accumulated over the last 10 years. If I broke it down into Ambulance size portions, it looks something like this.
  • One load of stuff still in boxes from when we moved in 1996
  • One load of kids clothes and soft toys
  • Half a load of assorted Christmas decorations
  • One load for the skip of boxes and other junk

Thankfully this part of the job is now finished and our house is breathing a sigh of relief with all this weight gone from the loft.