A Moving Experience

Well, we got back from our holiday late on Saturday evening. And we had to move house on Sunday. I was too tired to press the keys and type by the time we'd finished yesterday! Well, not finished, but we'd moved up the road everything we needed to be living and eating and washing and able to dress for work. Got the other half to do next wet weekend day and with a bank holiday coming up that's probably guaranteed... But we are now ready for Gary to disconnect the electricity at no notice in the next week or so. Mind you, while we were away: Plusnet failed to move our broadband as requested ---- Alan's new mobile phone provider failed to switch his new service to his existing phone number ---- Southern Water failed to trace the stopcock. We're going to start invoicing them for our time in resolving all these basic services they're failing to provide. On a separate note, there are new H&S regulations which came into play on 6 April and we are currently having a fairly active discussion with our architect about what's actually required - his H&S consultant is advising that we need to do lots of expensive stuff - surprise!!! (not). We've read the regs and the HSE guidance and that doesn't appear to support this. I wonder who is correct....

F-utility

Read it how you want! If we had a Frustratiometer, it would be bending the needle on the right-hand-side of the dial. Alan has borne the brunt of this, with at one point 5 different people due to call him back from the electricity board. 'Where's Gary?' appeared to be a question to which nobody at SE knew the answer, and Gary was the only person who could shine an (electric) light on proceedings. I had to despatch calming mantras from the various corners of the country I've been working in this week. However late yesterday Gary surfaced and promised to come round and see us today... #notgoingblueholdingbreath... All this had distracted us from the fact that three weeks ago we'd asked the water board to come and finally work out where they supply us water from so that they can turn off the stopcock - guaranteed to happen within 10 working days - which of course it hasn't. So we've had to chase them up too and guess what, we're waiting for a call back... Oh look, is this Godot coming up the driveway???

Our Friends Electric

Southern Electric, that is - and I'm not quite sure we're going to be friends... It appears they have a 7-week lead time to move an electrical connection. There is however apparently a chance of getting a cancellation earlier, and we're waiting to hear from them with a date and/or how the cancellation thing works. Happily Alan is dealing with them rather than me, as he's looking rather frazzled by it all. Still, I'm sure it will all work out fine...possibly.

Flying visit

First cross-country flight of the year happened to pass by and here is the view of our house from the north: - while the rebuild is happening we are moving to the next house to the right in the picture. You can see that we look up to the north across the stud farm paddocks. And here is the view from the west: Nice, isn't it!

Another milestone in the project plan ticked off...

...and it's a big one. If, that is, milestones vary in size, which in the nature of things they probably don't. But anyway, language pedants aside, this afternoon we agreed and signed a contract with our potential builder. So, I can tell you that our builder Ray starts work on 11 May and completes on 27 November... But.... in the first of what I hope is a list of 1 potential delay, it appears that the local electricity board may take 6 weeks to move the electrical supply to the edge of the plot. In which case we may not be able to start on 11 May - it's an overhead power supply so they can't demolish until it's moved. We're currently excited enough to find this more amusing than depressing... The fizz is being quaffed regardless. Hic!