The ghost of Christmas present

Yesterday was Christmas Day so that is done for another year.

D1 arrived last Sunday and was sweating on a tender she had put in for an apartment. She won and was able to do most of the business part of the transaction online and at the CBA Claremont Branch so she is very excited. It is about three minutes walk from the apartment which she has been renting for the last 20-or-so years so it just where she wants to live - a walking distance from the CBD and her workplace.

My kittens have had their innoculations and I can have them next week; unsterilised, so the breeder must have been given a good report by my vet as she is happy to let me organise that part of things. I have bought all that they will need when they come home and I'm turning the powder room over to them as the door swings so close to the vanity that it is not easy for an actual person to actually squeeze in and it will be perfect for them with the loo to flush their flushing litter down, space for three litter boxes and a hand basin for me to wash my hands when I have done the litter things.

I went to Christmas lunch at the Ex's place and the kids and GBs came here in the evening for a sausage sizzle and trifle. The GBs wanted to do the sausage pricking business and we had to create enough rubbish so that they could put it down the chute. The joys of childhood; to be allowed to throw rubbish down a rubbish chute.

Next year the kids are all coming here for Christmas lunch which will be much quieter than lunch yesterday where there were about 20 people, kids and noise. Roll on next Christmas ...

I am all enmeshed

Yesterday the cat mesh company installed the cat mesh on my balcony so all I have to do now is to block off the bottom gap to make the kittens safe from unexpected descents. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

I had lunch with D2 yesterday and we went shopping afterwards and bought the bare bones of the kittens trousseaux. Today I went back and checked that the local pet emporium sells flushing litter and while I was there I bought two carry boxes. I will inspect the litter trays which I already have with a view to upgrading if necessary and will wait to see how they take to being harnessed before I get a big pet pusher so that I can take them to the park. It may be that they will be better off not knowing that there is a great big world outside of the apartment. I'll see ...

The leaky windows have been sealed - I hope! We are unlikely to get many storms like the ones we have had over the last week so it may have to wait until wintertime to test the seals.

The Selfs are back in town; they arrived a couple of days ago and Himself has picked up his car. The Welsh contingent is arriving tonight.

The windows of Heaven were opened

We have just weathered about 12 hours of continuous thunder, lightning and rain culminating in a southerly gale which drove torrential rain horizontally.

Unfortunately for me, my apartment faces south and my balcony and everything on it was thoroughly rained on.

... and my windows leaked.

I started off with hand towels but had to resort to bath towels in the end. It wasn't the windows themselves but the frames; the water came in underneath them. We may never have another storm like that one but the maintenance man was around within 40 minutes of my phone call and will have the leaks fixed as soon as things dry out, although with the weather we have been having, that could be months away.

I suggested that it might be an opportune time to check the other south-facing apartments. He said that he intended to ...

Kittens - at last

This morning i went to visit my new kittens at Canning Vale. It took me almost an hour to get there but at least I didn't get lost. It is a whole new world over that way; huge shopping complexes and the cattery was in an area designated at a "Kennel Area".

I had a choice between two boys and as they both looked alike I just pointed and took one of them. he turned out to be a really cuddly little boy and went to sleep on my lap, purring like a buzz-saw. The little girl wasn't quite so settled and would have liked to explore rather than be restrained. The Burmese girls tend to be pushy and I suspect that the Bombays are the same, considering that they are almost pure Burmese with a but of common cat introduced to get the black gene.

I could have had them before Christmas but I opted to take them in the New Year so I can introduce them during a quieter period and it will give the breeder time to have the boy neutered a little bit later. Not as late as I would like but better than nothing; even a couple of weeks will help his little urethra to grow a bit.

I still have to wait for the screening mesh to be installed and until then I will not feel totally comfortable about the whole kitten business but they are coming next week to install it, after which I can breath a bit easier.

I took some photos ... I can't upload them due to a technical fault but will keep on trying.

... and there WAS light

The electrician came this morning and fixed the light over my computer. He began by changing the globe and the transformer but it still didn't work so he looked further and found that the connecting leads were loose so he replaced them and, yeah, the light works again.

I have been measured for cat-mesh and have paid a deposit to ensure that it is installed this month (it is December 1st here in Australia). Having sorted all that I felt that perhaps I could tempt fate enough to visit my kittens so I phoned the kitten breeder and I will be seeing them on Monday morning. I just hope that everything doesn't fall down before the mesh goes in or that no-one complains about it afterwards.

I feel rather the way I did when I first went to boarding school: not sure of the rules, not sure how much I could get away with and with a sense that my life wasn't totally my own any more. Coming from over 30 years of being my own boss with the ability to do exactly what I wanted in my own house I am really not enjoying having to obey rules again.

And Big Brother is watching; there is a security camera in the lobby.

Dem Dry Bones

My Family TreeMaker 2012 disc arrived last week and I have installed it and do not like it a bit. The format is quite different so I have had to try to work out how to add the information which I only have in printed form and is the information my half third cousin and I collected about the Davies side of the family.

Foolishly I started from the wrong end - a cardinal sin in genealogy - and I have spent the morning 'merging individuals' because I suddenly found that I was duplicating people already in the system. Hopefully I have now blended all those who need to be blended and can get on to working out how to add notes, sources and citations.

At least it is keeping me occupied. The smoke from the big fire at Margaret River has caused a smoke haze over the city and I have retreated to my sealed, air conditioned, apartment on account of my asthma. This works both ways because I have been forced, therefore, to come to terms with FTM and get all those Davies' sorted out and they are complicated. They had a habit of multiple marriages, multiple partners, name changes and disappearing into Darkest Africa or New Zealand.

Win 7 has a lot to answer for, making me do all the entries again since FTM16 doesn't work with Win 7. I think that I have the up to date version on the computer 'minette' so that I can check things if I need to but why, oh why, did FTM have to make things so much harder. It used to be so simple.

Let there be light Mk.3

After a day of 36 degree temperatures the light over my computer has just turned itself on again.

It has been off for weeks now and I wondered if the humid weather we have been having was one of the reasons it wasn't working.

But this time - when the electrician finally comes to fix it I am going to get him to see if he can find the cause.

Grrrrr - I'll bet that he comes tomorrow ...

Turning a blind eye?

This morning I phoned the cat screen people to try to get some idea of if or when they were coming to measure and quote for kitten screening. They hadn't opened my email of 9th November with the pictures of the balcony. I discovered this when the girl I spoke to suggested that I should send some photos so that they could give a rough estimate and I told her that I had already done that. Anyway, the outcome was that two men arrived about 3 hours later and had a good look and worked out how to fix the screens, promising a quote for the work.

The Corporate Body doesn't appear to have either opened or read my email. If he is away this week then his assistant should be letting me know or dealing with it herself but I am going to go ahead on the assumption that he is turning a blind eye. Of course, it could still all come crashing down but at least I have tried to do the correct thing and ask first.

Between a rock and a hard place

I am still waiting for the cat screen man to contact me and arrange a time to give me a measure and quote for the cat mesh. He is only here for another two days so I'll phone his base tomorrow to make sure that he is actually going to come.

In the meanwhile, my conscience got the better of me and I decided to ask permission to put up the screening. The odds are that I will be refused and that will mean no Bombay kittens but I was feeling very uncomfortable about arranging to have it erected without asking first.

If the worst comes to the worst and my request is refused then I'll have to look at other options such as R3's Burmese breeder; however I still want my black babies if I can; but legally ...

I cried my eyes out writing and sending the email to the Strata Manager and now all I can do is wait and hope.

Passing in on the other side

Yesterday I attended the auction of the apartment at the other end of the corridor and facing north. It has been fairly extensively modified and was fully furnished. There were no initial bids so the auctioneer made a vendor bid of $1,900,000 but their was no response so the property was passed in at $2,200,000 which appears to have been another vendor bid as the auctioneer said that he would negotiate from that price to any interested party and that it would sell at the reserve price which, I gather, was in the mid to high $2 millions.

I'm not sure what happens from there but it doesn't look good the the apartment opposite it which is on the market for $2,450,000; but that one does have river views.

The representative from SecureaKat will be here this coming week and hopefully he will be contacting me to measure and quote for cat screening. I am not sure that I am going to get away with having it installed but I am hoping that it will go un-noticed since my apartment can only be seen from very few vantage points and there doesn't seem to be anything in the contract to say that I can't do it. But if I don't screen then I don't get the kittens I want although D3 has offered to introduce me to the breeder who sold them their little Burmese and who seemed to them to be much more reasonable about risk, telling them that they should keep him inside but it was up to them.

I'll get some cats one way or another, even if I have to adopt a couple of rescue kittens. There will be plenty of them about at this time of year, poor little babies.

Himself has been doctored (not the same way as cats are doctored) and I have a photo to prove it.

Cooking with gas - or not

The gasman came yesterday and showed me how to turn on my cooktop burners. It is all about electronics and if the plunger which releases the gas is too far from the electromagnet which holds the plunger in place the gas won't be released. Clear as mud but I have to be sure to give an extra push when I turn a burner on in order for the electromagnet to connect with the plunger. The bad news is that if the power goes off the electromagnet doesn't work and the gas goes off too.

All this electronic stuff is getting out of control; I can't open a window in my car without turning on the ignition. Crazy stuff. But I have managed to shut my fridge up. There is a button to turn off the open door alarm.

And my dishwasher, incredibly, actually does wash better if the dishes go in unrinsed. Since I only run it every three days, unless I am doing a lot of cooking, there is plenty of time for the food to dry onto the plates, but ...

I have just received, in my mail box, a brochure letting me know about all the delights which the Claremont Council is planning for us in the lead-up to Christmas and it is rather daunting. Imagine amplified live music in every nook, cranny and alleyway ... and fashion shows which will have their own amplified live music, and schoolkids singing carols and stalls selling various things - as though we didn't already have enough shops here. I am starting to sound like Scrooge but it is really rather over the top.

Now I have heard everything (I think)

I was talking to the Multiplex troubleshooter because the burners on my cooktop have become very erratic and this morning I could not get any of them to light, so one chicken carcass destined to become chicken stock has bitten the dust and will have to be thrown away because I had already thawed it. It has gone back into the freezer for the weekend and then it will go into the bin. We were discussing the merits of Asko appliances compared to Miele and I told her that I intended to replace my Miele dishwasher with an Asko because the Miele didn't get things clean. She said that she had heard that the Miele does a sensor wash so if I rinse the plates before I put them into the dishwasher, the dishwasher thinks that everything is clean and doesn't try very hard.

So I am going to try throwing everything in unrinsed and see if it manages to sense that they are in need of a thorough clean and acts accordingly.

My kittens are about five weeks old and about to be registered so I submitted a couple of names to their breeder. My first choice is Parsifal and Poppaea, neither of whom was a very desirable person. Parsifal appears to have been a few kangaroos short in the top paddock and Poppaea was not best friend material but maybe she had a hard life; well she had a hard death anyway - her husband kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant and she died.

My second choice was my initials, Epsilon and Sigma. We will see. My main hurdle is going to be getting the breeder to hand them over as some conditions apply but hopefully I have that in hand and will be able to take them around the New Year.

Now I have heard everything (I think)

I was talking to the Multiplex troubleshooter because the burners on my cooktop have become very erratic and this morning I could not get any of them to light, so one chicken carcass destined to become chicken stock has bitten the dust and will have to be thrown away because I had already thawed it. It has gone back into the freezer for the weekend and then it will go into the bin. We were discussing the merits of Asko appliances compared to Miele and I told her that I intended to replace my Miele dishwasher with an Asko becaue the Miele didn't get things clean. She said that she had heard that the Miele does a sensor wash so if I rinse the plates before I put them into the dishwasher, the dishwasher thinks that everything is clean and doesn't try very hard.

So I am going to try throwing everything in unrinsed and see if it manages to sense that they are in need of a thorough clean and acts accordingly.

My kittens are about five weeks old and about to be registered so I submitted a couple of names to their breeder. My first choice is Parsifal and Poppaea, neither of whom was a very desirable person. Parsifal appears to have been a few kangaroos short in the top paddock and Poppaea was not best friend material but maybe she had a hard life; well she had a hard death anyway - her husband kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant and she died.

My second choice was my initials, Epsilon and Sigma. We will see. My main hurdle is going to be getting the breeder to hand them over as some conditions apply but hopefully I have that in hand and will be able to take them around the New Year.

Moving Pictures

My pictures are up and I was surprised at how much space is left so I will be able to buy more at some stage if the mood moves me. I have been moving them around a bit and with the system used, they are very easy to move although my kitchen steps are not really high enough and it is a bit of a stretch.

Now that the spare bedroom is free of the pictures I have started to sort it all out. I have bought a new duvet cover and pillow cases in peacock colours. My peacock picture is in that room but the peacocks in the picture are very pale birds. The duvet cover is huge and acts as a bedspread which I am very pleased about. I imagine that the duvet itself needs to be carefully centred if the bed is used in winter; in summer the quilt on its own will be enough to keep my guests warm.

I am also starting to get my craft room into some sort of order and spent yesterday making a dust cover for my sewing machine so that it can sit out and ready. It has been a hassle to set it up so I have not used it very much for the last few years.

D2 and D3 are in Victoria at the moment. They went over for the weekend to look at a display of wedding gowns and Qantas grounded all its planes, stranding them. I gather that D3 is having a ball, doing all the things there which she has never had time to do. And they will be there for the Melbourne Cup as they have a booking to get back on Wednesday. The planes are up and flying again so they might manage to get a seat earlier but it is a great excuse to play and they may not want to come home.

Himself is in Rome and came online last night to ask me if I had his daughter's phone number or, better still , her email address. I had her phone number so I phoned her to get her email address. I was given a rather cool reception but that is understandable as it was past the time when I would phone anyone unless there was a death in the family and hopefully that is unlikely to happen in the near future.

I must go down to the seas again ...

My grandson (GB1), ten years old, has just won a pennant in his first uncoached race. He sails an Optimist which is a training dinghy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist_(dinghy)

Here is a composite photo of him with his pennant and the boat in the background. The face is blanked out for obvious reasons.

Lights again - until the next time

Yesterday morning when I turned on what was left of the bathroom lights there was a little sighing sound and all the lights in the apartment died. It wasn't the main switch which triggered this time but one labeled 'protected light'. I decided not to turn it on again but instead phoned the Multiplex
rep and said that I needed them to send an electrician ASAP as I didn't want to be in the dark all weekend - and half of the apartment is windowless.

So the electrician came, switched the protected light switch on again, asked if the switches to the bathroom had "always been like that" removed the plate and did something to the switches, replaced two transformers in the bathroom, turned the bathroom extractor fan up and connected the light over the vanity which had never actually been connected.

I asked him about changing to LED globes which he thinks is a good idea as the halogen globes generate a huge amount of heat and use quite a lot of power. If they are generating so much heat then high electricity consumption is understandable. The LEDs will cost but I will feel more comfortable with them and it seems that the halogens will be phased out in the future anyway. Their main advantages, as I see it, are instant bright light and I can buy replacement globes for about $1 each in Coles. The LEDs cost about $80 each and after the struggle I had to change the globes before, I am not about to change 40 of them so I'll get an electrician to do the lot. If I live for long enough they will pay for themselves as they last for a long time and use a lot less electricity.

Let there be light again

Unexpectedly, when I turned on the light in my study this evening, the light over my computer was working again. I assume that moisture was causing it to short out and the warmer weather we have had over the last few days has dried things out. Perhaps it will not give me grief again until next winter.

However, the bathroom lights are still not working and I have been told once again that it is probably a transformer since it blew out the main switch; I need to get hold of the Multiplex Rep again.

The Poms came to visit and have a look at the apartment this afternoon after which we all repaired to the chocolate shop and had Hot Belgium Chocolate - mine a trifle hotter since I prefer the Chilli Chocolate to the straight stuff.

Dressing for Claremont

When I shopped in Cottesloe, “old money” prevailed and no-one cared how anyone was dressed; bathers, gym clothes, gardening clothes or whatever.

When I moved to Claremont a couple of months ago I felt quite intimidated by the ‘smart young things’ and their mode of dressing; absurdly high heels with 5cm platform soles, short, short skirts or long flowing drapes and the multitude of dress shops in the centre reflected this. The summer stock is in the windows and there is nary a sleeve among any of the offerings displayed.

I have got over my initial shock and am back to what I feel comfortable in - although what I feel comfortable in has undergone a subtle change and I am pruning my wardrobe accordingly. The rub there is that the Claremont Council discourages charity bins so I will have to go back to Cottesloe to donate the things I feel are no longer suitable for my new lifestyle.

Hmmmm - what goes around comes around.

Some light on the subject of Halogen downlights

Our multiplex contact person sent me very detailed instructions to enable me to change the globes on the lights which are not working so I visited Coles, which I was sure carried the globes as there are a large number of apartments with a large number of halogen down lights. They cost about $1 each and I triumphantly carried them home.

It was easy enough getting them out once I knew that the whole unit had to be taken out in order to change the globes but very, very difficult to get the units back again; so I struggled for about an hour, standing on my fold-able kitchen steps and working over my head … and after all that effort, two of the lights were still not working, the one in the bathroom and the one in my study (which is the one which is really giving me problems as it is the one over my computer and I have a black keyboard so I have to use a lamp perched in my printer and the light shines into my eyes and annoys me.

So finally an electrician will be coming to see what the problem is and he can deal with the strip light to the vanity as I have no idea how to fix it and I am not sure which switch works it and the bathroom is too dark to work there without having a light on; it is at the back of the apartment with no windows.

Tomorrow my car is finally going to be serviced - only about ten months late. It has been on my conscience for ages but with so much else going on I have not got around to doing anything about it.

I have found a brand of incense which is not too sweet and which seems to work reasonably well to keep the flies at bay so I have ordered four packets of 20 sticks each, all different scents, and I’ll stock up on the ones which work the best although the plague of blowflies which came with the first warm day seems to have tapered off - or maybe the incense is really working as flyscreens will be difficult.

The lights are going out in Claremont

First it was one of the bathroom lights which blew with a bit of a bang and tripped the main switch. Now I have lost, in the last two days, the light over the bathroom bench, one of the lights in my study and one of the lights in the powder room.

I have never liked halogen lights and I am not sure if I simply had a bad lot of globes installed or if it is the wiring and after being without a telephone for a week last month because water got into the insulation, I suspect that it could be the wiring.

My son-in-law tried to remove one of the failed globes but it defied all his attempts and later I tried as well but short of taking to it with a hammer I could see no way of removing it. There is a rim around it and that will have to come out too, but I am at a loss to know how. I will ask Himself sometime as the Selfs have some similar lights in their house.

What I would like to do is to replace the lot with LEDs and as soon as I am sure that the wiring is OK I will probably do so. It will cost - but hopefully they will be cheaper to run and more reliable.

The lights are going out in Claremont

First it was one of the bathroom lights which blew with a bit of a bang and tripped the main switch. Now I have lost, in the last two days, the light over the bathroom bench, one of the lights in my study and one of the lights in the powder room.

I have never liked halogen lights nd I am not sure if I simply had a bad lot of globes installed or if it is the wiring and after being without a telephone for a week last month because water got into the insulation, I suspsect that it could be the wiring.

My son-in-law tried to remove one of the failed globes but it defied all his attempts and later I tried as well but short of taking to it with a hammer I could see no way of removing it. There is a rim around it and that will have to come out too, but I am at a loss to know how. I will ask Himself sometime as the Selfs have some similar lights in their house.

What I would like to do is to replace the lot with LEDs and as soon as I am sure that the wiring is OK I will probably do so. It will cost - but hopefully they will be cheaper to run and more reliable.

Addressing the address muddle

A notice has gone up in the little room with the garbage chute to say that all garbage must be properly bagged and gives the maximum dimensions of the bags which we are allowed to put down. It goes on to say that we must not use the chute for bottles, cardboard boxes (fair enough they should go into the recycling bins on level 4), kitty litter (so I will have to use the flushable sort when/if I get any cats) cigarette butts (not sure what the smokers are expected to do with the butts), flowers or plants (if properly bagged I can’t see a problem with those). So far it hasn’t mentioned vegetable peelings or meat trimmings which is about all which we are left with.

I sent in my ‘change of address’ form to the electoral office who phoned me back and told me that the Claremont Council said that I lived in Apartment 30, 2 Bovell Lane. *sigh*

I went downstairs and took a photograph of the letter boxes with the street name sign above it, printed it off and went across the road to the Council Office where a nice man called Peter is, hopefully, going to sort out the multiple addresses which I seem to be attracting; I now have four but the Post Office manages to deliver most of my mail to me. He also wants to stop the Services such as water and electricity from saying that we all live at 23 St Quentin Avenue; I don’t fancy his chances there.

He said that the Council has to go by what Landgate says our address is which is strange because when the title deeds were issued I phoned Landgate and was told that they had to abide by what the Council said.

Oh, my paws and whiskers. :(

I contacted the Bombay Kitten breeder a couple of days ago because I worked out that the kittens I ordered would be about four weeks old, the age when I would be allowed to see them.

She emailed me back to say that the litter was born prematurely and they all died. She has two red Burmese females available and some Burmillas but I have my heart set on the little black ones so I will wait a while. She told me that she has two pregnant Bombay queens so hopefully I will get my kittens eventually; otherwise I will have to settle for Burmese, a breed which I love dearly - but not red ones and not two females, although two females might be easier to manage in an apartment.

I had my first lunch guests on Friday; Himself and Herself. The idea was that i would have my pictures up and herself and I would go and look at Persian rugs, leaving Himself to familiarize [sic] himself with Win 7. The picture rails are up but Second Wife and the Ex have gone overseas and she seems to have intimidated the picture person to the degree that he expected to wait until she got back before the great day of hanging.

So Herself and I went and explored the shops underneath here and when we got back Himself was having a postprandial power nap. If he gets stuck trying to teach Win7 I will be there to help if he can't work things out; I am still coming to terms with Win Live Mail myself so the two of us will muddle through somehow. Anyway - they are going overseas in a few weeks for him to receive his Doctorate from the University of Malta.

Replenish Salt

"Replenish salt" is the catch-cry of my dishwasher. If that doesn't work it tries "Replenish rinse aid". I soothe it with a couple of OKs and it settles down and lets me use the three-in-one blocks. My refrigerator whistles at me if I leave the door open for too long and since it doesn't swing closed this happens quite often.

I have been in the new apartment for four weeks today and am gradually finding things and replacing things in more appropriate places and then forgetting where I put them but gradually it is all getting sorted out. It has become home but is not customised in the way my house was. Over the years I had got things just the way I liked them and i doubt if that will ever happen here; there is too much stuff built in. I am getting used to the microwave and no longer have to sit on the floor to work it but still have to bend over to put things in and out so, along with the very heavy doors to the service areas, I am going to have to stay fit.

I do like the gym though and spend about 45 minutes most mornings doing a workout and stretch. And I really like some of the shops; there is a shop which sells different varieties of tea and another one which sells coffee beans, chocolate, pulses and a very interesting selection of herbs and spices. If all else fails there is Farmer Jack which is open until late seven days per week and seems to sell just about everything except the blue cow-type cheeses so I might have to go back to the Boatshed Market for them ... and salmon.

Replenish Salt

Replenish salt is the catchcry of my dishwasher. If that doesn't work it tries "

My sister died this morning

My sister died early this morning (20th August in Australia) in a hospital in Victoria. After her usual fashion she had refused to admit to any family and Little Bro and I only found out that she was ill a couple of weeks ago. As it turns out, she was processed through three hospitals and it was only two days ago that I spoke to her nurse and her doctor. Her doctor said that she was not responding to treatment and that she was unlikely to recover. It was her friend in Mentone, rather than me or Little Bro who was told of her death.

I am not sad about her dying but I am very unhappy that we could never be friends; she didn't like me or any of my works and I gave up when she informed me that she had intended to sue me but that her lawyer had advised against it.

She lived her life the way she chose to, cutting herself off from her family and living as far away as she could. Perhaps I should have kept on trying but she had no intention of changing; that was her choice and eventually I decided to respect that choice.

I think that I am mastering the microwave oven

Tonight, for the first time, my dinner was all hot, evenly thawed and ready when wanted without several tries at getting the vegetables cooked. The fact that I have to sit on the floor to see the controls is beside the point and I am going to remain fit and flexible into my dotage with all the crawling about and opening heavy, heavy doors.

This place is very badly designed but I had one more small success today when I was able to buy three unbreakable soap rest thingies for the bathrooms, something which Coles seems not to stock.

A new problem has arisen regarding the delivery of stuff if I am not home, and where do the delivery people park in order to deliver their goods. The Building Manager suggested directing them to level 4 which is a bit like driving through a maze (which she admitted herself) and I would still have to be home to receive the goods. I think that it would be easier to park in the underground carpark and come up the escalator to the main shopping centre; but I would still have to be home.

And then the Building Manager mentioned that when the removalists came yesterday to remove the boxes they arrived an hour and a half before the time booked for the loading dock. They were booked in for the time when Grace said that they would be there. The BM is obviously starting to get a bit miffed at me but ...

I have moved

It is now a week since my household was all packed up ready for the big move. Last Monday 1/08/2011 all the small things were wrapped and put into boxes, except for my bedclothes.

On Tuesday morning at 8.00am I had to be at the new apartment for the telephone connection and the washing machine man but I received a phone call to say that the packers, back at the house, would/could not pack anything unless I was there; so I sat on the veranda for four hours and watched my furniture being carried down to the removalists’ truck. The loading dock had been booked from noon to 2.00pm but no-one at the loading dock was expecting them so I had to contact the Building Manager. They didn’t arrive until 1.00pm and discovered that the truck was too high to go into the dock. More delays!! However, the phone line was working and the washing machine had been installed, luckily with a comprehensive instruction book since I had missed out on the demo.

The Town Council had to be contacted for permission to park the truck on the footpath and everything was unloaded into the loading dock and then transported up to the apartment. It took until 6.00pm by which time we were all exhausted and the apartment was full of boxes.

On Wednesday I had to go back to the house to let the cleaners in and then back here to let the unpacker ladies in. They did an amazing job and neatly stacked all the boxes in the spare bedroom … but they put some things in very odd places and I am still searching for a packet of breadmix which seems to have vanished without a trace.

Techie came on Friday and sorted out the computer connections and hooked up my main one to the dongle so that I can use the internet until my server connects me. I have a nasty feeling that I might end up with a one [1] tagged onto my email user name. I have emailed them to confirm and protest but so far have not heard and I can still log in to my web-mail with the old user name.