Robbing Hood And His Merry Men (& Women)

I've become rather conscious that the contents of this 'ere blog are becoming rather mundane. I guess this is because the things we're doing, or rather not doing are far from fascinating. Having said that I received a kick up the 'arris via email today from a regular reader bemoaning the lack of recent activity. So here we go.

Sunday was not particularly noteworthy. I managed a run around the Mount with a reasonable pace. It certainly felt relatively easy, but then the 12K was less than the rather taxing 15K of the previous run.

Monday was Phoebe's first full day in her new class. It seems to have gone quite well. She's not too sure about her new teacher, who can be rather strict when required but at least doesn't throw a hissy fit if the P.E. kit bags are not hung up in the correct manner. I spent most of Monday wading my way through a book on Joomla CMS templates, which turned out to be rather a waste of money. A suitably pithy (pissy? probably both) review was left on Amazon's site but they have yet to publish it.

Di had invited Rhiannon's friend's parents over for a barbecue on Tuesday. Thus old faithful was sparked into life and various bits of dead pig and cow were ritually cremated. There were even some chicken legs which I was only allowed to impart authentic barbecue flavour to since Di insisted on precooking them in the oven. Spoilsport. What's a little salmonella between friends? We must have done something right since they were with us a little over four hours.

The fun part of Tuesday morning was waiting in for the estate agent's merry band of thieves, rogues, bandits and ne'erdowells to attempt to "familiarise" themselves with the property. There's not a huge lot to familiarise yourself with since the layout is rather basic. There must have been about 20 or so of them turn up. It was rather comical. As they approached the front door, they all removed shoes walked into the living/dining area, then down the one and only straight and narrow corridor past each bedroom with a quick peak in the garage before turning about face and retracing their steps and re-shoeing. The whole thing took less than two minutes and I was left wondering what this rather pointless exercise actually achieved. I guess we'll find out on Saturday when the first of the "open home" sessions happens.

Wednesday's excitement was watching Phoebe do her "try-athlon" at school. Two lengths of the pool, leg it to the bike, cycle the length of the field and then run round it. The event was conducted in batches of three to prevent total mayhem. Her swimming has improved a lot, but she was still behind the others exiting the pool although she was catching up rather nicely on the run. She's made a new friend already, and we had the pleasure of her company for a few hours after school. Looks like she's settling in just fine.

One rather annoying thing I discovered today when I checked the bank back in the UK, was that Churchill insurance seem to have collected next year's insurance premium on the house that we were renting back in the UK. It didn't seem worth the effort to cancel the policy when we left the UK as it only had a few months to run and as it was contents only, the premium was about £100. I'd figured that any money we got back would be less any "administration fees" that most companies have a habit of adding on and thus it would be better to leave it alone as there was a danger of owing them more money. In hindsight a phone call might have been a good move. Sorting this out necessitated a call via Skype. It was relatively painless but could have been rather more so. Thankfully Churchill have UK call centres.

We also received some mail today, for a former tenant. We've had quite a lot of mail for former tenants and the landlords but this was a name we'd not seen before. Di opened it, and it turned out to be a letter from a debt collection agency chasing a $700 bill for Sky telly. Ouch! We sent an email saying "not known here" and pushed it back in the post marked "return to sender", but they'll probably still be sending the bailiffs round at some point anyway, claiming that they're not going to fall for the "we've moved" ruse. On the other hand we might well have moved soon anyway depending on what happens at the auction. The pound has tanked in the last few days and is currently sitting at a paltry $2.11 so unless the house sells for about $44.50, we won't be putting in a bid.