Christmas Countdown

You know how in magazines etc from about September they have these Christmas timetables – Step by step guide to creating the perfect Christmas ?

Well here’s my version:
How to have a perfect-ish Christmas with next-to-no outlay of time of effort!

1. October and November – Instead of using this time to look for early Christmas presents, menu planning and saving money for the holiday, haunt the property ads and spend every spare weekend visiting potential homes. Make a half hearted attempt at preparatory packing and clearing out. (Not too much though – you don’t want to tempt fate!)
   
   
2. 1st week in December – You could use this to dig out your Christmas decorations, test lights, discard old decorations and buy replacements, but instead find a house, make a real start on packing and chucking out the detritus of 20 years in the same place.
   
   
3. 2nd week in December – Send your husband to hospital so he can have a heart attack in a nice safe environment. Spend the rest of the week in a tizz of packing and hospital visiting.
   
   
4. 3rd week in December – Move house. This shouldn’t take long so you can devote the rest of the week to lying ill in bed.
   
   
5. 4th week in December – Only a few days to Christmas! Now that you are fully refreshed and in a cosy new house, albeit surrounded by boxes and haven’t got the hang of the fire yet, it’s time to think about celebrations. The first class deadline will be staring you in the face so grab an assortment of Christmas cards and bankrupt yourself by posting them out first class. Take time out to collect your offspring from airports and bus stations. Presents – your nearest and dearest will expect presents but you’ve no time left for hand crafted things of beauty and no money left to buy well thought out gifts…. Thank goodness for 24 hour supermarkets!
   
   
   
6. Christmas Eve – time to turn the house upside down looking for a Christmas tree and decorations – surely they’re here somewhere? Nip out to the shops and buy last, last minute pressies. Wrap the things you have got, stick up the tree, drape tinsel and greenery over selected spaces, pop the gifts under the tree and stand back well pleased with yourself that you made it after all!
   

Thanks to William for putting up the tree, and Vicky for helping me pick presents for under a fiver, and for coming back from China with a ton of stocking fillers that she proceeded to stuff in stockings for all of us, and thanks to all of us for setting aside any greed and for really appreciating a book, a jumper, some hand cream for Christmas gifts. We opened our little packages with the delight that can often be missing if a Nintendo is bought instead of a Wii, or the wrong brand of trainers.

We had a delightful day, and were so busy enjoying ourselves we didn't have time for Christmas lunch at lunchtime, so after visiting my mum in the afternoon and having fun with the greater family, we had a civilised Christmas dinner in the evening, and because no one was driving anywhere we could have wine and flop on the sofa afterwards.

Moving House - how many disasters can happen?

Dear all,
Here is the sad and sorry tale of our move to Blainslie. We were in an all-fired rush because the light of my life was suffering with the stress of noisy and abusive neighbours, so as soon as we located a cottage and it was empty we gathered our stuff together and dashed off. Unfortunately 5 days before the move, the light of my life went to hospital for a routine visit and they decided to keep him. That made the last minute preparations for the move quite challenging! However, plans is plans, and we just had to carry on. The house was wreathed in mist when we arrived to pick up the keys and absolutely freezing! However George, the farmer had offered to lend us a horsebox to move our stuff and threw in a huge pickup to pull it

The move of boxes and furniture went reasonably smoothly, but even although I had had a big clear out I still ended up with too much stuff to fit into a 2 bedroomed cottage with no cupboards. George had offered to come and light the stove for me to show how it all went, but once he arrived he started pulling bits out of it, tutting and shaking his head. The result is that the stove needs a complete rebuild, but he fitted the bits back in for the time being so we could get some use out of it.

Someone at this time told me that the electric water heater can be switched on and left and it would kick in only if the fire wasn’t managing to heat the water. The fire was lit, the radiators started to become warm, every room was filled with boxes but in the main the furniture was all in the right rooms. The cat was released from his box and the light of my life was released from hospital, so I picked him up from a warm hospital and delivered him to a cold house.

That evening the telly was connected to the existing satellite dish but it showed none of the “right” stations the radiators stayed warm to cool and we could hear the hot water boiling in the tank above us I found the box with the phone in it and plugged it in. The phone didn’t work

That night I tossed and turned worrying that I’d made an awful mistake, at 4 am I got up and looked at the fire which looked as if it had gone out. On opening the door I found a huge plate of metal had fallen down into the fire!

I let the fire go out.

Sunday morning, after a sleepless night I went to the bathroom and threw the entire contents of my stomach (precious little) up into the toilet…. Unpleasant enough but made more unusual by the clouds of steam that were emitted by the toilet when I flushed it! the cistern was pleasantly warm, the handle comfortably hot and the radiator stone cold. My brains were scrambled but I knew the loo shouldn’t be boiling hot! The hot tap in the bathroom sink was running hot, and so was the cold one! I called for help with the fire and then spent the morning ringing BT repeatedly to try to get my phone fixed but they denied my number was a BT number and couldn’t trace my order, technical services were available from 7:00 am but they passed me to another dept who wouldn’t start till 8:00 am and they passed me to a department who didn’t start till 9:00 am. This was taking forever with continual requests to press button 1, key in my phone number, key in my order number… and my mobile phone kept cutting out on me so by the time they decided it was a technical fault that would have to be looked at by technicians on Monday, I had had to resort to getting 2 other people with landlines to make the calls for me.

During the afternoon George came and moved the plate for me and relit the fire, tried to get the radiators working and contacted a plumber for us. He recommended we pour off the incredibly hot water - I ran off gallons of hot water in the bathroom – so much that the steam was lifting the wallpaper off the wall! I was washed out, couldn’t face any boxes and sloped off to bed.

Monday was a bit of a blur from my side – if I wasn’t throwing up, I was hiding in bed wearing 4 layers of clothes and an electric blanket, plumbers and workmen were working away in the house - apparently the fire was more or less working, it’s the electric water heater that is making the water boil. The central heating pump was replaced and thermostats were fiddled with, the fire re-lit and the radiators slowly started to pick up some warmth

BT finally connected the phone and someone fixed the satellite dish so once more my house rings with the sound of foreign news broadcasts (actually on reflection - , but at least the light of my life is happy ) He was an absolute star on Monday, made a valiant start on emptying the boxes littering the lounge and kitchen – even though he had been in hospital just a day or two before! I felt guilty playing the dying duck when he was working so hard but I really could hardly move.
Late Monday evening the tumble dryer squawked and died

Tuesday morning the kettle didn’t work… nor did the electric heater or any other kitchen appliances including the washing machine. Oh a fuse! Where is the fusebox? About 10 feet off the ground above the front door! Is it a fancy one with trip switches? No, old fashioned fuse wire. Who fancies balancing on top of a step ladder fiddling with fuse wire? Certainly not me, I’m having difficulty staying on my feet on the ground! Fortunately George is a nice man who, being a farmer, is out and about nice and early It seems the steam that was released when I poured gallons of boiling water away on Sunday night/Monday morning condensed on the wires causing a short circuit. (I hope that’s it anyway – I can’t imagine regularly changing these fuses!) Once the fuse was fixed the tumble dryer came back to life By Wednesday I was coming back to life too. Still a bit fragile, still unable to face more than a couple of bites of dry bread without dashing to the loo but I was managing to stay awake and erect for several hours at a time. I was still, however, lying awake each night wondering if this was the biggest mistake of my life. The fire seemed to have started behaving itself, staying in (just) all night and coming back to life when I coaxed it with sticks and logs, it was even managing to warm up the radiators, but it takes time to warm up the walls of an old stone house enough to make the rooms comfortable. Other excitements during this period were the pouring rain on the day of the move, snow the following day and gale force winds the next day, something going wrong with the plumbing in of the washing machine leading to water going all over the place, and the cat refusing to emerge from behind the boxes in the spare room.

Still, we’re in and the only neighbours above us are the bats, I have been told, that live in the roof. So long as they don’t start having late night parties they’re welcome!