Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.
Of course I should have known this already. I've moved house as a child onwards four times in my life and should my wife die before me one last time up to the Valleys. And yet I've completely forgotten that this twilight moment between the house being SOLD (subject to contract - which is how the sign outside the house is displaying our current the current situation. SOLD in big letters. Subject To Contract in tiny really tiny lettering you need a magnifying glass underneath) and the actual moving means that your life is gradually put into some sort of cryogenic state until you've both moved and settled.
It all came back to me on Thursday. When it took the wife and I all evening to go through the forms the solicitor sent us. I knew then that the slow process of moving will get faster with everyday that passes, so it meant that some of things that I've been doing/planning to do will have to wait until it's finally complete.
On Friday we viewed four houses. All had problems for at least one of us. The biggest cause of a domestic between me and the wife came at house number 3. It needed work but was livable. She wants perfection or as close to it money would allow. That was the argument. Of course she won, if only because I had separate worries about the main road it was on..
Of the remaining three houses one had a lot of work that needed to be done, seemed over priced and was worryingly near a graffitised bus stop. Houses Two and four were good houses well presented but too small. Even though for the area we are going to downsize it was, as I explained to the estate agent in house four, "one room too small"..... that being a dining room.
This coming week is the most awkward work wise for me as if you ignore Sunday I'm working on the afternoon/evening shift Tuesday,Thursday,Friday and Saturday. What that means is that tomorrow (Monday) I'm going to arrange appointments to see four separate houses on Wednesday. The idea being that if I like any of them I'll arrange a viewing for wife/daughter to see it on Saturday. On that evening wife will see another house with brother-in-law's partner (I'll be back home cooking for daughter just from school) if she likes it she'll arrange an appointment for me to see it on one of the following three days. Just making sure that it's an early viewing so I can get some lunch before going off to work.
But as I've said all this activity comes at a price. The first thing that's being put on hold (and it needs to be stressed put on hold rather than abandoned) is my attempt to learn languages. The one exception I'm making is Welsh as it's all around us here in Wales(!) so there is no reason to avoid learning it. Even if I'm packing things up for example can listen to BBC Radio Cymru (as long as it's not playing young people's music. I feel my old man ears being mugged with every teenage shreek).
I do intend to volunteer to help Plaid Cymru fight in this May's local elections in Bridgend. Exactly how much I can do not sure at this stage. After all come late April/May might find myself in the Vale of Glamorgan battling for Plaid there. Time and opportunity will tell.
The above being said will in the next few weeks provide a post concerning Bridgend Town and the way it has been betrayed by the Labour party. The idea is to take the posts concerning the place since I've started the blog and see whether things have changed (spoiler alert:they've got worse).
A quick aside here. You may remember that the Bridgend Town Centre Post Office was going to be closed and transferred to the basement floor of the nearby W H Smith (with a greatly reduced space - another downsize). Well I've been advised on Twitter (@daibog all rights reserved etc) that the proposed move has been abandoned.
Must admit was surprised by this, if only because I felt that because of the dire state of the town centre it would've been something the Post Office could have done without any major opposition. Whilst I'm happy to have been proved wrong it does lead to another question. If W H Smith were happy to have the basement floor become a Post Office they were presumably unhappy with the status quo (it sells DVDs, stationery, games amongst other things and was half the size of the ground floor) then what are their plans for it now? To me it's a worry.
Finally comes the question of my books. All of my Penguins/Pelicans will be moving with me. But in the meantime I'll be packing them soon as they're an easy thing to deal with. Of course that means I'm not going to be reading any Penguins/Pelicans for a while, but again it's not going to be a permanent thing.
As for my non Penguin/Pelican books there will be a cull. Though those I intend to ditch will be sent to a charity shop. Books will never be destroyed by me. Never.
A quick aside part two here. Have finished The Mill On The Floss by George Eliot. Unlike the last book with a reputation I've read (Call Of The Wild by Jack London) this was a book that deserved it's classic status. I was gripped from the beginning. So far it's the best book I've read this year.
All of this does not mean that I'm stopping reading. But yet again when I've had problems with reading a paper book I've had to turn to the Kindle (other e readers are available) to feed my addiction during this period.
Somewhere an Amazon executive is smiling.
Until the next time.
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