Tuesday, September 27, 2005

We've got Broadband!

Hurray! We've finally set up our broadband connections and found enough adapters to plug in our normal computers. At last, we're back on line at less than a snail's pace and it's heavenly. We've been very frustrated by the slowness of our phone/laptop connection. Those of you who have been holding back on the e-mails can feel free to write to us now. We'll do our best to respond in the next couple of weeks.

Our container arrived last Thursday. Well, it got to the top of the driveway, but the driver refused to come down 'cos he didn't think he'd be able to get back up! Then the movers arrived and they too felt their lorry was too big to come down. Meanwhile a major traffice jam (one lorry - this is major for C.S.) developed as they were blocking the road. They called for a smaller van, which had to come from Hereford, and while they waited for that they transferred the stuff from the container to the big lorry so the container driver could get back to Manchester.

These little snafus have occurred at every step of this move, starting more than a year ago when I first got breast cancer, and continuing today when John's driving license was returned because he sent in his old passport number for identity purposes and by the time they processed his license application it was no longer valid because he'd renewed his passport in the meantime!

In the end, our goods from the U.S. were all unloaded by about 3 pm, leaving us with an almighty mess. There were boxes and curiously shaped packages throughout the house. We've been unpacking ever since and there's still an awful lot of stuff left to unwrap. In spite of buying what seemed to be a huge house, we have way too much stuff and no-where to store it. English houses rarely have enough closet space.

John's 63 book boxes are unopened in the breakfast room (which has now been re-named the library) and we've also used that room to store all the packing paper. We've been tossing it in there and rapidly built a paper mountain. Every now and then one of us goes in and smooths some of it out and folds it. I want to keep it as I have plans for some papier mache sculpture. However, as soon as the mountain is eroded by folding we build it up again by tackling more boxes!

On the wildlife front, we've seen another badger. This is a smaller one and it came onto the patio to eat some cat food we had put out to attract hedgehogs. We haven't actually seen any of the latter, but there must be some about and we're hoping to get them out where we can feed them. Unfortunately, the cat food also attracted a big black cat (duh!), a carrion crow and lots of flies!

On the food front, we've found that the C.S. butcher makes wonderful sausages and is a supplier of other good meats and we've been enjoying some good, simple but hearty meals at home. We've both lost a couple of pounds from all the manual work we've been doing, but it's hard to resist all the goodies especially when we see things we haven't had since we were teenagers.

And on that note .... it's time to go pour a glass of ginger beer and settle down in front of the telly ......