A slight case of overblogging

The bathroom has tiles! We can use it again, and the bathroom pod on the drive went back. I got a very entertaining graph of the temperature in the pod for most of the time it was there: ranging from 14 degrees max to about minus 2.5 degrees at a minimum. (There was actual ice on the floor inside the pod one morning, from the drips from the shower door being left open). There's some issues with the coloured grout having made everything BLUE, but most of it has come off again. We're just waiting on getting the bath resurfaced (on the 27th) and then I'll get some photos. It's lovely to have the house back together again! Insurance company agreed to pay for the extra electricity and the bath re-enamelling, which is good.

My iron levels are still a bit on the low side, so we're testing again at the end of February, and I'm taking over-the-counter iron supplements in the meantime. They're "gentle" ones, so I'm not getting such tar-like poo as with the stronger prescription ones. I've persuaded the GP to do another HbA1c test at the same time because...

The Wegovy prescription seems to be doing its job. ( weight loss talk )

Despite having discussed tiles in early December, and had an email saying they were going to double check if there would be any extra labour charge for the design we choose (20x10cm tiles, rather than 20x20) I got a call at lunchtime *today* to say that yes, this was going to cost extra, and so would the coloured grout. So I asked how much extra, and they emailed me an additional per square metre price. Which is no good at all, because I don't know what size the whole bathroom is! (I can probably dig it out somewhere). But the extra cost is based partly on the old tiles being 30x30 - and I can't even go an measure one because they were all ripped out yesterday, but no way where they were 30cm tiles!

Anyway I've emailed them back, including an old invoice of when I picked up a couple of samples in 2018 of 200mm tiles to try and replace a damaged one. I shall have to see what they say, but now I'm just waiting again. And it's part way through the damned job and they haven't ordered the tiles yet, and *why* and I am so cross. *sigh*

We have a date for the repairs to the house! Starting on 6th January.

They're going to have to strip out everything in the bathroom, in order to re-tile it completely. This means we'll be without the use of a bath or shower for a fortnight. So I've been on the phone to Nationwide/RSA to discuss options for what we do during that time. For once I actually got straight through to our claim handler, rather than one of her team, which helps.

So far options look like: a hotel for a fortnight. A gym subscription so we can use their facilities. Being paid some money to go round and use our friends or family's bathrooms. Or possibly a "bathroom pod" parked on the drive. I'm not sure how well that works in January! Personally for me, I'd quite like if they can provide a hotel room with a bathroom for us to use, but for us to actually *live* at home, provided we still have water for the loo/kitchen - which I'm confirming with the builders. We shall see if that's possible!

It's all just an extra layer of complication which hadn't occurred to me. But we do get to pick any tiles up to £25 per square metre, so it looks like the bathroom will look lovely when we're done! And we did get the money through for the electricity used powering the dehumidifier too. Progress. Slow, but progress.

Thanks to Rachel for finding the <details> tag for me to use here :)

Really productive week at work - I'm training my colleague Julia up so she can cover the most of the postmaster parts of my role once I'm on maternity leave, which is quite rewarding, but John and I also managed to get a new server up and installed and running as a replacement for the very elderly hardware which was doing our virus scanning and giving off repeated temperature warnings from the CPU whenever it had any mail to process! Plus I've made a bit of progress on some documentation which isn't even really my area but has become my problem which is also good - though it'll be more satisfying when it's finished.

At home by contrast it's been a pretty lazy week - watching Sherlock (the BBC version) and The Inbetweeners (series 3) on rental from Lovefilm, playing some more Minecraft and so on. I pre-ordered the new XCom game online and got a free copy of Civ V with it, which led to some amusement (but not much progress) on evening - and having spent all night downloading it I've spent this morning playing the XCom game. It's definitely quite good fun :) Whether it's 30 quid and 12GB of download worth we'll have to see. No baking this week.

Now 19 weeks pregnant and this week's vegetable is a giant tomato - well, it says "large tomato" but I've never seen one which is 15cm across. I'm pretty sure I may have actually felt the baby move now too! Not enough for Mike to feel yet. Just over a week until the next scan! With a birthday ceilidh for a friend to look forward to in the meantime. While bump is getting quite a bit bigger it's not slowing me down much yet and I don't intend to let it stop me! Weight gain suggestions from the US have now been plotted on a graph and my gain so far is nicely between the upper and lower suggested amounts so far. Still eating sensibly (she says while tucking into an apple :)

In today's fit of doing something useful though I rang our mortgage provider up to arrange a new deal for when our current fixed rate runs out in December - to make sure we don't default to their standard variable rate. Rather bemused to note that they do a quick valuation of your property themselves using a computer model and that took about £14K off the expected value of our house - meaning we no longer had a good enough Loan to Value for the deal we wanted. Turns out that if you ask they can do a more complicated version though, which they do warn you could be even worse. Provided it gets a high enough confidence score they can use that instead - and in our case it did - undoing the £14K reduction and adding a further £25 on top! Given it makes 0.3% difference in the available rates it was worth asking, but I do wonder how many people just believe the first computer and don't even ask!

You can catch up on any ranting I make midweek either on Facebook or twitter. I won't repeat my thoughts on bad cycle facilities or union action here.

Had all the family visiting at the weekend (except John, who was off in Berlin getting very drunk any staying up til 10am with his mates). Takeaway curry and birthday/housewarming presents on Friday night. Then a nice chilled Saturday with the farmer's market in the village, pub lunch, a walk on the Magog Downs (while Mum, Dave and Emily went shopping in town), and a party in the evening with a rather *fabulous* buffet and cocktails. Steph and Dave made us breakfast on Sunday and Mike and I cooked a proper Sunday lunch while everyone had a go on wii music. It was a lovely weekend, even if we are now completely knackered. The house is now quite throughly warmed (we turned the heating up quite high all weekend give how cold it was outside) and contains many more vases and cushions and wine glasses then it used to.

Then an adventure on the way to work this morning: I parked up outside the Co-op while buying breakfast, and I dropped the bike as I unlocked it, and it landed hard on the derailleur side. The chain had come off the rear sprockets so I put it back on and turned the pedals until it settled back into gear. Poked stuff and it looked vaguely OK so I set off again for work. Then I thought I'd best see if I could change gear OK. There was a large thunk and my rear wheel locked solid and I didn't quite fall off but skidded to a stop. Stopped to look (and a nice chap who was just parking up had a look too). Seems I'd snapped the rear hanger (the bit the derailleur attaches to), and the derailleur had spun round and lodged itself in the wheel, above the sprokets, having bent the mudguard in the process. Here's me thinking "arse, can't weld aluminium, OMG am I going to have to buy a new frame??!?", because the lug had snapped clear through.

Turns out that bit is "fail safe" and replaceable for 15 quid. I presume by fail safe they mean "if you damage me a cheap part breaks off and you can replace it without having to replace the entire frame", since jamming the back wheel and trashing it in the process is not what people would usually call "safe". Actually I think the wheel is surprisingly OK and just needs a bit of trueing. But I may need a new rear mech, and will need a new mudguard, so it may turn out to be fairly expensive. Which is a shame when I've just decided that I *will* sell the bike I won in the raffle, and put the money towards staying in a posh hotel in Oxford for a couple of nights in January (instead of the cheap one we would normally have gone for). But hey, I do have a couple of people interested, and it's not the end of the world, and I didn't even fall off, so it could all be much worse.

I have removed my bike lights from my bike in case they can't fix it today. That way once I've got the bus or train home tonight I can fit them on my spare so I have something to ride in the meantime. It's a shame I didn't have a camera handy to take a picture of the mess though!

Edit: They rescued the mudguard, but £57.95 got me the replacement bit and a new rear mech, new chain by the look of it too, and the labour and re-truing of the wheel. A fair whack but much better than a whole new bike, and on the other hand I've just found a promotion that gets me 60 quid off the hotel room for January if I pay now rather than then, so it's all worked out quite well really.

Thankyou so much for the advice on what to expect with the packing and moving. It was very helpful, and it all went smoothly. Though you were all wrong on one point: they drank coffee not tea!

We had one chap to pack on Tuesday, and he was rather embarrassed not to have brought enough small boxes to pack the books: I think we've got much crockery, glasses and plates crammed into smallish cupboards than we expected. So the packed the books into big plastic crates on the morning of the move instead. They arrived at 8, and we were out of the house by 10:30 or so, and they'd finished unloading by about 1pm just as it started to rain.

By teatime we'd unpacked apart from half a crate of books and 2 boxes in the kitchen. So far nothing broken. We caught the train into town and finished the hoovering and cleaning and then Kevin came and inspected and took meter readings and gave us a large cheque for the deposit and the unused rent up to 17th October. And Becky kindly gave us a lift with the mop and hoover and got to see the house (with its large pile of flattened boxes in the middle of the living room. She kindly dropped us again by Shelford station so we could have dinner at Zara, which is a rather posh indian in the old station building. Very very tasty food, we'll definitely be back.

A fairly early night meant we were awake bright and early this morning, and we've finally got the computers put back together in our rather snug study. They're both working fine, and when we plugged in the ADSL modem it turns out AOL are more efficient than they advertise, as it's working fine. And since it's now in the same room as the computers we're on wires rather than wireless and feeling a little faster as a result. Sorted.

Squeeeeee! We like our new house. Fridge is supposed to arrive today and then we can go buy some food for it.

Those of you who are LJ friends of mine can find updated contact details in my original post, which is also linked from my Memories. If anyone else wants to know drop me an email (lnr@livejournal.com).

After a week of much stress and 7 calls by me to HSBC I was told on the last call about 2:30pm that it still wasn't sorted but that yet another person was looking at it as a priority and they would let me and my solicitor know. I almost despaired: the vendor had a place lined up provided she could exchange *today*, so she could go sign the contract and pick up the keys. 5 minutes later my solicitor calls, and after him getting rather cross at them over the phone earlier in the day they have now faxed him the go ahead. In fact they had probably already faxed him at the point in time where I was on the phone trying to find out what was going on.

We exchange. Completion date is the 23rd, same as it always was. I ring my removal firm and they can still do the packing on the 23rd and the move on the 24th as originally planned. I'm am a) delighted b) completely gobsmacked. It just seems so surreal to have all this stress for a whole week and still end up exactly where we were supposed to be in the first place.

We will shortly be going to the pub, but first I'm going to crack open the tiny bottle of bubbly in the fridge and phone my mum.

And they still haven't called me back.

Apparently the vendor did agree to amend that clause in the contract, so we've gone back to the original terms and conditions. It seems the delay in exchange is actually because HSBC hasn't answered a letter which they received from my solicitor on 6th September, which asks them to confirm that a) they're happy with the house's concrete construction and the remedial works which have added the brick skin and b) they're aware that the sale is of only part of the original property (ie that they know the garden was already sold off to someone else). So yesterday I rang them to chase this up, and point out we were completing in just over a week and they said they'd sort it out as soon as possible and get back to me.

Later yesterday the vendor contacted me to let me know she needs at least a week between exchange and completion. Which means we need these answers from HSBC by *today* - as soon as they say "yes, go ahead" we can exchange. And if we don't get them today then we'll have to move the completion date, because she won't commit to a rental property until we've exchanged and it'll take a week to do the references and so on (apparently). Which is a complete bloody nuisance since we've already committed to moving out, booked a removal firm, allowed our landlord to re-let the property for the end of the week, ordered a fridge to be delivered to the new house and so on.

So today I rang HSBC to try and let them know it's even more urgent than I said yesterday. All the chap I spoke to would say is that someone else is looking into it and will get back to me as soon as possible, and couldn't put me in contact with this person directly or give me any time-scale for how long it's going to take. I don't know if he's even going to pass on the extra urgency, but I was too flustered to make sure.

Originally I was cross at the vendor for not changing the clause, and this turns out to have been unfair, and I was cross at them for not saying originally that they needed longer between exchange and completion than we suggested: I'd have been quite happy to go for longer myself! Now I'm actually cross at HSBC again for adding more unnecessary delays, because they weren't even looking at the question until I rang them yesterday, cross at my solicitor for not allowing enough time for HSBC to be useless in and cross at myself for letting things get into this state. I should never have tried to organise the move for so soon after the original completion date anyway, I was just trying to save a bit of overlap rent, especially since Peter's move date to Cambridge seemed to coincide so well.

Hopefully we'll get it sorted today, if not and we get it sorted tomorrow it's just about still OK, since we weren't going to move out until the day after completion anyway, so could still be out of the house as intended. If not I end up messing my landlord about and messing Peter about or putting our stuff in storage and trying to live in a B&B.

ARRGH.

P.S.: thanks for all your kind words on my last post.

We went on a holiday. There are maps (day one, day two, day three, day four). We went up and down hills, visited Beeston Castle and a lake, ate lots of big breakfasts and nice dinners and very little in the way of lunch and also before cycling had a nice explore of Chester which has walls all the way round and roman ruins and a cathedral and weird shopping streets where there's a second level of shops as a gallery above the first. It didn't rain and it wasn't too hot and we had no injuries and only one puncture. Very much a success. There will be photos of some of it at some point.

We went to see our solicitor, and signed things and made a couple of decisions, then we checked with the vendor and now we have an exchange date (12th September) and a completion date (23rd September) and I'm busy getting removal and insurance quotes and it's all very exciting. Eek! (in a good way).

Last night it absolutely tipped it down. We were very impressed and stopped the DVD we were watching to open the back door and look at it properly, then we went upstairs to listen to it on the roof and coming through the skylights into the bathroom, and then we thought sod it and put on swimming costumes and went outside and splashed about in it in the dark. It was *brilliant*, if completely mad. Ace.