Box city

Help, I am drowning in cardboard boxes and I don't like their nasty cardboardy smell.  We have packed some books and a few things from the spare room - result is 30 boxes of crap all piled to the ceiling in the spare room and another 6 under the table in the playroom and another 5 in the sittingroom.  No, I cannot live like this for a whole month.  I was so over zealous in my start. All boxes must go to the spare room and nestle there in a happy fashion.  Then I can breathe.

We are having a party.  Do come.  It is simply so I can stop feeling guilty about not letting Mrs Nosey into my house .... Ever.  She can come and ask as many nosey questions as she wants such as how much did we sell for and how much did our new house cost.  I will answer all such enquiries with complete dishonesty.  I am sure there are several Mrs Noseys but Mrs P serves our end of the street.  Mr Smith keeps talking to her and even showed her a picture of our new house .... with no price.

Perhaps when I get towards the end I will be pleased I made an early start.  Three less books to pack.

Exchange & Mart

We have exchanged on both houses.  Weyhey, we are moving in a month.
A bit scarey.  Off to our posh house in the country.  I am SO excited.

Like a mad squirrel I am collecting packaging.  I have sent off for lots of boxes and wrapping material.  Such fun.  I am bursting to make a start.  I have a plan which involves a central hub of operations where we store all our packed boxes and a satellite for all our unpacked boxes.  Giant sellotape and pens will be our weapons.  Shall I get a white board so we can mark our planning strategies?  We will need coloured pens.

Mr Smith makes annoying suggestions.  It's ok he won't be here on removals day as I constantly remind him.  He will be golfing in America.  Thank you God.  Honestly, that is just the best ammo ever.  He does exactly as I tell him otherwise I remind him of his hideous selfishness. Frequently.

What's the time?

I lost my watch.  Mr Smith helped me look for it mumbling away about irresponsibility with expensive possessions etc.  Who me?  The person who gardens in Jimmy Choos and drives her Mercedes like a bumper car.  No joy.  I was in Bond Street with 30 grand of loveliness on my wrist, as I was trying on expensive watches, when I suddenly remembered I had put it in my sock drawer before I went to Paris.  I beetled home.  There it was.  So happy.  £30,000 less spent.  Mr Smith should be ecstatic ....but it was SO beautiful.

Anyway, back on planet Earth where we still haven't bought a house, my cardboard boxes arrived.  My yearning to start packing them up has dwindled.  I will start next week.  In the meantime I will send off for more kit.  Oh how I love packing material - tissue and bubble wrap, carboard, paper and best of all ... pallet wrap which is giant cling film.  It packs everything.  

Box Clever

I am awaiting the arrival of my packing boxes.  Where are they?  I want to start packing.  Really a lot.

I went to the hairdressers and now have lovely hair.  At the bus stop, whilst I was having a particularly hair flicky moment, I was stopped by someone handing out half price hairdressing leaflets.  Can't you see I have just been?  Did the hairdresser make that much of a botch up?  I think not.

I am now suspicious that Mr Smith and the dog have sunbathed all afternoon and failed to answer the door to the boxman.  Have they no idea how urgent my box need is? Well, I don't really need them until mid August but I am getting all excited about moving now.  The removals man who came this morning to give us an estimate for our big move was so nice and made me feel most nomadic.  Pack up tents and animals, time to move on.

I am bursting to organise things like Sky and telephone and Internet and all that jazz but we still have not exchanged on our purchase.  Actually I have asked Mr Smith to do these things .... He probably won't.  I have asked Mr Smith to pack his wine.  He showed the man a few mouldy cardboard boxes that looked like they were about to disintegrate at any moment.  I think they might benefit from a repack.  He doesn't.  I despair.  I am actually looking forward to the old git going off to America to play golf leaving me to move house on my own.  Do you know something .... I would never do that ... Ever.

Blighty

I am trying to solve problems.  Billions of them.  With no help.  Sometimes I get shouted at.  I am seeing removals man on Wednesday.  Then I may have a clearer picture of the whole procedure.  Mr Smith at one end of the grand piano and me at the other.  No, we don't own a piano.

Mr Smith has done what he always does in a crisis .... He's gone to golf.

I Love Paris

Oh Paris is SO lovely.  It is very hot but the galleries are cool and air conditioned and full of beautiful paintings and we are having a wonderful time.

We are metroxperts and can probably tell you which metro line and where to change trains wherever you want to go.

So far we have been to .... The Louvre, the Place de Concord, L'Orangerie, Decoratif Arts, Champs Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe, Musee D'Orsay, les Jardins de Luxembourg and lots of cafes and ice cream shops.  Tomorrow I want to go shopping because we are getting just too cultured and my feet are tired.

Mr Smith is at war with Paris - something to do with opening times and closed days.  Some places close     on Monday and some on Tuesday and you never know which.  He got into a bit of a paddy in Decorative Arts which wasn't helped by me dragging him round an exhibition of corsets.  It was very good.

Tomorrow will be less galleries, more shops.

Gay Paree

Monsieur Smith and I are having a break from all this house buying and are going to Paris on Eurostar for a few days.  Firstly we are going to Kent for the weekend then off to France from Ashford on Monday.  I must get some Euros.  Maybe Monsieur Smith can do that.  I think I will need lots.

We have nearly exchanged on London.  Weeheee.  What I really want is to exchange on Kent then I can buy lots of things for my new house whilst I am in Paris.

Doctor today to sort out crappy headaches and cough.  Bet he doesn't.  However, with T's excellent diagnosis by email, I now know what's wrong.  It is my neck apparently.  She may be right because I have been trying a few relaxy stretchy exercises and it seems to have melted away my headache.  I get all tight at night as I worry about moving house, then Ben, then more moving, then Mr Smith, then money, then the dog, then me.  It all goes round and round until I hurt.

Owch

I am plagued with awful headaches that make me want to scream.  I can't see a doctor til Thursday. This is getting serious.  Mr Smith is getting cross.  Sympathy never was his strongest characteristic.

Internet Disasters

I have a warning that an Internet delivery is imminent,  I am waiting with disappointment in place ready.  

My recent on line purchases:-

Hair style things - Japanese, no instructions, hopeless.

Bed - awful in a hundred ways - might take to the tip.

Table - damaged

Linen - thin and scratchy

Chair - small and uncomfortable

Hairbrush - big but weedy

Sweets - revolting

Frame - enormous and wrong in so many ways

Cotton thread - fine. One good item.  

I must stop shopping on line.

I must

I will

But I must just have another look on ebay.

Bon marchay

Watching Wimbledon doesn't really count as PE does it?  I am so lazy but I have to wait in for dreadful Internet buys.  The chair was quite ugly and stupidly small and uncomfortable and had Impulse Buy written all over it.  This has to stop.  My hairbrush never came; my hair is a mess.  An enormous parcel arrived yesterday containing a frame.  I suspect I got the measurements wrong.  I haven't dared to open it.  The linen was hideous and awful quality.  Thank heavens I haven't bought entire sets for all nine bedrooms in a house I don't yet own.  Mr Smith has put a ban on me buying any more stuff for our new house until we have exchanged contracts.

Our forthcoming holiday in Paris looks slightly flawed.  I bid for three nights in a Parisian hotel whilst drunk at a charity auction.  I SO wished I hadn't.  The place looks a flea pit in a particularly grim bit of town miles away from the centre.  I have booked us one night in a decent hotel.  I am thinking of maybe doing two.  I don't think we are going to like it very much.

I am working on a very beautiful patchwork quilt with highly dodgy instructions.  I am giving it to Mr Smith's niece as a wedding present.... In small bits at this rate.  This doesn't exclude Mr Smith from buying her a present himself - he is looking through the list for something that costs under $10.

And now I am off to Camden to see about a market research project that is so beyond me I could weep.  It is big money so I decided the only way to do this was to go and irritate them in person.  I find it all too confusing on line.  Anyway, I want to walk through Regents Park and have a bit of a leg stretch - too sofa bound these tennis days.

I am giving knitting club a miss as they have some awful yarn bombing project planned.  I wouldn't mind if it was a properly planned beautiful installation but a load of rubbishy bits of knitting strewn about the place is truly not for me, or Maurice, or Susie, or Christine.  Three people will be there on their own.  The rumble of our stampede in the opposite direction will be the only sound to break our silent protest. We felt we were being made to do something we didn't want to.  Is it actually legal - possibly not?  Shall I tip off planning? With any luck someone else will.