Tuesday 27 February 2007

Something & Nothing

Quite a lot has happened since my last entry, but none of it relates to any of the things I intended to blog about.

February 6th saw Pickfords collect our stuff from Whitby; after which I ran the vacuum cleaner around, jumped in the car, waved good bye to Whitby, and headed south. I called it quits somewhere near Peterborough (even though I was only 80 miles from my destination) and stayed over at a Travel Lodge because I was too knackered to continue. It was bloody cold that night too. The following morning I went straight to our new bungalow in Weeting and got there just as the Pickford's guys were arriving. Everything was unloaded by lunchtime so at 1pm I went to Dee's folks (where she was staying while I sorted all of this out), some 9 miles away for a spot of lunch. So far, so good.

The fun all started when we went back two hours later to find water pouring through the ceilings in the kitchen, living room, bathroom and hallway. To cut the story short, a pipe in the loft had frozen in the night, remained frozen in the morning while I was round there, and thawed out while I was away having lunch.

20 days later, Dee and I reckon we were kind of lucky because, as they had just been delivered, none of our kitchen appliances were plugged in and are working again now they've dried out. Our stuff in the living room that got wet was still boxed and the boxes protected most things. We unpacked them into the bedrooms immediately we'd shut off the water and the only thing to have suffered is our CD collection, about half of which now has crinkly booklets.

Our landlords have been less fortunate because the kitchen ceiling eventually collapsed, the living room ceiling is warped and needs replacing, the carpets in the kitchen, hallway and bathroom were unsalvageable, and all four rooms need redecorating. The worst part however is that they forgot to tell their insurance company when the last tennant moved out in October. This has invalidated their insurance so they are having to foot the bill themselves.

In a way I guess they are lucky too. As it stands they are looking at having to pay for several hundreds of pounds of repairs. If the place has burned down...

I've volunteered to do most of the work, if they pay for the materials as I figure that it will get the job done faster, more conveniently, and with materials of our choosing. It does however mean that I've had little time for MacBooks, blogs, Fedora, Beetles, or anything else. Things are settling down a little now but there's still a heck of a lot of work to do so my 'Blog Projects' are likely to be taking a back seat for a good few weeks. Expect another update around the end of March.