Mild Peril

I’ve been so busy at work this week and so tired in the evening that there hasn’t been any time to write about the weekends events.

We have too much stuff. I think I’ve mentioned this before. When the extension was built it all got stuffed into the shed. It got so bad that I couldn’t actually get into the shed without climbing onto the huge mountain of boxes. Of course, having to find something just made things worse as the boxes that used to be in a mountainous neat pile turned into an erupted volcano type pile with things falling down everywhere.

Enough was enough and I took two days off work to sort out the shed. At the end of it, I had a small pile of boxes of stuff that I could sell on ebay, a small pile of boxes to keep (which I put back into the loft), a small pile of rubbish that went into the bin and a huge pile of boxes of stuff that I reckoned we could sell at a car boot sale. This was put in the new playroom.

My parents graciously agreed to help but finding a free Sunday for both of us took some work, but eventually this Sunday just passed we sorted it out. My parents stayed the night as you have to make an early start, I loaded up the car with boxes (and couldn’t get it all in the car) and the rain stayed off.

In the morning it wasn’t raining when we woke up, but about a minute later it was. As we left it really started raining and it didn’t stop all day. No car boot sales. The two different ones we drove to (as we had gone to such effort we weren’t to be put off by one) were closed for the day and looking at the weather it was a good job too.

I looked at the stuff in the car and realised I’ve have to take it all out again, store it back in the playroom and plan another day (not easy with three children) to do the sale. I realised this wasn’t going to be very easy and the main reason for doing it was to get the stuff out of the house, not to make some money. So Gina drove the car round to the school who are having their summer fate this Saturday and gifted the whole lot to them. They were a bit stunned at the amount.

Now, this weekends mission is not to buy half of it back when we go to the fate tomorrow

Father’s Day and I got a lie-in. Students might be shocked to learn that a lie-in for me is 9am at the weekend. The 18 year old student version of myself would have been shocked. Getting up at 2pm is a student lie-in. Of course the 35 year old self thinks that getting up at 2pm is a huge waste of time.

Then we took a trip out for the afternoon to Windsor Castle. We completely lucked out on a car park space. There had been a road race or cycling race (update: actually it was both and more as it was a triathlon) and the roads near the castle had been closed. As we got there, the police were opening the roads up and as a result we were one of the first into the virtually empty car park near the castle. (When I returned later to bring some picnic bags back the car park was packed; and the clampers were out in force too).

We walked round to the castle and entered the grounds through the airport style security; in one of ours bags were some knives and forks from our picnic set. They nearly got chucked out and we didn’t even bother to use them. We had a picnic in the grounds prepared by Gina and Jeanie.

We did a tour and Ryan liked the huge walls, battlements and arrow slits and had good fun “shooting” the people coming up the path outside the wall. But the best part were the gargoyles. Ryan told me that he’d seen a statue and now it had disappeared which caused Jeannie to be a little bit scared every time we saw a gargoyle, which was often.

Ryan also liked the soliders that stood completely motionless except at seemingly random times, they’d slap their machine guns and move it around. Most of the castle rooms were closed, which was good because entry was much cheaper and the kids would have been bored by them anyway. You also could fill out a form and get free re-entry for up to a year when the rooms are open. As we didn’t know why the rooms were closed, we speculated that the Queen was about. Then we saw a woman walking a corgi in the grounds.

Only she wasn’t very queen like and anyway the Queen was at Buckingham Palace marking the 25th anniversay of the end of the Falklands War. Must have been a decoy.

Lack of updates only partially excused by the fact I’ve been away. One week away but nearly a month without an update. I shouldn’t bother saying that. I had one nameless blog in my feed reader who started every post with a “sorry for the lack of updates…” It is what feed readers were invented for. Jonathon Delacour didn’t post for two years and yet the post appeared in Google Reader as if he posted 3 a day. And yet I’d changed feed reader twice since he’d last posted.

Erm, anyway, we went to Northern Ireland to see Gina’s parents who moved there and had a great time. The weather was great all week and we missed the torental rain that occurred in south east England over the bank holiday. The best sort of rain is that which feeds the plants and doesn’t get you wet. Although I take that back as I like the rain.

Whilst on holiday I got a call saying they were going to deliver our new sofa on the Monday after we got back. As we were getting an extra sofa (and a 3 seater at that) it required a move round of all the other furniture. I did this the day after driving back from Scotland. I was extremely tired and suffered a migraine as a result later in the week.

After all that reorganising, the big new 3 seater wouldn’t even fit through the door! The delivery man took it away and recommended we call a double glazing firm to get them to take the front window out and put it back in again. Gina rang a few different companies up and we were reminded what rip off merchants they are. Quotes ranged from £150 to £275. Just to take it out and put it back again.

When I got the £275 quote, I thought it must be possible to do it yourself and I rang my every resourceful Dad. My parents came over and we managed to get the centre panel out and taking the bar off and determined the gap was large enough to get the sofa in. When the delivery guys came back on Friday, I’d taken the window apart in about 10 minutes. It fitted through beautifully.

For a bit of thought, a bit of knowledge from my dad, 20 minutes work, I’d saved up to £275. Not bad.