FridayQ: Childhood

Because I can’t resist a meme…

FQ1: Where did you live out your childhood years?

Without wanting to sound too Enid Blyton, in a little village next to the sea. (In the house in the middle of this picture, in fact) It wasn’t as romantic as it sounds - the sea in question was the Irish Sea, which is a) bloody cold and b) makes it rain in the little village seven and a half days a week.

FQ2: As a child, what was your favorite toy, book, television show, and cartoon character?

The toy would have to be Lego - although it’s not the same as it used to be, and I’m going to hold it against the offspring for the rest of their lives that they’re not really interested in it, thereby depriving me of a lawful excuse to play with it again. Favourite book is more difficult, simply because I read so many. A couple that stand out particularly are My Family And Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, or Swallows And Amazons because it’s set in the Lake District (which for the geographically-challenged, is just inland of aforementioned little village.) TV show is tricky, too - I was (and still am) fond of Morph, but he’s a character rather than a show. I suppose I’ll have to be boring and nominate Doctor Who. Cartoon character could be Morph, if he’s cartoony-enough, but failing that I’d go for Wile E. Coyote.

FQ3: Charm us with a favorite childhood memory…

Oh gawd, think of something suitably non-embarassing… Falling off my bike which resulted in my collection of china teeth. But that’s hardly suitable for a favourite. If it’s not too sappy, walking along the beach with the family Great Danes…

FQ PHOTO-OP: Show us a photo of just how adorable you were as a child.

I wasn’t adorable, I was a stroppy little shit. Plus ca change…

Back, and the good news is…

…that the ADSL install at the new house has gone ahead without any problems. I’ll believe it once I’ve connected to it (call me a paranoid cynic if you will), but it’s a start. All I need now is a completion date, and life will be straight-forward once more…

I’m a happy bunny again…

…because the house sale is back on. It was starting to look a bit dodgy because one-half of the lower chain hadn’t seen any progress since their offer was accepted - the buyer’s disappeared and his solicitor hasn’t been instructed, all of which started to look distinctly dodgy. So the sales coordinator at my estate agent (who I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of, having seen him in action today) did or said something which resulted in them upping their mortgage offer so that they were proceedable again. Which means that having signed my contract, it should all be rattling through any day now. Now then, how many chickens did I have again…?

I hate buying houses

Or rather, I hate buying houses from people who change their mind about selling to you after disappearing to Tenerife for a fortnight. Bugger. Back to square one again…

Why, oh why, oh why…

High on the list of my current diversions is house-buying, timed nicely to purchase at the top of the market just before the incipient crash. Which means that as well as carting all our worldly goods from one side of the town to another, I’m going to have to sort out shifting my broadband service. Broadband is higher on the list of required features in a new property than doors and windows, believe me.

The only slight snag in this is that I haven’t yet found a way of guaranteeing that the new place will be able to actually get broadband prior to buying the place and moving in, short of persuading the current owners to order it before we complete. There must be some other way…

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…

I completely missed the fact that this blog was a year old yesterday. ..

Flooded out

We were woken up at 8 o’clock this morning by a thunderous banging on the front door, so cursing whoever it was who was so damn antisocial as to be banging on the front door at that hour, I got up. Which was a mistake. Rather than the warm, dry carpet that normally covers the bedroom floor, this was cold, wet carpet - squelchily-wet carpet in fact.

Turns out there was a leak in the apartment next door, and as our next-door neighbour is apparently away for a couple of weeks, it had been leaking unchecked for some considerable time. So now we’ve got cold, wet, squelching carpets throughout, anything that was on the floor overnight is soaked, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of it drying out any time soon. The efficiency and effectiveness of the contents insurance policy is about to be tested. The irony of all this is that living by the side of the river, we’re regularly asked what we’re going to do when it bursts its banks and floods us out (for the record, it would need to rise something like 25 feet and overwhelm the flood barriers before there was real cause for concern.) We now know exactly where the lowest point on the whole floor of the building is - it’s about two feet and slightly to the left of our front door…

Snowman

We woke up this morning to Memorial Gardens covered in an inch or so of snow - so there’s only one thing you can do. This was the result…

Two questions for the world at large

1) Why does wbloggar keep giving me an HTTP error when it’s posting with no problems?
2) Why have six of the archive pages had their entry numbers mangled so that Google thinks that they’re five entries adrift from where they really are?

Currently drinking…

…a bottle of 2003 Merlot from Origin. 2 for £8 in Threshers. Rather good.