Moving to Whitby

Well, another busy week and the pressure to be out by the 22nd of October is on. We've just about completed the packing, Not only did we get an out of the blue offer on the house, I even managed to get a late offer on my old megane. But everything has been breaking down on us.

First the washing machine went bust a couple of weeks ago. Richard our friend and neighbour kindly lent us one of theirs. This too has now broken and leaked all over our office floor which is loaded with packed cardboard boxes. We're now washing by hand. The power shower is also on the blink. It keeps cutting out and takes nearly a minute to turn off. Our PC, a vital form of communications when you live out in the sticks has been on the blink. This morning I got back from Erwin, our Swiss ex microsoft expert, who has pronounced our old PC 'dead'. I'm now bashing the keys with an old second hand machine which you have to wind up first. I've just returned from the local mechanic, Billy Barry who came up trumps and rewelded the broken exhaust on Trish's car for only €20. Now we've just discovered a tap is not working. And all my tools have been packed! On top of all this I've had to deal with our horrible neighbour who owns a strip of land at the bottom of our garden and has just tried to create a new entrance onto the road. Totally without planning and something he said he would not do until the new owners moved in. Luckily George Barratt stopped after my sixth F*****ing B******d!! It's all quite again.

Providing nothing else breaks down we'll be moving on the 22nd of this month.

The financial crisis, which would normally pass me by, is affecting us but Trish has that almost sorted. Because were moving from the euro to the pound we can loose thousands with the poor exchange rates. It may not matter for your holiday money but for the kind of money you buy a reasonable house for, it could leave you several thousands short. However Trish has found a currency broker and we've secured all our pounds at a fixed rate of exchange ahead of actually getting our hands on the cash we'll get from our buyer. In the space of six days we've already prevented two thousand pounds from being lost in devaluation!! Now we just need to worry about where do we stash the cash safely, until we put it into our next house!

Oh, and then there was the worry about getting the removal van parked outside my mother's house in Whitby which has no off road parking and is on a busy road. Luckily I 'phoned Scarborough Borough Council's parking office who came up trumps and offered to drop of a couple of the 'no parking' cones for us.