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Hello from Wales or Hello o Gymru (I think!)
Friday October 23rd, 2009 |
Where to start? We have now been in our new house in Wales for over a week – and what an eventful week its been…
To start, I will finish off where we left – the removers were unable to fit everything into the lorry… so my worst concerns were realised. They seemed to load everything very easily at the house, but sadly a plant had one of its stems broken – after all the care we had taken to not upset it!! But sadly, they could not get all the large stuff on from storage (partly due to bad loading in my opinion) so it was not just boxes being left behind for Norman to bring back gradually. Since the problem was the house and not the storage (estimator got it wrong!) they collected the remainder on the Friday – after much annoyance and nagging from me that it was not our fault. Therefore, we are still waiting on them delivering the remainder of our possessions. (As most of it had been in storage for some time, we are not missing it – but its a pain nonetheless.) Ah well, such is life. Also, a mirror got broken – hope it’s not us that has the bad luck!!
Once we got here, the start was that there was water gushing out of the overflow onto the roof… On the note left from vendor, she advised it was an occasional event, but it happens every time we turn the water pump on (necessary as we’re on our own water supply) and the ballcock in the loft gets stuck. Fortunately the plumber for all the en-suites says it just needs replacing, so he will do that when he is here once the work starts. In the meantime we just turn the pump on for short periods of time. We usually know if there’s a problem, as the water stops coming out of the taps!
Second thing in short succession – the lorry when turning around in the yard, knocked the cables and three snapped – fortunately, it was from one barn to another, and looks as though it was long dead, but still irritating! It was quite awesome to watch that big truck head up our drive… The irritating thing though, the guys they sent to help unload, were only around for 2 hours, then had to leave as they were from Stoke! It would have been completely offloaded if they had worked till 5.30, like normal folk! However, it was only a minor irritation, and the following day they were back to finish it off and had left by midday.
We had some sad news on our first morning – one of our friends from the pub had died the previous night, so we were quite upset. She had been at the pub on our last night there, so at least we had seen her recently and said our farewells – but not expecting it to be a permanent one! RIP Dawn.
Hubby and I have had some fun in unloading boxes – kitchen was done the first night, but trying to decide what would be best where has been strange. Yes its a much bigger kitchen than our old house, but we have not got a routine as such and it meant that I have moved a few things since then; but mostly we got it right. Since then we have had the washing machine delivered – done a few loads already and its wonderful; then the big American fridge/freezer… They had to remove the doors to get it in, but it fits perfectly. It will take some getting used to for us, as neither of us have had one before. Also, I think I made a boo boo, in that the water and ice dispenser needs to be connected to a permanent water supply – I thought it was one which we could fill up manually – so might mean we need to shift it to a slightly different position to enable this, but it’s not insurmountable.
Sadly the big issue for us – we lost our telephone (and therefore broadband) on the Saturday. We walked over to meet our new neighbour – they bought some of the land from the estate – and they said we should check to see if we still had telephone, as a telegraph pole had been taken down when they caught the cables… apparently the cables were lower than regulation. Anyway, we had lost the phone – which meant no broadband. I reported to BT Business, and they got on the case. However, we were not back on till yesterday (Thursday 22nd October) in the afternoon, but we learned that the whole of Dolanog (our local hamlet/village) was without telephone. I took the dogs for a walk on Wednesday and saw the new pole, but the spaghetti for the phone lines looked like they would take days to get back together, but technology being what it is, we were pretty quickly sorted…. well done BT.
We had our first social event in the village – a cheese and wine gathering. Although the pair of us were absolutely knackered, we decided it would be a good idea to go and introduce ourselves to some of the locals. We were warmly welcomed and promptly put on a table – there was a small quiz which each table had to answer, which was fun, but tested us all a bit – and the cheeses were lovely (must remember to go to the cheeseman in Welshpool market!) and then dessert too!! Lovely… We will be looking out for other events in future.
Well, we have survived our first week of Norman heading back to Maidenhead to work. Been a very strange couple of nights on my own, but got used to it… happy to have hubby back last night! Worst part was that on Wednesday night, I didn’t even have my mobile signal to have a conversation… so worst case scenario happened, and I survived. It should get easier…
After the first few nights with the dogs waking us up at 3am… etc, we decided to bring them into the back porch. Absolute silence since then. The problem was that they could smell and hear all sorts of goings on from the barn, and barked like mad. Norman had investigated the first night it happened, and could hear dogs barking from other farms – which obviously set them off, and then they were in competition with each other. Fortunately that has stopped. However, need to try and address they wandering tendencies… whilst they are used to having the run of the farm, they have got into the habit of going further afield, onto the neighbour’s land (to be fair it used to be part of the original farm, so they dont understand) but yesterday I spotted them on the neighbouring wetland – across the road. Then this morning when Norman took them for a walk, they didn’t heel or come when called, so, we have now grounded them in the yard with weights for now. Not sure how we can go about retraining them to stick to the land which is ours. Might have to walk all the perimeter fence and ensure its all blocked… more work! Ah well, we knew it wouldn’t be an easy life!
Our best friends are coming up for the weekend, so our very first “guests” – it’s the half term week and they are coming up tonight. We have made all the beds and set-up each room as best we can – no en-suites yet, but I am sure they will enjoy the break. We will too – but the dogs will love having kids to play with them… They can keep each other entertained!
Oh well, that will do for now. Been here for about an hour doing this, so best get on and do some work! Thanks for reading – and it won’t be so long next time! (Fingers crossed!)
Tags: House Move
