Big breakfasts, narky dogs and unpacking boxes!

I went to my first Coastwatch training session last Wednesday; charts and plotting! Of course I didn’t understand a bloody word but it was still cool and I definitely learnt a thing or two. I have much more to learn, but that will come ‘on the job’. This was just an introduction. I also have a Tides course, Weather course and Radio course coming up…

Getting to Polruan was a little, shall we say, exciting? Torrential rain, freezing fog and a lot of unmarked, track-type roads that were as black as the inside of a witch’s hat… I was hunched over the wheel and actually praying out loud to whichever deity might take pity on me, to deliver me in one piece…

The people were lovely. I think it’s fair to say that I’m not a typical NCI volunteer! Only about 10% of watchkeepers are female, for example, and I was the youngest by a few years, but I was made to feel welcome and not out of place at all, which was really nice.

Our carpet has now been fitted! I’m now not tripping over a large roll of carpet in our front room and dining room (I’m tripping over dog toys or my wife’s shoes instead but that’s another story). We also managed a lot of sorting this weekend and felt quite pleased with ourselves – the bathroom looks great now and we’ve cleared the dining room table of all sorts of crap! But it wasn’t all hard work. We met our friends for breakfast again on Saturday, which was a lot of fun – and nice also to meet our friend’s niece and brother who are also very lovely so it must be in the genes. And on Sunday we took the dogs to Seaton beach and ran them (and us) ragged, before stopping off in Looe and buying a gorgeous hurricane lamp for the bathroom and a picture of St. Michael’s Mount (where my partner’s great, great grandmother lived), from a small gallery on the harbour. It really is a stunning picture and is going up in the dining room.

We did, however, have a bit of trouble with the dogs this weekend. As was to be expected perhaps, once they both settled down in the new house, hierarchies and boundaries would have to re-established. Consequently Bess gave Pluto a pretty hard time and we had to find a balance between not interfering in what is a necessary and natural process when two or more dogs live together and not letting Pluto be bullied. Of course, we also had to rule out that Bess wasn’t ill either. When dogs act out of character, two reasons might be either because they are frightened, or because they are ill. So this morning, without an appointment, we turned up at the vet practice that we were planning to register the dogs with anyway, and asked whether they could check Bess over. They were amazing and we got to see a vet within 10 minutes of walking in! We knew the vet was highly qualified and very experienced when she told us she thought Bess was absolutely lovely! She established that she wasn’t unwell and that the weekend’s hostilities were almost certainly all about the thorny issue of who wears the dog pants in our family...

Of course after all that fuss and nonsense things are practically back to normal anyway!

I hopefully have another Coastwatch training session this week and my brother in law is down for the weekend. It will be great to see him and he will be our first overnight visitor.

I wonder if he knows that when we said he’ll have to make up the spare bed, we weren’t talking about sheets and pillowcases, he will actually have to put the bed together!?

A weekend at home

We had a lovely weekend. It was exciting to come back from work on Friday and know that my partner was home. I’d gone to M&S and bought one of those ‘eat in for a tenner’ deals they do and I have to say it was delightful. Butternut squash and goats cheese lasagne, roasted veg, fruit dessert and a bottle of plonk. Of course, whilst it appears to be fantastic deal (the wine alone was £4.99 before the discount was applied), you never just go into M&S for one thing. And they know that, they know they are dealing with the weak, the over-enthusiastic and the greedy. Sadly I was all three and ended up spending not £10 as planned, but nearly £30. This is not just marketing; this is M&S marketing…

We ended up at Route 38 (an American style dinner on the A38) with some friends on Saturday morning, where we had a good old catch up (even though we’d seen them the week before!) and large and rather lovely breakfasts. Then we went our separate ways; us to see a clock maker. My partner inherited her grandfather’s long-case clock (circa 1830) but it had stopped working. The clock means a great deal to all of us and so we wanted it fixed by the best and in a tiny village in Cornwall we think we found exactly that.

He’s slightly eccentric, an impression not helped by the magnifying lens that protrudes from one of the lenses of his glasses, but also by his love of clocks – all clocks. Absolutely all of them – his ability to talk hind legs off of unsuspecting donkeys and his general world-weariness. He is a craftsman in a society that no longer values its crafts people. It saddens him that there are “so-called” clock repairers and restorers out there who do a lousy job and charge people the earth for the privilege. So he toils away, building on his reputation of excellence and often having to clean up other people’s messes. Anyway, we were completely enchanted and trust him to be able to sort out our grandfather clock – mind you, it’s costing us £300 to have it done!

I sorted books in the afternoon despite really suffering from this cold and ended up having a fairly early night. Sunday we did a big shop because I was getting fed up going out for lunch and paying a lot of money for manky sandwiches when I can make some lovely sarnies myself, and then we sorted the bedroom and most of our clothes. I was in bed by 8pm reading and keeping everything crossed that the cold would be gone by morning. It wasn’t… oh well…

Men are worse drivers than women

Yes you can disagree but I don’t really care...

I tend to do 80 in the fast lane; I try not to do over that. There is a reason our motorways are the safest in Europe. Yes, Europe. The whole of Europe. And that’s because our speed limit is 70. You may disagree and think it’s too slow and that somehow your man or womanhood is called into question by this outrage but again, I don’t really care. That’s the speed limit and even then, if the conditions are right, I'm going over that.

So today, I was zipping along at 80. I was doing 80 because visibility was good, as was (surprisingly!) the weather and traffic. As I came up quite a steep hill passed Plymouth. Maddy (my car) start to slow to 70 before she changed gear (she's an automatic), and I made the decision to swap to the inside lane because I could see that there was traffic behind me that hadn’t slowed – or hadn’t really appeared to. Before that happened however – some fuckwad decide to overtake on the inside and then the most extraordinary thing happened. He slowed right down, flashed his hazards and was gesticulating toward the middle lane. Now I thought he’d overtaken and suddenly lost power. Confirmed, I thought, when he virtually stopped in the fast lane. I indicated and then went to go round him. As soon as I was in the middle lane (and that had now snarled up as we all changed lanes to get out of his way), he suddenly sped up. Ah! He was trying to make the point that 70 was too slow and so had almost stopped his vehicle in the fast lane of one the busiest roads in Devon to demonstrate my own fallibility as a driver…

A woman would simply not have done that. A woman may have shouted, driven too close to make a point, she may even have gesticulated and shaken her fists. But she would not have pulled one of stupidest and potentially one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever seen on a motorway. The irony is, he then pulled in front of me and was going too slow and down the road I had to overtake him. As I did so we looked at each other and I indicated that he was a self-abuser and drove on without further incident.

There’s a reason car insurance for women is so much cheaper. Of course, as he probably couldn’t read or string a sentence together, that fact would have been lost on him.

On a brighter note, I’ve made some lovely sandwiches for work today!

Carpet woes

I had a lie in this morning – 7 instead of 6am! And the universe let me know that they approved by letting me have the LAST free parking space (we have a number of spaces that are free, if they are taken we need to use a normal bay and pay for a ticket; we get the money back but it’s just a pain).

I picked my partner up from the train last night and it was good to have her home (the dogs agree!).

I’m looking forward to the weekend very much – we haven’t anything special planned (well, we’re going for a big breakfast at Route 38! And I have my first visit to the Watchtower where I’ll be volunteering) but really it will just be nice to mooch around, getting the house a bit more sorted, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company…

Here’s a question, why do trades people moan about their customers? Do they not realise that actually it just gives us the impression that as soon as they leave, they’ll be moaning about us! We were supposed to have a carpet fitted today, but apparently we need underlay and they didn’t have that on the van. The bloke moaned from the moment he arrived to the moment he left. His favourite description of his customers according to my partner was ‘waste of time’! Nice. And we now have to wait another week to get the bloody carpet fitted! After a while we’ll forget it’s not normal to have a ruddy great roll of carpet stretched across your living and dining room and start to treat it like a design feature…

Top ten!

Well it’s been so long I should do a summary really…

1. We moved down last week. Pickfords were pretty good. The guys were great, although a few things are broken, the office side of the operation didn’t come across as well, but it’s done and we’re in…
2. There are boxes EVERYWHERE. It’s a bit of a nightmare but when I get too stressed I just remember that we’re going to be here for years and that if we only did one box a week, we would eventually get it all done. We had friends over last Saturday who were great. Not only were they good fun to spend the day with, but they also worked their socks off putting up shelves and pictures and unpacking boxes and even helping to plumb our new washing machine in.
3. We’ve had lots of exciting deliveries; a gorgeous (and rather large) new bed and mattress, washing machine, fridge/freezer and a great new TV. I was especially pleased with the TV when the Sky engineer (possibly the nicest and most helpful Sky engineer in the history of all such things) said it was the best TV on the market and one he wanted himself!
4. The cottage is wonderful. In the morning (when I’m not up at 6am for work!) as the sun rises it fills the bedroom with a golden light which is very beautiful. We have an owl in residence and there are deer in the field behind our house.
5. The dogs are happy and relaxed and love the garden as do the chickens. (In fact the chickens are on the move again… our next door neighbour had chooks but got rid, but he still has a large enclosure and much larger house than the one we’re currently using and he’s said we are very welcome to use it.) We haven't sorted out the best place for dog walking yet as around us is very hilly and I need flat, or flatter, terrain to walk on. The chances are though we'll start walking on the moors before work each morning which are only about 4 miles away from us.
6. Our neighbours are great(see above!) We left them all Christmas cards when we visited before Christmas and they seemed to really appreciate knowing when we were officially moving in, our names, and a contact number…
7. I haven’t started volunteering with Coastwatch yet, but am in contact with the Watch Commander who is fantastic and a very good advert for NCI – friendly and helpful.
8. I have however, started my new job. I really like it! I have a nice office, nice colleagues and am close to all the shops (OK, that’s actually a very bad thing as I went into Fat Face three days in a row…) Already my boss has said I should work part of the week in Liskeard which will be great. There’s lots I like here: I like that they have a dedicated environmental officer and that they take such things seriously, I like that they provide bottles of squash in the kitchen, I like that they are very relaxed and treat people like adults, I like that they provided me with a parking space and I like that people seem to care about what they do… I also like that they gave me an embossed diary, notebook and fancy pen and pencil to welcome me!
9. My partner is working part of the week back in London, which is a bummer. It won’t be forever though and it means she gets to keep a job she’s worked hard for and loves, and yet also gets to own a gorgeous house in Cornwall!
10. And finally, I might be getting a tax rebate! HR emailed me yesterday and said apparently I’m owed one. I shall wait and see and will assume nothing but if it’s true then it will go straight on the house as there are a few bits and pieces we want to do. But I’m sure there will be some left over for a nice meal with the missus.

Nothing is ever perfect and maybe one of life’s lessons is that if you keep seeking perfection you will never appreciate what you have or ever be truly happy, but this is a great time for us. I’m not a religious sort but I guess I do have a spiritual side because I honestly believe that someone is looking out for us – how else do you explain such good fortune? At least I recognise this and it inspires me to try and be a better person... wish me luck with that!

As you can see I still haven’t reconciled whether or not to stop blogging. At times I think definitely yes, and other times, like these, I want a record of everything that’s happening. Who knows what will happen.

But in the meantime, I think it’s only fair to wish you good fortune also!

Pickfords, the sequel...

In the interest of fairness I should point out that the Pickfords sale rep has just popped round as they like to do follow-ups (was everything ok, did you get all the paperwork through in time – that sort of thing). We told her of the problems we had had, and she apologised and promised to make sure they were fed back to HQ. It also transpired that we were supposed to receive a load of paperwork after I had send in the acceptance form, which has never arrived, including even a receipt for the cheque I sent...

But the guys were great and will be back tomorrow (am!) to pack up the rest of our stuff. At least we’ve made a start, I feel better already!

Pickfords

Hmmm... Pickfords are not impressing so far! We’re still waiting for them to turn up! We had to send the agreement form back and forth because they kept making silly mistakes like calculating VAT at 17.5% not 15% and then wanting to charge us a premium for not damaging the property! I never did get a satisfactory answer about why I would want to take out this insurance? I’m paying for professional movers to not make mistakes, and yes, accidents do happen but my “move coordinator” could not explain why if a mover accidently broke or damaged something, Pickfords wouldn’t have their own insurance (if it was Pickfords’ fault) to cover this. In the end I told them I did not want the insurance...

So once we’d thrashed that out, you sign an acceptance form, send off a hefty cheque and wait till your move date. On the form it has a bit that says, when would you like the removers to turn up? And so I put 10am.

10am came and went this morning and eventually I called at 10.30 to be told they would be there between 12 and 1.30pm. Erm, say what? Apparently there is only am and pm on offer (despite it not saying that on the form and despite it having a space for you to specify what time you want them to turn up). Morning appointments start at 9am, and because I hadn’t specified 9am, they had given me an afternoon appointment. Eh? You would have thought someone would have emailed/called and made sure this was clear, but no. So when I called this morning, the woman I spoke to, my move coordinator by coincidence, promised she would call back after she found out what was going on. Only she never bothered. I had to call her back, and with her sounding even more bored than she had on the first phone call, she told me about the am/pm system. She agreed that we should have been told about this and reluctantly (very, very reluctantly) apologised, whilst letting it be known it wasn’t her fault. When it actual fact it was.

They have now turned up and the two men are pleasant and very calm. I keep looking round and thinking, there’s too much stuff, they’ll change their mind and say we can’t do it! But, so far, they appear to getting on with things without any hysteria. In fact if there is to be any hysteria, it’s going to be all me!

I shall blog again about the whole experience post-move. The guys seem great, but the administration is a little ropey!

Bye, bye...

As always when I have a lot to do, I blog! (Therefore I am?) Anyway, today is the last day before Pickfords descend and I am a little panicky. The dogs boarding mum is taking them up until the moment we actually leave for Cornwall on Tuesday evening so that Pluto in particularly, doesn’t get stressed. My partner pointed out that today would be the last day they spent in the house and I suddenly felt incredibly sad. It was pure projection, the dogs don’t give a hoot where they are as long as they are with us, but I guess it was the first time I really allowed myself to think of leaving in emotional terms rather than must do this, must do that...

I am sad, of course. I’ve loved this flat and I love London. Although owning my own home and moving to Cornwall are dreams, it doesn’t mean that this place and this time means any less. I moved back to London because it was always my home. I was born here and as a young gay writer, it was one of the best places to be in the world! But now, I’m a gay writer with a wife, two dogs, three chickens and a desire to reap what I sow – literally, I want to grow my own vegetables, to a lesser extent my own fruit, and eventually raise my own animals. And before that even, I want to raise my own children.

I like early nights and I’m rather too fond of my slippers. I don’t travel on night buses anymore, I drive a Hyundai. I do do wild and crazy things but on the understanding that I can do them sitting down. I still read Enid Blyton it’s just that now, they happen to be first editions. I have savings (not very much after buying a house!) but I do have savings, whereas at times in my life, I didn’t even have rent money...

I’m happy and I’m going to a place that will make me happier still, but it requires no small amount of daring do and it’s good to acknowledge that. Nobody can be brave all the time. But similarly it is equally important to acknowledge just how awesome London is. London probably saved my life. And this flat has been lovely too, it’s mine and my partner’s first home together. It’s Pluto and Bess’ first proper home ever, and it’s been a place of lots of visitors and lots of laughing and has been witness to some extraordinary moments in my life. But now it’s time to move on...

*Sigh* bye, bye Garden Flat!

Four days...

Four days till we move... we’re cramming in the visits, NYE was most of the gang (and another friend popped over before we left), yesterday was mother and father in-law and two friends who live down the road from us, tomorrow, brother-in-law and my mum...

Today we’ve got the day to ourselves. I’m taking down all the pictures down and doing a bit of a paint touch up, I need to clear down the home PC onto a portable hard drive as well because we’re recycling the tower (although taking the screen and keyboard) and getting another laptop. And we need to pack up all the Christmas decorations. We also need to tackle the garden which is in a shocking state...

But really, there’s not that much to do. I have a little flutter of stress now and again, but for someone who loathes moving, I’m doing rather well!

Happy New Year!

What a fantastic new year! We went up to the Cotswolds to see in NYE with some friends. We were supposed to stay over but because we couldn’t get a dog sitter we either had to not go, or drive back the same night – well, the next morning. We decided on the latter because we love our friends very much and always have a legendary good time and last night was no exception...

There were 11 of us, and my partner and I got there around 5.30pm after a great journey with almost no traffic. Music, homemade chilli, vodka jelly (not for me the designated driver!) and lots of giggling followed by a trip to a local dodgy pub where at one stage we were the only customers! A few more people did show up, but it was pretty much us, one cheesy DJ, a ‘light’ buffet (hula hoops and ham sandwiches anyone?), and some impressive attempts at pole dancing without a pole and thus ensued a totally fantastic new year! There was a free raffle and I won the main prize an enormous teddy bear (bigger than our dogs!) and a bottle of rose, which was particularly nice as I hadn’t been able to drink. Then back to the cottage for some Canadian ice wine – my first taste of what is apparently a rare and expensive wine – to toast the new year and because I could only have half a glass, our lovely host gave us a bottle to take away with us, which we’ll have tonight.

We were sad to go, not least because it will be the last time we see a couple of people for about six months (one in particularly, who is working in the States till July). We spent the whole evening just laughing our heads off, my friends getting drunker and sillier and me staying sober and still getting sillier. The pub was great, as soon as they realised I was driving, the landlord went upstairs to his flat and made me a coffee – and didn’t charge – which was really lovely. That and two red bulls meant I had all the stimulation I needed!

We headed home just after two and got in the door just after 4. I’ve only just got up and my partner is still in bed with a hangover.

Another legendary Shrivenham massive social... Happy New Year everyone!