The wind knocked right out of my sails...

...y'see, I had all these ideas for a blog post. As I lay in bed yesterday I was thinking it was about time I wrote something new, updated you all on the fascinating developments with my fireplace, told you what a lovely time we had on Saturday with my brother, sister-in-law and niece going to see Thomas the Tank Engine and friends at Chappell/Wakes Colne, and even time I wrote something serious but then I got up and started doing stuff, then when I browsed the logs later I looked at Glyn’s latest post, forgot what I wanted to say and decided not to say much for now, firstly because I'd advise you to check out his blog/vlog/vblog or whatever he wants to call it, and secondly 'cos I then forgot what it was I wanted to say. It was something deep and meaningful though, that much I remember...

But because I can't remember everything I did want to say I'll distill it down to this:

Thank you, Rich, Nicola and Bethany for a lovely day on Saturday. We love spending time with you but probably don't tell you enough.

And so as not to disappoint all those of you desperate to know how the house is looking, here's the latest picture of the fireplace...

Totally addicted to Face(book)...

Hi there.

Well, we had a great week at Summer School but are wrecked still. Also, as the title suggests, I've got a new addiction: Facebook. Seriously, it's ridiculously addictive and I blame it for my not blogging. Well, that and Glyn. Not sure why it's Glyn's fault. But it just is...

And as I've been bugged/pestered/persuaded to blog again I thought I'd update you with a picture or two...

We're having our fireplace stripped back to its original state, having cleared off the, frankly, nasty mantelpiece we had on there before. This is how it looks at present (well, the first picture is after he stripped back the wall, the second is the later one, with the hearth bricks replaced):

Hello? (Hello, hello, hello) Anybody out there? (there, there, there...)

It seems few of my chums are still actually blogging. Shame...

Anyway, just to update you (don't pretend you're not dying to know...) I've been spending lots of time driving. Most of the weekend, in fact, it seemed like I spent behind the wheel.

But in any case, yeah, that was it. We had a staff meeting for our divisional Summer School which has given me plenty to think about (and do!) before the even itself starts two weeks from Sunday.

And today I've just had my annual review at work. Been here for three years now so it seems logical to have a review, I guess. I hate them, probably 'cos from my first proper job I used to dread them as the boss and I didn't see eye-to-eye so they never went well.

But here they've always gone well even though I approach them with the same fear and dread. Silly, really...

Lacking inspiration...

As is seemingly the case with lots of other people on my blog roll I'm really lacking inspiration for a post.

So, as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that doesn't really apply here, allow me to point you towards a couple of interesting posts:

Rich has blogged about some of the work he's been doing and ideas he has in the pipelines. I would love to have creative ideas like this. Rich is one of the guys I've had the privilege of working with at Summer School and look forward to doing so again.

Kirsty is hosting a discussion about performance/worship. As ever it's nothing if not thought-provoking.

And although Glyn hasn't posted anything in a couple of weeks it's his birthday today so go and wish him happy birthday.

"For greater love hath no man than this, that he should promote other people's blogs" (this may have been adapted from somewhere, can't quite put my finger on where though).

Update:

Not at all spurred on by the fact she got mock 'umpy with me in her comment I should also point you towards Liz's blog where she's telling the world about the miracle of creation!

A murderer in our midst

So we're now settling into the house, enjoying the vista, sometimes even occasionally with sun but we've discovered a slight new problem: our cat's a murderous assassin.

Where we used to live was on a new development so the amount of local wildlife was negligible. Now, however, with a garden backing onto fields and the catflap installed (to the relief of myself and the cat as he'd started to take exception to being kept inside after the move and was scratching and biting the jiggery out of my limbs), what we assumed to be a sweet, innocent, cute-looking moggy has turned into a predatory monster.

Don't get me wrong, he's still capable of being enormously cute, in fact most of the time he is enormously cute, but on Friday night he started to show us what we've not seen for the past year he's been with us.

Those of you of a squeamish or vegetarian nature (like V, not that she reads this), you might want to turn away now. Those of you still reading, don't say you haven't been warned.

We'd decided to keep him (Bob, the cat, obviously) inside until such time as his new ID tags arrived and I had a chance to fit the catflap. This opportunity duly presented itself on Friday night so in it went, and out he went... but within 30 seconds he'd returned, complete with half-dead bird in his mouth. To cut a long story short he then proceeded to play with it until it was dead, then eat some of it and leave the rest for us. This was followed over the course of the next 24 hours by a fully-dead bird, couple of fieldmice and a vole, the last of which he actually brought upstairs to show us just what a good hunter he is.

As we'd not previously experienced this it all came as a bit of a shock, but I guess it's just in his nature and, having previously tried (and failed) to reason with him about not climbing on the sofa when he was wet and dirty, I decided not to waste my energy on it this time.

Problem is I now find myself in a bit of a quandry. Having defended cats when Chell blogged about it, I'm now facing up to the fact I live with a murderer. I feel so tortured... still, could be worse, I could have been that half-dead bird in his jaws...

Sometimes you go to write something and then decide to check it first.

We've finally moved house. FINALLY! So we now live in a little village on the outskirts of Chelmsford, wake up to a beautiful countryside view, etc etc etc blah blah blah but for the most part, since moving in last Wednesday we've just enjoyed the wonderful vista... in the rain.

On the whole the move itself went fine, but particular highlights included:

• having to do half the journey from Harlow to Chelmsford with the car windows wide open as the cat was a bit poorly on the way (poor thing, he wasn't best pleased at being put in his basket then into the car and showed it).
• trying to get the sofa into the lounge. And failing. Instead, making do with putting the sofa upstairs in a spare bedroom, scuffing paintwork and plaster on the way, and vowing to get this rectified asap.
• erm, that's it. Only two points. I'd make a rubbish officer.

But now we're settling in nicely but are still up to our ears in boxes etc.

So the title of this post. Do you ever get that, when you're just about to write or say something then you think "I'd better just check exactly what this means" and actually do check it?

Just had that. Was gonna call this post 'Like Flynn' (as in the phrase 'In like Flynn') but then checked it out. Google it for yourself if you can be bothered then realise why I scrapped it.

Hopefully I’ll get hooked up to t’interweb at home soon and stop being such a Luddite, then I can post more often. You can hardly wait. Go on, admit it...

Even more so than usual...

We're out of the loop at the moment: we're no longer at our old address, but don't move into our new house until the middle of next week. If you desperately, urgently need to get in touch with either of us, e-mail or call/text us on our mobiles. If you haven't got the numbers, try asking someone who you think will!

Blooming typical:

Post rant about the delays in the legal process: 2.54pm...

...then exchange contracts: 4.20pm.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

Time for a bit of a rant: it's on the subject, still, of buying and selling houses, so sorry if this will bore you but I'm just completely stumped by the whole thing. According to my understanding (and this is where the title comes in) of these matters, gleaned over the past few weeks of frustration and delays, there appears to be absolutely no legally-enforceable deadline by which point you have to have exchanged contracts for buying/selling a house.

In the case of our current move this means that basically any one party in the chain (and there are about 4 or 5 in ours, I think) can slow things down without anyone else involved being able to do anything about it.

In short: we agreed to sell our house to our buyers at the end of January. We had an offer accepted by our vendors at the start of March. We then did all the stuff required of us, in terms of mortgage paperwork and other legal paperwork, before going on holiday at the end of March. We came back mid-April to be faced with loads of stuff to do but expected this so it wasn't too much bother. We duly filled out all the necessary forms and returned them as quickly as possible, chasing up people as and when necessary so as not to delay the whole thing further.

So why, over two months later, are we (those of us actually buying and selling, and ultimately occupying, the houses) sitting here waiting for the exchange to go through?

Why is there no statutory time limit for all this stuff to have been completed? Why can one party legally delay things without any of the rest of us being able to stop them doing it? It's just complete and utter madness.

Our buyers are first-timers, i.e. they've got no property to sell and are buying a nearly-new property, so the legal paperwork took them next to no time, but through no fault of their (or our) own they've had to wait 4 and a half months to move house. We and our vendors have pushed and cajoled our legal representatives and done all the paperwork as quickly as possible but are still sat waiting.

IT'S ENORMOUSLY FRUSTRATING AND STRESSFUL!!!!!!!

So book my face!!!

Yes, like so many others I've now signed up for Facebook though I'm still not quite sure why...

...but it seems like fun.

In other news the move stuff is still dragging on, hence my silence on here (i.e. haven't got much time to blog and not much else to actually talk about and it's pretty dull if you're not involved in it) but when I move I'll hopefully re-discover some energy and enthusiasm and tha'.

I think, therefore I tag...

Having been tagged by Liz, here you go:

My tag: "Of or pertaining to the Aztecs or their language." from "The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" (sorry but I'm at work, waddya expect?).

OK, the rules:
Grab the book closest to you.
Turn to page 161.
Print the 5th complete sentence on your blog.
Tag 5 others.

So, I tag Martin, Chell, John, Matt W and Katie.

Oh, and I see Big Brother starts again tomorrow. Might leave the TV at ours when we move house and then go and collect it sometime in July to try and escape the gibberish.

Gah! The stress!

Blimey, I'm getting really stressed out with all this house malarkey... and this is before we even get as far as packing up (though we've started that bit) and moving.

Found out today our buyers are getting very frustrated at the whole thing taking so long to complete. V and then I told our estate agents we're equally frustrated at it all taking so long and added that we're doing nothing to hold it up. The estate agent then said he's made a few calls and checked a few things out and it seems there are delays further up the chain.

The basic thing is this: we need your prayers that the whole thing doesn't go belly-up now. We've been waiting for this to happen for about 7 months now (put our house on the market at the end of October) and are soo close (mimes holding fingers really close together) it'd be disastrous for it all to fall apart now.

So even though it may not be a big deal to you, we'd really appreciate it if you could pray for a swift resolution.

Ta

Just quickly...

...changes are afoot here, now I've got my new laptop. Will actually get round to adding some pictures and all that but for now what I wanted to do was to alert you to the fact that my sister-in-law, Nicola Hill, is doing the Race for Life in aid of Cancer Research UK on 20th May.

If you can spare a couple of quid, please go here and do the necessary:

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/nicolaeh

Will put a link on the side too. Hope you enjoyed ROOTS if you went, and if not that you just enjoyed your Bank Holiday (assuming you're in the UK, that is).

Nothing witty or clever to say...

...so no change there then. Just to say I'm still here but haven't had time to write anything of substance this week. I'm hampered by a few things:

1) Lack of anything interesting to write about
I've spent most of my evenings this week working in one way or another. Mostly doing stuff for an OU course I'm finishing. And you guessed it, I'm taking it right to the wire - the final deadline for the assessment is next Monday.

2) Lack of internet at home
Makes the main part of 1) difficult too, as it means I end up staying on at work a little longer to do my research. My boss is cool with that so it's not a problem as far as that's concerned, but it means I'm getting home a little later and then can't go on t'internet at home to update you on my thrilling and action-packed existence. No, really.

3) Loads of other things to do first when I do actually get round to finishing my studying and get the internet sorted
After we've moved (hopefully in a few weeks' time), I'm hoping I'll have the time to do some stuff: write up the journal from China (yes, Glyn, I'm aware you just can't wait for this but you'll have to), post it on here with some video and some pictures and maybe even have something approaching a life.

But I'll probably be reminded of other things I've got to do first in the new house.

So until such time, talk amongst yourselves and be entertained by the list of blogs I like reading, down the right-hand side of the page.

The feast of champions:

One brie, bacon and cranberry baguette.

One packet Marmite-flavoured crisps.

One Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

One bottle of Coke.

SCORE!

And for those who are interested, the China photos are in the process of being uploaded. Problem being that at the rate they're uploading you'll have to wait until just after the 2012 Olympics to actually view them.

So, erm, yeah, I'm back then...

Got approximately a thousand photos to sort through, a journal to finish, loads of video to edit, then I'll get round to putting it online. But for now, just know this:

China's flippin' awesome.

Thank you.

Leaving on a jet plane...

...but do have some idea of when I hope to be back again.

Anyway, today's my last day at work for nearly three weeks as me and the wife are off on holiday to China. Tomorrow we fly to Hong Kong then we head into China and make our way up to Beijing via lots of cool places like a Giant Panda Reserve, the Terracotta Army, the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City and, erm, lots of other equally-cool-but-currently-unmemorable places too.

I hope (but don't expect) that at some point on our travels I may be able to upload some photos, but don't hold your breath.

With any amount of luck you lovely people reading this will be able to click on the links which should have appeared above for the various attractions, but if not, just google them along with Wikipedia to see what I'm on about.

And then go "oooh" and "aahhhh" and "mwkfkjhs". Actually, scrap that last one, unless you're being sick.

A hierarchy of bloggers

Wow, who'd have thought it? OK, so after some comments about people being shifted up and down the list I've re-arranged the list of bloggers into alphabetical order. I realise the following may bug some people's sense of pedantry but "My bestest friend ever in the world" is above Martin as she's called Liz.

If anyone has a problem I suggest you take it up with the ombudsman...

More blogs added

At the request/suggestion(/harrassment) of those who will remain nameless I have added some new names to my list of friends who blog. You'll see on the list my wife, Verity, Liz Hall, Kirsty Caffull and Katie Allen have all been added to this esteemed company.

Now, I must confess I don't really know Katie that well but she was kind enough to leave a comment on my blog so I thought the favour was worth returning and extending.

Right, on with some work...

I don't follow trends, I set 'em...

I see the wife's started blogging now...

http://ifievergetroundtoit.blogspot.com/

Curses, already her post is better than my two efforts.

I did threaten to stop after 6 weeks. I may make it less than that. For the record though, I also had a rubbish commute today, just going the other way, out of London.

Oh the excitement.

And if anyone can help me to add video to the side in Google blogger (can't find it in the help section and it is needed - I wish to treat you all to a fine exhibition of dance) I really would be so grateful. I might even mention your name... as long as it's not Glyn who does it, I couldn't bear to be shown up for a techno idiot by him...