From Leamington into Warwick 1

I realise I haven't done a proper entry since we got the house. There's a simple reason for this. I haven't had time. I almost managed to fit in a quick one last night but I was just that little bit too rushed off my feet. So, I suppose you�re going to want to know what happened.

I got the call to say that we'd completed at about 12:10 at Wednesday lunchtime. Alison and I met at the Halifax, picked up the keys (which was a bit easier than expected, they didn't want ID or anything which was worrying), and then headed straight over to the house to have lunch (a "picnic" on the living room floor).

Our first surprise was the pile of suitcases just inside the door. The woman who had sold us the place hadn't quite got all of her stuff out in time, and she turned up in the middle of lunch to collect it. This was a bit awkward and I think all parties involved felt rather uncomfortable. Then, just as she was moving her stuff out, the cooker arrived. Chaos :-D

Once we'd finished lunch, it was time to get down to work. Alison got started on the painting (well, if applying plaster sealant counts as actual painting, rather than just applying dodgy chemicals with a paintbrush) while I got to grips with changing the bathroom light (because the light fitting was one that was considered unsafe for a bathroom). It wasn't as straightforward as I expected, and I think I learnt a lot about electrical wiring in that first few hours, but it did work properly first time, and no bits that weren't suppose to heat up heated up, or anything like that, so it seems to have worked. I didn't get as far as wiring a proper light into the loft, because by then it was starting to get to the point when I should really think about changing the locks.

Changing locks on UPVC doors is pretty simple. Not in a way that is dodgy from a security point of view, just plain simple. The problem with this is that I only found this out after I'd pretty much dismantled the entire mechanism on the back door. Yeah, duh. And in the end I could only get 1 replacement lock, so the back door remained as it was and only the front door got a brand spanking new lock. There seems to have been a rush on these locks, as visits to 4 DIY superstores and 2 local hardware stores did not yield a new lock for the back door. I don't even know where to start on sorting out the garage lock.

Somewhere around this point there was an amusing incident involving Alison and the icebox which is being used as a substitute fridge until the proper move tomorrow. She went to open it, then hesitated and said "for a moment there I was expecting a light to come on as I opened it." Needless to say, this occurrence put me in fits of giggles.

We ate out on Wednesday night, at one of our favourite haunts, the local Frankie and Benny's. They didn�t seem too keen on keeping our custom, though. I don't know if it was outwardly obvious that we were now Warwick residents and that this was a problem for a Leamington restaurant, but they did seem quite keen on messing us around. We had to wait for a table. This is fair enough. If they're busy, they're busy. One couple who arrived after us were shown to their table first � as it turned out this was fair enough because they took a smoking table, when we wanted a non-smoking one, but then another couple walked in and were shown straight to a table. Hmph. It even turned out that the table they were shown to was the one that the manageress had cleaned for us. Hmph. Once we were seated it took a while for anyone to show interest in taking our order, and then took quite a while for it to turn up. Hmph. Sorry, this probably sounds like whinging. The desserts pretty much made up for it though. It was the first time we'd ever finished our meals there with room for dessert, so this was a new experience for us. Firstly, the desserts were bloody marvellous. Secondly, as we left Alison noticed that we hadn't been charged for them. Fantastic.

Our first night in the house, despite being spent on a lumpy air-bed, was the best night's sleep I'd had since Saturday night. That wasn't saying much, however, and I still didn't make it through to the end of the day without feeling like I was flagging badly.

And then I had my signing class. To recap this is the second time around that I've done BSL Stage 2 � I failed the exam first time around in Summer 2001. As it turned out, the class went fine, but I found that I was more out of practice than I�d expected � it has after all been about 6 months since I�d done any proper signing. There look like being a few "characters" in the class, more on that in future weeks when I'm a bit more familiar with people.

After the class I went back to Leamington to finish up my packing and pick up some more "essential" stuff, including some plants to make the new house look a bit more homey. Which it now does. I think I slept a lot better last night, but I still have a lot of catching up to do. Hopefully Sunday will be able to involve a lie-in.

So now I'm going to stop pretending that I'm working on a functional spec and switch to actually working on a functional spec instead. Later, people.