What a Weekend!

We set off up country for a visit to the old house, to make sure all was ok and to collect some things, like extra bike gear etc. So Thursday night after work, SOH picked me up and he drove all the way up to Bedford. I was no use whatsoever in driving as I was already tired, and drained and my only role was to provide things as and when he needed them.

We picked up a KFC en-route to the house, when we finally understood the very thick accent of the guy serving, and our meal was thrown at us we headed for the house and hopefully at least a comfortable night.

What greeted us was a silent, dark and very cold house as the boiler had stopped working, my mind went immediately to how much was this going to cost. Nothing could be done in the dark, so we had a couple of portable fires to warm up the bedroom and living room but were still very cold when we went to bed in an icy cold bed.

Made a mental note to myself to use the electric blanket next time!

Friday dawned grey and dreary, and to add insult to injury Cornwall had blue skies and sunshine.. life just wasn't fair. SOH did his genius thing with the boiler and soon the hot water was doing its job and warming up the house which was soon toasty hot.

A drip, drip, drip from the bathroom alterted us to the next problem.. a leaking toilet seal; age and cold had meant that the seal had contracted and hardened and no longer kept the water out. Time to call a plumber.

This led to us finding the third and hopefully final problem, no phone.. just a whole load of crackling on the line. Luckily we both have mobiles and soon Steve the Plumber was enroute with his magic bag of tricks to resolve the drip in the toilet and I used the hub phone to contact BT to try and get a fix for the phone problem. The online test showed there was a problem and that an engineer would be dispatched by Monday at the latest - No good to us as we had no broadband at all nor a working phone line mostly.

Still, there were things we could do like reorganise the garage of boxes, finding the ones we wanted and putting the others in some sort of order. I made roast chicken for tea, with roasted potatoes and carrots (trust me if you have never roasted carrots please try them they are absolutely gorgeous) and served with some mashed swede. I should have also done some runner beans but forgot.

We did a bit of shopping at the weekend, at Milton Keynes, I think I have got used to the pace of life down here now, and I couldn't deal with the amount of traffic while trying to drive the Volvo which was new to me. We visited a couple of shops, and I also dropped in on my Aunt who was full of life, and having hydrotherapy on her bad knee at Bedford Hospital. It was good to hear her being so cheerful.

We had a chinese from the local shop, on Saturday evening with a bottle of wine, but it wasn't too successful in fact we both said how bland it was and we didn't really enjoy it. It was late when we both went to bed, and we had to be up early Sunday morning to pack the car, clean the house and travel back down. Even so it was 10.30am by the time we left.