2nd January, 2011
Sunday – New Year’s Resolution – we walked to the paper shop. Haven’t done 200 metres unassisted for a long time. Got back to the shoebox but was too tired to read the papers. We have been having some second thoughts about the Woking property over Christmas. We haven’t been able even to walk the floor plan yet although we do now have detailed measurements. A door has been changed (by the planners according to the builders) from a glass panelled one to an almost solid one. It will make the lounge too dark. We are seeking an urgent meeting with the developers who weren’t available over Christmas and New Year. I don’t know what’s happening to the workers of today.
3rd January, 2011
And now we’ve got a Bank Holiday. What has happened to the work ethic? Pauline & I are working on our itinerary for Greece 2011. At the moment, this is the plan:
4th January, 2011
Drove over to Leeds to look at furniture shops today and found a number of items that would suit us but soon decided that it was all too soon to start purchasing. We might even be going back into the property search business if we can’t resolve the problems in Woking. We must live for the moment and be patient about the future. Later, I wanted to stay up to listen to the Test Match but fell asleep and went to bed. I haven’t got Ruth’s stamina.
5th January, 2011
Off to the dentist this morning. Before I got together with Pauline in 1978, I hadn’t been to the dentist for ten years – since I left home, in fact. She made me join a brand new practice opening up in Meltham, the village where we then lived. It was run by a young man called John Derbyshire who we became friendly with. Although he eventually sold the practice and we have moved house three times, we have stayed with the practice. It is only seven miles away. It has been sold again recently and is now in Asian hands. Whether it is our sensitivities or not, it appears that we are being pushed in to many more peripheral and expensive procedures than we ever were in the past. Suddenly, today, ‘scale and polish’ which is standard NHS treatment incorporated in a check-up was no longer possible for either Pauline or I. We both need, according to Waqar Mohammed, intensive and expensive treatment from the hygenist who will then scale our teeth. Suspicious, we are grateful to be moving elsewhere soon.
Fantastic football results last night and tonight but feel sorry for Bolton and for Roy Hodgson. Can I stay up to listen to the cricket? Do they really need me now anyway.
6th January, 2011
Good day today. In one, fell swoop we have resolved the planning issue on our apartment in Woking. We think it may have been because the lead sales administrator was absent because her stand-in for a day was able to assimilate the problem, check it with Head Office, instruct the Site Manager and free the log jam. We now think that the lead sales administrator couldn’t be bothered or wasn’t prepared to make waves for the Site Manager. We are delighted.
We went out to rejoin our Health Club today. We’ll be here – on and off – for about three more months so we took out a three month joint contract for £210.00. The club has a good pool, gym, sauna, steam room and jacuzzi with restaurant/coffee shop attached. We can go off-peak (9.00 am – 5.00 pm / Monday – Friday) for less than £1.70 each per day. We started using this Health Club in 2002 and these prices are now at their cheapest. We spent a couple of hours swimming and preening.
7th January, 2011
Oh no! Just as I’m whooping up our Ashes victory, I look outside to find heavy snow has fallen and is still falling. We could really do without that.
8th January, 2011
Up early now we’ve beaten the convicts. Where is the snow? Gone. Simple day today. Sainsburys trip and the focus on the two current strands of our life:
- Preparing the legal pack for the apartment purchase
- Completing the travel arrangements for April – October 2011
Before our weekly trip to Sainsburys, we went to a quaint little Huddersfield shop that we’ve used for years to buy some new kitchen knives. It is a wonderful, old hardware shop which I now realise is the oldest existing shop in Huddersfield. I got into conversation with the owner who told me that it was opened in 1865 – and he brought out photographs – and had been in the family ever since.
It doesn’t look much in this photo but the wheel above the shop is not a satellite dish but a timber saw wheel like the one that chopped of Grandad Sanders’ fingers.
Sanders Blog 