Caravan Diary, Day 45

Getting on with the decorating is a lot easier now that Mats has started going to nursery full time. I would have made even more progress had I not spent most of Sunday and Monday up to my shoulder in crap trying to unblock our main drain again (eurghhh!!!!). The amount of rubbish I found in its depths beggars belief: stones, broken bits of metal grate, blood sugar test strips... Well, anyway, after many hours of scooping out liquid and ladling out junk it is now flowing again (for the moment), but thank goodness its days are numbered due to our impending kitchen extension! Keep your fingers crossed that it'll not give me any more grief until the work on the kitchen starts in autumn.

But the weekend had much better moments as well: We had a visit from Vicky, Megan, Oliver and Rowan who stayed for lunch and a walk and extended afternoon tea complete with Kidlington-made scones. It was lovely to see everyone, especially Roo who has grown so much since we saw him last!

Many of you will remember how I whined about 2013 getting off to such a rubbish start. Well, turns out it could have been A LOT WORSE! For reasons too complicated to explain here I happened to end up in our old house on Saturday evening. As it happens, our buyer hasn't even moved in, yet, because he started a new job in Manchester three weeks ago. Phiuhh! In fact: mega-phiuhhh!!!!! Had our sale taken even a couple of weeks longer to go through it would most certainly have collapsed, because this guy would not have bought Princes Street after all!!!!!!!!! And it gets worse: last week there was yet another fire in the derelict pub next door, so nobody else would have bought it, either. At least not for the foreseeable future. I simply cannot put into words just how grateful this all makes me feel. We HAVE sold and we HAVE moved. And we're loving being in this wreck of a place and doing it up. Yes, it's stressful, and yes, it's cramped, but hey, it's only a matter of time. Even if it is months until we get rid of the chaos and the dust. What is that in comparison to what could have been?...