…grayblog…

Category: married life

  • De-Christmassing

    My wife is de-Christmassing the house already. Somehow, I feel that it is slightly premature to do so, but she tells me that it is "New Year’s Day – not Christmas any more".
    This does have one significant advantage. With all the cards removed from the shelves, I can now get to my CD collection again without causing an avalanche of festive greetings. This is a good thing, although I am reminded that I am yet to alphabetise the discs and update the catalogue of the collection to cover recent purchases (admittedly very few, but we got three CDs for Christmas and purchased a further eight in Brighton the other day). It also looks like we’ll be merging our collections, so there will be two or three duplicates that will be sold off on Amazon in order to fund a new purchase or two.

  • Two thousand and five

    We prepared for the New Year by taking the waters at the pub next door last night, before retiring to our sofa with the kittens. Today, we walked off the excess with a long walk through the fields and woods around the next village, in the company of a whole bunch of the locals, plus H’s parents, sister and brother-in-law.
    And we’re still eating chocolate.

  • Review

    Oh blimey! There are only a few hours to go, most of which will be spent in the pub next door, and I haven’t written my end of year review yet! OK, time pressures mean it’ll be bullet points:

      Highlights, in roughly chronological order:

    • my trip to Saumur
    • birthday trip to Lisboa
    • the grand tour of the low countries
    • selling my flat
    • finally getting to live full-time with Hels
    • the grand tour of Germany
    • getting married! (obviously!)
    • the honeymoon in Sicily
    • getting our own home in Ruralville
    • kittens!
      Lowlights:

    • not selling Hels’s flat
    • generally not having enough money or time for all the things we want to do
    • ummm… that’s about it really

    All in all, 2004 has been excellent. PFE continues to plod along, family are healthy and happy (mostly!) and I married the perfect girl for me. You can’t ask for much more than that really.
    Happy New Year to you. Come back to the same place this time next year for another exciting annual review!

  • Baker

    Today, for the first time in my life, I made and baked a loaf of bread*. And very good it was too, even if I say so myself.

    * Actually, what I did was to measure out some ingredients and put them in our shiny new bread maker. I then switched it on. Five hours later I went back and there was a loaf there. This is exactly the style of bread making that I can cope with.

  • Meow

    So, whilst I may not be at the bloggers’ party tonight, I can live up to one other blogging tradition – yes, at long last, a post about kittens! I just know that this is going to make Vaughan jealous.
    This week, we went down to the RSPCA cat rehoming centre at Hastings and put our name down for these two "poor little fellas". They’re going to make it, Rolf.
    This one has been named Monty by us.
    Monty
    He’s completely mad, a total livewire. He’s bound to wreck the place.

    This one has yet to be given a name.
    no name yet
    She’s much more quiet and retiring, in marked contrast to Monty. We reckon that, once we have her here, a name will come to us.

    The RSPCA will send out a visitor to check that we’re ok to own cats, but since we’ve already passed the test with another animal rehoming charity within the last week, we’re confident that it will just be a formality. In fact, we’re so confident that we went out and purchased kitten food, a litter tray, litter, a new cat flap (now fitted), a scratching post, a basket, a carrier and assorted toys today.
    This is going to be fun.

  • Mixed messages

    On the main church in Taormina, right at the top of the façade, there is a skull and crossbones. Catholic pirates?
    skull and crossbones on church in Taormina

  • Home is where the blog is

    I’m sitting in our conservatory, happily blogging in a wireless stylee. I’ve not tested it yet, but I reckon I’ll be able to log into my wireless LAN in the pub. Then I’ll be really happy.
    Life is gradually settling down in Graybo Towers. We’ve repainted the lounge, stairway and both bedrooms. The house has been furnished cheaply but stylishly. The new sexy sofas have been ordered and will be delivered in the new year. We’ve got countless jobs still to do on our new home, but we’re getting there. We are both very tired, but we’ve been helped a lot by our family, and we finally managed to relax in our new home this evening – meatballs in tomato sauce, a bottle of Vinho Verde from our trip earlier this year to Lisboa and some lovely music – all by candlelight on our new table. All this coupled with waking up this morning to the view of the horses in the field across the road as well as the peace and solitude of our rural retreat. It feels like our home.

  • Very busy

    As has just been pointed out in conversation between my wife and her sister, you can tell that Graybo has been very busy because he has written hardly anything at his website.

    Yup.

    Thanks to the help already mentioned, the back of the decorating is definitely broken. Needless to say, we collective feel like our backs are broken too.
    Top discovery of the week: the local pub (walking distance door-to-door: ninety seconds if you drag your feet, but not named here because Hels doesn’t want the whereabouts of our new abode revealed at the site) does a mean curry night on Tuesdays – two curries for £8.50 is not bad at all, and they are very tasty and generously proportioned.

  • Chaos

    Paint everywhere. Boxes everywhere. Slightly frayed tempers. But getting there.
    And big thanks to Tim, Lu and Kev for coming over to help.

  • New house

    We have the keys. We’ve cleaned. We’ve started spotting some paint here and there. We’ve had bacon and egg sannies. We have two phone lines. We have broadband. We have gas. We have electricity. We have water.
    We’ve got a home.
    Not bad for day one.