But will you need it in a static?

Everyone else was awake and noisy long before I was in the mood for such behaviour this morning. I was particularly irked to realise that having put a Shrek dvd on (do you have any idea how much Gingie’s voice grates when it invades post waking slumber? It’s like fingernails down a sodding blackboard!) everyone else had buggered off out of the room anyway!!!

Good humour restored with a full pot of tea (Ady is LOVING having full on access to a kitchen ;)) we gathered ourselves together, Ady rang to book the static – we need to get a deposit cheque in the post and the balance following before too long. It’s provisionally booked for delivery on 12th April, but they’ll ring and confirm that next week. I made a phonecall to arrange a different estate agent visiting on Monday to look at the house and we headed off over to Mum & Dad’s.

Only Frazer was home so we got stuck in to sorting stuff out. The kids are sorting their stuff into ‘coming to Rum’, ‘begging Granny and Grandad to store for us for a bit longer’ and ‘can finally bear to part with’ piles. I imagine everything will start off in the coming with us pile and gradually move through the ranks… we are sorting out stuff into ‘coming with us to Rum’, ‘ask Mum & Dad to store a bit longer’, ‘ebay or charity shop (it has to be worth over a fiver on ebay we’ve decided to justify all the photographing, listing and faffing, we may amend this and do a car boot sale if we can fit a Sunday morning into our schedule)’, ‘tip’ and ‘for Caz and Bid’ who are moving into a house next week and are very grateful for anything we can donate to furnish it with.

So far the biggest pile by far is ebay / charity shop. The tip pile (which is currently residing in the back of the car ready to drop off in the morning) was pretty big – how? How did we end up with stuff that is going to the tip? The pile to come with us is fairly sensible and the pile to ask Mum & Dad to store is fairly small consisting of stuff like photo albums, pictures in frames, precious baby clothes, wedding dress, funeral suit each for Ady and I and a couple of size 10 cocktail dresses that I think maybe just maybe Scarlett might one day consider wearing. Oh and a pair of thigh high black suede boots with 6inch heels that I suspect I won’t get a lot of wear out of as a crofter but can’t quite part with either….

Dad came home and gave us some money to go and get some food for lunch so Ady and I nipped up to Sainsburys for the sort of food we only buy when someone else is paying ;). It was a productive day with a good third of the boxes gone through. Once we’ve gone through everything we’ll need to repack the stuff to take and stuff to store and make some decisions on the stuff to sell too but it felt like we made some real headway today.

Davies has been after a 3DS game and didn’t think he had enough money for it but we found a piggy bank of his in the boxes which was full of coppers and silver and he totted it up to discover he had over £10 in there which meant he did have enough. I also told Scarlett that if she wanted to get Humphrey a bigger cage (which has always been her plan) she needed to do it while we’re down here on the mainland really. So at 530 the kids and I went across to Argos to collect the reserved DS game and Pets at Home to look at hamster cages. We’d cut it fine really and looked at cages first where I got spotted by a friend – Matt who was keen to catch up on all our news (facebook had given him most of it but he was full of further questions). His wife is very jealous of our adventures and would love to do something similar but Matt tells me she can’t even consider camping as it means she has to be without her hair straightners so I’m guessing our lifestyle is not quite suitable for her 😉 Lovely to see him but it meant we dashed across to Argos just as they were closing to get the game and took ages counting out all the coppers and silvers. Then back to the pet shop which I’d not realised also closed at 6pm and the doors were already locked. Scarlett looked so sad and miserable that the manager opened back up again so we could go in and grab the cage! Bless him, and of course he got £40 in his till at the last minute too!

Back to my parents for a last cup of tea with Dad and the hope that Mum would get home (she’d been out with a friend for the day) but she didn’t so as we’re back there tomorrow anyway and the kids were desperate to get back to our house to show Humph his new palace and play on the new game we loaded the car up for the tip in the morning and came home.

Humph is most happy in his new abode, lots more room, two extra floors, play tunnel, ladders, cage to climb up etc. D loves the game. Ady cooked, we all had baths (Scarlett got in with me and we had interesting chats about bodies and puberty) and after an ill fated attempt to watch Mrs Doubtfire we ended up putting on a version of Oliver Twist that was rather dark (I know the story is not cheery anyway but this is really grim) which Scarlett declared a bit rubbish without all the songs! 😆 I’ve been looking at my John Seymour book and researching midge repellent. Our big priority now is finding a vehicle and trailer so we can book a passage on the ferry before the static and know just how much space we have for bringing stuff with us.