One week later

Can’t believe we’ve only been back a week. At times, walking around this house again I can’t believe we ever went away really. Then I notice the lack of sofa, bed etc and it all comes back to me!

This is a far better place to be than the month or so we spent at Mum & Dad’s but sleeping on camping mats on the floor is no sustainable life. I have to keep reminding myself it’s only a month ago we had the interview and got offered the croft, a month from now we’ll be almost there and two months from now we’ll definitely be there. A year from now it will really be our home. I don’t want to wish time away so I’m trying to find the positives in the delay and having already sorted out all our stuff, arranged the car and trailer, planned the carpet fitting and house being rented again I guess we can focus on spending time with family and friends before we go and learning lots about crops and livestock from our library of books on the subjects. It is frustrating to have missed out on things such as the Big Bang and Albert Hall where friends have been the last couple of days as when they were first mooted I had to assume we’d not be around whereas infact we could have gone…

This morning we all went through our clothes – everything is over here now so we all had big trying on sessions. Davies has enough of everything other than socks. Scarlett is fine for tops but could do with more pants and definitely needs more trousers. She is not so bothered about socks ;). Ady also needs jeans. I have plenty of everything but have been very ruthless with getting rid of more stuff and now have just three bags of clothes and shoes. It still feels excessive compared to what everyone else has but unlike the kids I won’t be growing out of my clothes so what I have kept will fit me forever. It was quite gratifying to be trying on so many things and find them massively too big though.

A couple of washes went on and were hung outside to dry – towels and jumpers that had been in storage and smelt a bit musty.

Scarlett and I did some more of the craft kit she started last night – it’s really good actually Dazzling Dolphin – last night she put together the 3d wooden puzzle bit of it, this morning was sculpting it with plaster gauze stuff you dipped in water and then wrapped over the wood. She really enjoyed doing it and has a very cool looking dolphin to paint tomorrow when it’s dry using the acrylic paint and glitter than came with the kit. I picked it up cheap in TKMaxx before Christmas as my brother’s Christmas pressie for her but I’d really recommend it. Would get more of the plaster gauze stuff too, I think we could do some excellent stuff with it.

We had lunch and then headed out – first to the library where I tried to sneak in to use the computer but got spotted. A quick catch up with the four colleagues in today and £5 later I’d sorted out the croft application forms and printed off the kindle return label too with internet access and printing charges (sadly the colleagues in were not ones who would do it for free!). We picked up a mothers day card for my Mum & Granny and posted the forms off.

Over to Dad’s via the charity shop to drop off the last couple of boxes of stuff. We checked what was in the garage – mostly camping stuff which is coming with us, chairs which Caz and Bid are having and the dalek. Davies has asked Dad if that can stay there a bit longer and Dad said yes. I do like the idea of restoring it and bringing it to Rum at some point really 🙂 I see it becomming some sort of family heirloom that my descendants are one day terrified with the story of Mad Old Granny Nic and her curious antics using the dalek as evidence 😆

Back over to Lancing to arrange the carpet fitter for next week. He needs it paid for upfront as we don’t have an official address so we’ll do that on Monday but it’s booked in for next Friday which means we’ll be spending next Thursday evening taking up old carpet and much of next Friday taking it to the tip.

I had a phonecall from Vikki on Rum to say she thinks moving the static delivery back a couple of weeks would be a good idea and that if we want to stay with her in the period between us arriving and the static arriving she’d be happy to have us 🙂 It was great to talk to her actually, it made it all feel nice and real again :). We’ve got permission (backed up by a nice email from Sean with an official permission letter) to put the static on the path next to the croft land if the lorry can’t get it onto our actual land, which takes the pressure off on delivery day. I’ve since emailed to ask whether the new date (25th April) is realistic as I doubt the croft paperwork will be finalised even by then. From our point of view we are happy to move and get started on things prior to actual official tenancy paperwork but I need to check that IRCT is happy for that too.

Baths, roast dinner and Lassie as tonight’s film. Now Ady is asleep infront of Open All Hours while both children are still awake and watching!