The week started off with a visit from my boss to deliver my work computer and after a couple of hours I was good to go...well that's if the internet wanted to work properly, which it didn't. In fact it stopped working altogether by Tuesday, so my work was on hold until Wednesday when I waited ALL MORNING for a BT technician only to turn up at half 12 (half an hour before the 8am-1pm time slot) and fix the problem within ten minutes. Ahhh, finally I could start work, well that's if the connection was fast enough. Thanks to BT's policy of capping how many Mbps you get for the first ten days of your new connection, I was unable to stretch my editing wings fully all week (since then the connection has now been uncapped but that's only thanks to another hundred or so call to BT to get it sorted.) Good old phone line monopolising BT.
Tuesday was a great day, as on Tuesday we got our new-second-hand sofa delivered. I never knew how much a sofa could impact on your personal happiness, and thanks to a lucky eBay purchase of £20 for the sofa AND delivery our smugness overflowed and mixed with the happiness to create one big mushy ball of cosy gunk. In addition to the sofa, a couple of attractive throws I had also bought on eBay arrived though the post. Needless to say as soon as work was over, I dived bum first into the cosy stew bubbling away in the living room and snuggled down with a book. We had planned to make a visit to the Chester film society for their evening's screening of 'Essential Killing' however after calling the three telephone numbers required to book a ticket and not getting an answer, and the fact that Michael got home from work feeling one step away from the mighty sleep kingdom, we instead settled in for the night enjoying the new comfort of our living room. The camping chairs have been thrown in a corner somewhere, sorry camping chairs - you're only lovely when faced with a wet field on a groggy hung over Saturday morning at a festival. We'll appreciate you another time.
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| Drool |
Michael's parents came to visit for a few days on Wednesday, so we decided to head out to a nearby pub for a meal. This wasn't any pub, this was a palace. In nearby Erbistock you hang a right off the main road down a windy country road for about a mile and a half. At the end of this road you will find a pot of gold in the shape of The Boat Inn. Situated right on the river Dee, The Boat had the most amazing food I have ever eaten in a country pub (corn on the cob? For starters? Yes please!) I tasted a half pint of a pale ale called Cheshire Cat, which played a delightful tune on my t-buds. Along with one of the best fish (whale) and chips with mushy peas I've ever had, the whole mix was a fantastic experience for my oral senses. I didn't want to leave this place in a hurry. After dinner, a couple of the locals in the next room let their dogs off the leash and we were met with a happy black lab called CJ and a smaller dog resembling a mop, who was called Boris, they gratefully snuffled up any food scraps around our feet. We got to talking to the locals who firstly mistook my accent as Scottish (?), then after a short chat they began letting us in on some sweet local knowledge, (such as how to pronounce the nearby town of Rhosllanerchrugog's name by remembering to just say Rhos-Lemon-Tree-Frog) and beckoned us back to the pub at the weekend to share more drinks with them. Driving back down the country lane after our meal, we realised the sky was incredibly clear and stopped off at the side of the road (with the car lights off) to marvel the stars in the un-light polluted sky. I can honestly say I have never seen so many stars in the sky, and when Michael pointed out the milky way to me, I don't think I stopped beaming from ear to ear for the rest of the night. Stunning, and along with the Woodpecker sighting the week before, this was one big tick on the list of reasons to move here.
Michael's parents visited us again on Saturday, and we decided to go to a nearby antique warehouse emporium. It was the biggest place of it's kind I've been in and we easily stayed there for an hour. After picking out a couple of bits and bobs for the house, we stumbled upon a reduced price side board which looked a bit battered but in need of a nice (cheap) home to live in - after two weeks of stepping over the record player and the box of our booze in the living room, we decided to buy the side board to house these items, including our ever growing record collection. After speaking to the lady who owned the chest, we handed over our money and waited for her to deliver it that evening. We waited, 7pm came and went, then 8pm. By which time we began to feel like we'd been swizzed out of our money. OK OK, just chill, she's probably caught up in traffic, right? People took their time about things around here. So 9pm came, I felt like I had been watching the window way more than the film we were in the middle of and by 10pm we started to panic. After recounting our steps at the emporium about 10 times, and realising we had no way of even proving we had bought it (not even a receipt) we made a plan to call the place in the morning, but we still had that sinking feeling of being done over. Our trust in people minimised to the size of a peanut.
We had planned to start work on the garden in the morning, but instead the weather turned against us, the rain hammered down and it hammered down hard all day. After calling the Emporium, we learned that the lady did in fact work for them (mega phew!) and that they would ask her to get in touch. Two hours went by without a peep, finally she rang just after lunch and mumbled some things about her being ill and spilling paint in the van but she would deliver it as soon as the paint was cleared up. 'That's fine', I forgivingly sang down the phone, 'cleaning up some spilled paint won't take long' I thought. 5pm rolled around, we'd stayed in the house all day waiting for the delivery and around about this point I think the cabin fever started to kick in so we called her up - only to find her phone was off:
"WE HAVE BEEN SWIZZED!!!" We cried, flinging our bored limbs in the air. After a lot of phoning around, we eventually got word that she was on her way, and it wasn't until 7pm that it got delivered, without a hint of apology. Well I rather that than have money stolen from me.
The side board is now proudly displayed in our front room, it's weird to enjoy owning furniture. It's something I've never been bothered about before, but I guess because we're so far away from Leeds - these little comforts mean a lot. It's a feeling much more involved than materialism, it's trying to make an unfamiliar corner of the world into something of your own. The fact that we're trying to source second hand bits of furniture is all the more worthwhile, knowing that we're recycling and saving money is pretty important to us although I hope it doesn't become an addiction and I end up trawling antique emporiums for days, napping on 17th century futons and snacking on the crumbs I find in old kitchen pots, eventually being chased out of warehouses by rich middle aged women wearing Barbour jackets and polo necks, their stringed DNKY glasses swinging wildly about their buxom chests as they savagely shake their fists in the air.
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| New chest knobs (snigger) |
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| More chest knobs (chuckle) |
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