Four

The day began with a Feldenkrais lesson at C's house, and an encounter with her beautiful 18 month old son. The lesson and the encounter helped calm and lighten my spirits. Less enchanting were various encounters yesterday and today with the electrician, who is impatient, does not think ahead, and does not give one time to think when presenting questions and dilemmas. The earth out the back of the house, and the various pipes inside which wires run to and from it, are unsightly and we have not been given much opportunity to influence the decisions about their position. We hope we can find ways to cover them... The house has been rewired with stupid 3-prong bayonet bulb sockets in all the pendant lights, supposedly to meet new regulations re energy saving. The bulbs you have to use in them are only available from one source online at around £10 a go! Did he tell us these would be needed? Did he ask if we actually wanted them all to be like this? The requirement appears to be that 1 in 4 light fittings should have these sockets. About half of ours are this type... It seems you can buy the conventional ones quite cheaply and change them over yourself (standing on ladder, fiddling with wires etc), so you can use ordinary energy-saving bayonet bulbs, but having spent a fortune on the rewire this seems a little ironic. Anyway, for better or worse, the power goes live tomorrow morning at 8.00 - the official testing man runs his test, and then hopefully, the sparky goes away!

Our lovely 'vertigo' cupboard was delivered this afternoon - drawers at the top, cupboard underneath. Very fitting as I have been suffering from mild stress-related vertigo that is worst when I bend forward! The decorator's off to Spain tomorrow so the painting is on hold now, but 85% done I'd say. The 'Oriental Ginger' in the bedroom looks very tasty with the 'Natural Hessian'.

Back here we have been packing box after box - mostly books. I had forgotten how many boxes they fill!! I'm off now to pack up the 'second layer' of kitchen stuff, leaving only the essential 'first layer' to be done on the day. Eating out tomorrow and Saturday and cooking in two pots on Sunday! Next will be taking down the pictures, wrapping them, and finding a nice big box for them. Then the house will really start to look bare. Meanwhile the new one starts to have touches of home - some plants (one tall one lurking in the shower out of harm's way), a little table and the famous cupboard. Our fridge is up there too. We might even get it plugged in tomorrow.