The Jury's Out

Well, that was short but sweet wasn't it? After planning this week and next week around daily trips to the Crown Court in Liverpool, I (along with around thirty others) found myself discharged back into the real world at about 4.30 today;  we were told that our services were not required next week so our ten day commitment turned out in fact to be just four. 


I'm not complaining. Jury service was not an unpleasant experience and we were certainly very well looked after. Observing the groups of jurors gathered in the waiting area every day at lunch time and during breaks in the trials it appeared that a number of friendships were being formed. There was a general air of camaraderie about the place which allowed us to relax and concentrate upon the job in hand. Had we not had such a lot of stuff to do at home I would have been quite happy to do the full stint.


As things are, the early reprieve is a bit of a Godsend as we've some family visiting next week and then we have to carry on with going through everything in the house and deciding whether or not we'll be taking it to Suffolk. As for Suffolk, the architect hopes to present the plans to prospective builders next week but then expects them to want four more weeks in which to come up with their quotes. This would mean that it could be into August before the builders get cracking; which in turn means that it could be almost Christmas before the house is ready for us to move in. And that means - if we sell our house in Southport - we might have to live in the caravan in Scotland for some time. Which is not, in itself, such a bad thing as long as the savings in no longer running the house in Southport offset the cost of keeping everything in storage.  


So it's hectic times ahead and, with Rose's first birthday in July,  a family baby on the way in August, Paul moving soon and us two managing a building project over a distance of 475 miles (9.25 hours according to AA Route Planner) this could be quite a bumpy few months. It's a very good job we're retired (that's a slightly stupid statement as, if we weren't retired we wouldn't be moving to Suffolk). Wish us luck.

I had a letter from the coroner today.  If Marion fancies a trip to the Lake District on our wedding anniversary, he's holding an inquest into the piece Roman gold jewellery on that day. He hasn't summoned me to attend so I think that we had better give that one a miss if I want any more wedding anniversaries. Not expecting to go detecting again any time soon.

Thanks For The Memory

We got back from our stay at the caravan on Sunday in time for me to start on Jury Service on Monday. I can't mention anything about that of course other than that I'm scheduled to be there for a couple of weeks.

Last night we decided that it was time for us to start dealing with all the paperwork in preparation for the sale of the house. We're using an online conveyancer (very pleased with the purchase will elaborate on which ones we used and recommend them on here if we're still happy after the sale); one of the benefits of doing everything online is that you can scan and upload all the answers to questions and copies of guarantees , planning certificates and all the documents needed for a smooth transaction. You can't say that we aren't thorough and we came up with twenty-nine pieces of paper in total which I diligently started to scan into a single multiple page document at around 10.30 p.m.

At just after midnight Marion asked me if I was still planning on coming to bed; 'Almost finished now' I was relieved to say as the screen asked me if I wanted to scan another page. I fed in the final sheet and pressed the scan button. The scanner whirred and started to copy. Thirty seconds later a warning flashed on screen to the effect that my memory was almost full. I sighed with relief that the final document was being processed but then watched in horror as a further message flashed up something to the effect that  "the application has quit unexpectedly"and the scanning application disappeared from the screen. It was now about 12.15 a.m. and almost two hours worth of scanning was lost. I vainly reopened the application but it was gone. So thanks for the memory (or lack of it) Mac. I can't really blame the Mac as I suppose I should have made the document a more sensible size and split it into several smaller ones. There's no feeling quite like the euphoria of finishing a pile of hard work being vapourised by an onscreen error message.

Oh well. It's all done now after getting up at 6.30 and working flat out before heading off to the court. At least it's a job out of the way.

I got home yesterday to find this lovely bouquet of flowers had been delivered with a box of chocolates and a bottle of fizz. They were sent by Sarah and Duncan as a thank you for the help with stuff in St Andrews last week. They really didn't need to send them but it was a very kind and generous gesture. We're pleased to hear that Sarah did very well with her Boden party so perhaps we'll be helping her with another when the autumn collection comes out.