Preparing For A Blitz On Ebay

We decided today to get around to doing something about all the stuff that we have accumulated at home that is no longer on display or that I bought with the intention of flogging on eBay but stuck in a cupboard instead. Exactly three months into retirement I suppose that it's time that I did more than go to the gym and read books (although to the surprise of the guests at the weekend's party I thoroughly enjoy doing just that). So Marion and I went through everything and split it into two. The small stuff that is relatively easy to post has been set aside for selling on Ebay. There are some really good items and I'll start on the photos later.

And then there's a second pile - a big box full and more - that I've decided to take to the local auctioneers. This box contains everything that is either too big (or fragile) to post or that I am not convinced is worth the effort and cost that eBay entails. I reckon that there is well over £500 worth of stuff in this (at what we paid) and I wonder how much less we'll get when the cheque arrives in due course.

While we were eating during Saturday night's Perfection party, my phone beeped and reminded me to complete my Mappiness record. Mappiness is an iPhone application in which users take part in a survey being carried out by the LSE which is recording levels of happiness. You record how happy, how relaxed and how awake you feel when the alert rings. You also record where you are, who you are with and what you are doing. They aren't getting too much useful info from me as my figures are almost universally the same. Our guests didn't think I was filling it in properly when I showed them the graphs which have a low of 86% happy and an average of 97% over the month that I have been doing it (the 86% was just after I backed the car into a concrete post) but I can honestly say that I am filling it in genuinely. The levels of how awake I am do fluctuate more (see note re concrete post) but the relaxed figures are, like the happiness ones, pretty consistent at an average of about 92%.

We were delighted when Sarah's partner Duncan emailed this scan of our first grandchild who is due to arrive in early July. We don't know if it's a boy or a girl but we can see that he or she is certainly growing quickly. Time has flown by and there is now only a little more than four months to go. It's so exciting for us.