Phew

I'm sitting with a small glass of brandy beside me as I write this. I think we deserve to wind down after what has been an exhausting week.

We've spent most of it, clearing out  Marion's mum's flat. I snapped this just before closing the door on it for the last time. We've left it very clean and tidy (not difficult as Flo always kept things immaculate). The last job was helping the men from The British Heart Foundation to take away the items of furniture that the purchasers don't want. There were a few display cabinets and a bookcase in fabulous condition and the manager of the charity shop phoned this evening to say how pleased they are with the donation.


I hired a van to take Flo's bed to the care home. Although I only drove it for three or four miles I had to put diesel in as the hire firm left the vehicle virtually empty - so much for picking the bargain hire price. We also enlisted the help of an odd job man, Ian, who has done a few jobs for us recently getting our house shipshape for selling. He put up four shelves in Flo's care home room and, after four hours of fitting the room out with her favourite photos, nick nacks and  ornaments we were ready for the grand unveiling.  Flo hasn't been very well this week; she's been very grumpy, miserable and even uncharacteristically angry. So we weren't expecting an enthusiastic response. However, we were wrong and she was the happiest she's been for ages and delighted to be reunited with her possessions and photos - we gave ourselves a pat on the back.


We're off to Framlingham on Sunday. We've got to discuss the surveyor's findings with the architect and run through the plans we've got for the property we're buying. It should be a pleasant break after a week of stress that's taught us a lot about clutter and how to handle it.

Our next big job is to sell our house. It's supposed to be pretty hard in the property market at the moment so I was surprised when we phoned a highly recommended local estate agent and asked if they would be interested in selling it only to be told that 'yes they would be interested' but they 'can't come to see the house until April 12th'. April 12th! That's almost three weeks. So much for hard times if an estate agent can be so nonchalant about a potential commission of over £4,000. I phoned a couple more agents who can come much sooner. When we were in business our sales team would have leapt at the chance to get a lead like this.


Oh well. We'll wait and see what the other agents come up with. I'll leave you today with a couple of videos. I haven't posted many lately so I've chosen one to amuse our lovely American daughter in law Josephine and another for our equally lovely son Paul.