Packing up

Well I was right about the frantic stuffing of things in boxes! Stephen and I have just spent a couple of hours dumping kitchen bits and pieces in boxes (or in the bin if they were a bit tired). We then roped Guy from next door in to help put them into the loft (best to get someone young, fit and with a sound back in to do the heavy bit!! - I don't want Stephen in hospital with a slipped disc right now!).

Then, whilst Stephen whisked Guy off for a "thank you" pint, I got to work moving the 3 tonnes of make-up and hair products (and bear in mind the 3 tonnes has been reduced drastically from the 7 tonnes that used to lurk in my dressing table!!) from what used to be our bedroom and into the spare room where we are now squatting. It covers every available surface...I'm going to have to pick my way over, round and through it to get into bed tonight! I might need to cut everything down to to absolute basics (1 tonne!) for the time being - but that's a job for tomorrow.

So, bar a bit of tidying up tonight, we're ready for mum to move in tomorrow! There's still a lot more stuff to be packed up...but its all stuff in rooms that can be done a bit slower time...so I'm going to open a cider, put my feet up for 1/2 hour and watch Big Brother!

Bye bye handbags...I'll miss you!

I'm bereft! The air shipment has gone and my lovely handbags are now in a box and en-route to Washington. Farewell my lovelies, have a good trip...Bon Voyage, Bye....bye. That's it - they've gone! And my shoes too...and the majority of my clothes - so apologies to the office if I get a bit whiffy in the next couple of weeks...joking, joking!! I've got enough to keep me going, and even an evening dress if I'm really pressed for something to wear. It might be a bit formal for the office, but as we have dress down Friday I don't see why we can't have dress up Tuesday!!

I got back late from the office and I was too tired to be bothered schlepping round Waitrose so Stephen and I headed round to the Fox for some dinner....which means I'm feeling the double guilt of having eaten less healthily than I ought (chips - need I say more!), but it also took ages (mostly because we were sipping large drinks!) and so I haven't packed any boxes tonight! There will be wholesale panic in the Spark household tomorrow evening and I'll be randomly throwing kitchen stuff in boxes to make space for Mum's stuff!

It's not been an unproductive night though. We're going to London next week for our interview at the Embassy and as we need to go down the night before anyway (it's a 9am appointment) we're going to go early and do the tourist stuff in London. I've just booked tickets for the London Eye, Theatre tickets and have made tentative e-mail enquiries at one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants about lunch. We might end up in Wimpey, but at least I'll have tried!!

More packing!

I got home from work at lunchtime on Friday and feel like I've not stopped since! Mum came over and helped me plough through the mountain of ironing in preparation for stage 2 of the freighting process. (My ironing pile is always mountainous! I swear that the stuff breeds as soon as my back is turned!!) The items we're air freighting are being collected on Monday, and this includes our clothes, shoes and my handbags. I'm aiming to send as much as possible as I don't want to be left staggering through Heathrow with 14 suitcases!! And believe me, it would be me staggering about as Stephen has been known to use me as his personal pack horse!! (Mandy: remember the photo shoot at Witley Court when I was left carrying 2 camera bags, a video bag, 2 umbrellas and a tripod!! And then he complained that I was being slow getting him film!!)

Anyway the imminent freighting triggered another massive sort out session. I've filled about 5 bags (so far) with stuff to go to the charity shop...I've been utterly ruthless! Its quite amazing the stuff I hang onto for no discernible reason! My wardrobe isn't quite "capsule" but it's a lot smaller than it was! After all I have to have some reason to hit the shops when I get to Washington! A large portion of my infamous handbag collection also went to the charity shop last week for the same reason...

Mum is moving in here on Wednesday, so I've also been packing our stuff (i.e. the stuff were not taking to the US) into boxes to be stored in the loft. Considering that sorting out and packing up has taken me all weekend there still seems to be a lot to do! I think this was in part due to the heat this weekend....26 degrees and humid doesn't help with motivation! I think I was doing quite well to battle on despite the fact I was "glowing" like a piggy! Anyway, I'm hoping that a couple of nights this week will see it finished. I'll get fed up being orderly and just start stuffing things in any old how!

Stephen has spent all day today swearing at our laptops, threatening to take one back to the shop, cursing when software wouldn't load/run and generally getting annoyed that the whole process was taking 10 time longer than it should! He has also had to say goodbye to another of his guitars and is somewhat heartbroken that he won't see it again for a few weeks - and that he'll have to make do with the 2 guitars he's leaving here.

To be honest it wasn't all hard slog this weekend! We did have Saturday night off from packing, and went round to Julie and Andy's for dinner - which was absolutely yummy! It was such a lovely warm evening we sat out in the garden chatting and making inroads into the bottles of wine till gone 11pm. No fleeces required last night!

Oops...

Oh dear! What a start to the day we had...we were driving into work together, got caught in the usual Malvern traffic chaos (people drive like loons here, with no concept of space, distance or other road users!) and were sitting in stationary traffic, when someone hit us up the bumper. This made Stephen rather unhappy as you can imagine! Especially as we are trying to sell our cars in preparation for our move.... Anyway, he pulled over, as did the lady who hit him, and surveyed the damage. Thankfully it wasn't too bad. It hasn't broken the paint, or badly scratched it, or dented it - but you can see where the impact was. The lady who hit us burst into tears and said "other people would let me away with this" which did make me wonder how many times she'd done this, and whether hitting a BMW 645 was her preferred braking method! You know..."I wonder what this pedal in the middle does?"

The day did get better! I was busy though. My "to-do" list was getting longer by the minute and I didn't seem to be making much headway. Probably down to the fact I'm still not feeling 100% and I REALLY wanted to take a nap for most of this afternoon! I finally managed to throw off the mental duvet with the help of Lucozade and zip through the pile of things I had to do (its amazing what you can do on a surge of sugar and "glucose energy"!). I even had time to swap a couple of e-mails with fellow Big Brother addict Sarah. Every year we say we're not going to watch and then 10 minutes into the launch night we're totally hooked! I'm not sure how I'm going to cope without my nightly fix, but at least I know Sarah will keep me up to date with the latest happenings!

We're getting "tooled up" at work in preparation for the move. Our laptops are off having VPN installed (which lets us connect to work e-mail from a remote location), and BlackBerry's arrive tomorrow. Gadgets....how exciting! Well, for Stephen anyway....he goes a little bit loopy for the latest technology. Stand by for the reports on TV shopping in a few weeks time...we'll be hosting the great debate "Is a 90" Plasma TV too big by far?" I'll let you decide which way I'll be arguing!!

Into work, and home again

After starting to feel like I was on the mend, I woke up yesterday with another sore throat. It wasn't really any better today but I thought I should make an appearance at work. It turned out to be a reasonably short one - I decided enough was enough at lunchtime as my head was splitting, my throat agony and I was starting to cough and wheeze. I slunk off home and fell asleep for about 3 hours on the sofa...which was quite a feat as it's a 2-seat sofa, and even I (at a weeny 5ft) was folded up like a concertina to fit on it! Still, exhaustion won out over comfort - I could have slept on a knife edge! It's going to be an early night for me tonight - duvet and disprin sounds good to me right now.

37 years on...

It seems my arithmetic may not be up to par as it turns out that it was actually 37 years ago that Uncle Jim headed off to Oz (maybe I'm just older than I thought!). One of my earliest memories is of Jim throwing me up in the air and catching me, and me screaming blue murder! Typical "Uncle" stuff - after all it's an Uncle's job to wind kids up and leave the parents to cope with the fall out!! I can only have been about 1 year old at the time, but it's a vivid memory...as I have a fear of heights I feel there may be some psychological scarring!

As an added bonus my sister Eve was also there last night. She had flown in from a trip to Canada the night before and decided to hop on down in order to see Jim and Birgitta. We had a really fun evening, the banter was top notch! We tossed jokes across the table in the way that only 5 long separated Scots and 1 Swede can, and laughed til our faces ached!

Jim and Birgitta have bought a house in Sweden, and it's their intention to spend Summer in Sweden and then go back to Australia for Summer....that really is the best of both worlds! Anyway as they'll be regularly venturing into the Northern Hemisphere we're hoping we'll be seeing them at slightly more frequent intervals than every 37 years now!

G'day mate! The long lost rellies...

I got to hang out with Eve this afternoon which was cool. It's been a while since we've had a proper catch up...so we flapped our gums for a few hours before I had to run her to catch her train. I'm now sitting here with power over the remote as Stephen has headed off to Brighton for a sales conference. The really disappointing thing is....there is nothing on telly I want to watch! My one chance to watch what I want without the remote control commando switching it over...and there is nothing on. Not a thing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

Glorious weather! Time to garden...

For the first time in I don't know how long it has been a beautiful day, weather-wise! And, to make the weekend even better, it's the Bransford Plant Centre annual sale! They're a wholesale suppliers who open to the public one day a year and sell plants really cheaply. I find it really difficult to go to a garden centre and pay £10+ for a plant, when I can get it at Bransford for a couple of quid (that's the Scot in me coming out!!).

Stephen and I popped along this morning with the intention of getting plants to replace the lavenders which had died in the gravel garden. We managed this and provided a source of entertainment to our fellow customers as I tried to fit 30-odd plants into the boot of a StreetKa (affectionately known to my colleagues as The Rollerskate) which has a boot big enough to take a couple of bags of crisps and not much else! I managed it - not all the plants were in the boot though - there were quite a few in the foot well and quite a few in my lap. Thankfully we only live a couple of miles away!



Due to my weakened state, Stephen was kind enough to help me dig out the dead stuff and plant up the new plants. This is something of a miracle as he detests gardening! It has always been a case of "Kerry, your grass needs cut"...but anyway the milk of human kindness kicked in and he gave me a hand. Looks pretty good....just need to buy some more gravel to top it off, but might not mention that to Stephen just yet - cos I'll need a hand spreading it and I don't want to push him over the edge!!

We had a great meal out with Richard & Justine last night. It was one of Richard's infamous "odd but good" restaurants. It sells itself as being 6 restaurants under one roof - not sure where they get 6 - but the one we were in was really good! Food was excellent, and the slightly odd photos of Gurkha's in uniform which graced the wall weren't too off-putting!! We're off out again tonight, this time to see my Uncle Jim and his wife Birgitta. I've not seen Jim since he left to go to Australia 35 years ago, so it should be an interesting night!