Who’s Normal Anyway?

The Sky installation engineer was due today and rang first thing to say it would be mid afternoon before he got here. We had a trip into town to get a few bits and pieces and it was a chance for me to check I could find the way there and back without getting lost! It was bitterly cold again so we hurried between the shops. M spent his pocket money and World Book Day token on 2 more Astrosaurs books and got a bargain in WH Smith where it rang up as £2.49 instead of £4.99 and then he got another £1 off. Then the book shop (WHS didn’t have both books he wanted) was doing £1 off too.

At home M has played computer games and mooched around. L has been into everything the last few days and today was the same. He is pulling up on everything and is very insistent about what he wants. He wants to have any pen I’m holding, type on the keyboard, have a knife and bash it on my plate when I’m eating (or push all the food off on to the floor) - not that I let him, but it’s what he would like to do and he gets very frustrated when he can’t! He’s crawled through the chair and table legs and round boxes and pulled out videos and all sorts, and come a cropper a couple of times so now he has a bruise on his face from a miscalculated manoeuver beneath the dining table (thank goodness for the arnica or I think it would’ve been huge).

The Sky engineer turned up just as it was beginning to snow this afternoon. I wasn’t sure what to make of him to begin with, he kept calling me “Ma’am” on the phone and being too polite and when he arrived he looked a bit like a stereotypical Neo-Nazi (OK, I’m being awful) with a skin head and big boots and his South African accent just finished it all off somehow. Anyway, he was very helpful, exceedingly polite and quite chatty with A who came home early and sorted out the ins and outs of where the cabling needed to go. We’re sharing next door’s Sky dish because there’s a huge tree in the way for us getting a signal. Lucky we have nice neighbours! L was in heaven when he got to crawl behind the TV.

While I remember, I’m quite warming to our new garden. It looks better than when we saw it before we moved, because the hedges have all been trimmed. We’ve got loads of birds visiting - mainly starlings and sparrows but also chaffinches and a robin. They’re going to be hard to count if this many keep coming at once we it gets round to next year’s Big Garden Birdwatch. We have the bird feeder outside the dining room window and I can look out at them as I’m on the PC. I took this photo this morning and the fat block is almost all gone now.

We’ve moved and got into our new house safely and hurray, we’re back online! Going to take me a little while to catch up with what we’ve been doing though. I almost blogged last week on A’s laptop, but then I couldn’t remember my log in details for Blogsome. Here’s the first installment.

The packers arrived earlier than we’d been told to expect them, about 9.15am. We were at least up and dressed! They came in and did a quick tour, looked horrified and called for an extra person to come up from York to help. They started in the kitchen after almost packing all our shoes and coats, which we hadn’t put into the car out of the way yet.

The house was freezing with all the doors open and nowhere was safe for L to crawl, so M, L and I bailed out to the community centre coffee shop and left A to it with the removals men. They were OK but not very chatty and I hate having people in the house. Last time we moved it was a different firm and they were really friendly and easy to have around, they chatted to M, listened to what we were saying and did a great packing job, but this lot were distinctly “average”.

We bumped into an acquaintance in the cafe who invited us round to hers for the afternoon, so after some TV and meeting A for lunch we went round to her house and M played with her kids while we chatted and kept L out of mischief.

Mid afternoon we went home and the removals men were long gone and the house was all packed up apart from the mattresses, TV, fridge, vac and drinks things. I don’t know what all the fuss was about, they could have moved us in 2 days instead of 3 easily. The house was cold and echoey and didn’t feel like ours anymore, so we went out to Pizza Hut for tea and then watched Chicken Little. We had an early night and barely stayed awake to watch Desperate Housewives, but then didn’t sleep well in nervous anticipation for Thursday.

I’ll blog the next bit later, I’d better catch up with A a bit before I carry on. I might password some posts so I can be a bit more specific and I’ll email the password to regulars I know about, but feel free to ask for a password.