September/Early October

Where oh where has the time gone. I feel like we have been living in a time loop: we just seem to have been so busy. The second week of september was really spent recovering from Pete's play run which combined with him starting his extra 3 days a week in london working nearly killed us. The after show party on the last night of the play didnt finish till nearly 3am and so began the week of trying to catch up on lost sleep.

Our camera hasnt been working either (although Pete thinks he has got it working now!) so not having any pictures has also scuppered the blog.

The rest of September has been a whole round of trades in doing various things... we still havent got any heating and thank goodness it has been very mild weather so far. The water situation is more or less finished now, including the miraculous moment when for the first time in some 50 years, water came through our ensuite shower. A bit of the marble floor tiles still have to be put back but part from that we have a working bathroom: the shower is great fun and works really well. When George and his team took away the horrible storage heater that had been put there, they found fittings for a chrome towel rail that pete had remembered was in the attic and so lo and behold the bathroom is looking pretty much like it was originally again. George had some trouble finding various parts and had to make washers for the valves out of shoe rubber (!) but it works a treat now.

His heat loss calculation for the entire house is done now and unsurprisingly found that all rooms except Verity's did not have sufficient radiators for the room, so we have been busy sourcing cast iron rads (at more considerable expense of course) and hopefully George will be able to get to work on that in a couple of weeks. In addition, the window company has come to renovate the leaking balcony and so we have scaffolding up.

Most weekends have been spent at home and we did have Mark, Jo and their girls over to stay one weekend and we had a great trip to this mediaeval national trust place called Baddesley Clinton.

The fig tree has gone mad in september and I have been getting an average of 13 figs a day with 45 one sunday!! I was giving them away to all and sundry! We have had loads of raspberries, blackberries and tons of apples too, and courgettes(or marrows when i left them too long!) out of our ears (have made loads of jams including marrow and ginger).

Verity is now saying 'Mamama' and Dadada' and is really becoming a little character now. She was ill with a stinking cold: her first illness since she was born so pretty good going I reckon but is over it now. 

I went back to work on Oct 1st... Verity refuses absolutely to take milk in a bottle or cup which has not filled me with glee going back to work but she seems to just cope without it until I get back. She eats so much anyway in real food terms she probably doesnt need that much anymore. Anyway, work was okay... very strange.. nothing has changed!! Our lives have transformed and work continues just as always the way it did before! I got back from work and we had fish and chips but was then throwing up all night (we worked out it must have been the fish which was the only thing only I had) but it was horrible.i felt terrible the next day and Pete couldnt go into London and I couldnt go into work for my second day (or am i just allergic to work ha ha). Term starts on monday so that will be the real work!