Spring has Sprung

Wild garlic

The wild garlic is here. 1st Feb. Amazing! And extremely yummy 🙂

Lucas PawPaw Ointment

I just thought I’d mention this. Some time last year I was looking up hand cream and in reading reviews came across this. It isn’t hand cream, but there were lots of rave reviews about how good it is for minor scratches, abrasions, burns from the stove etc.

I decided to get some, and it’s actually really good! Well worth a place in the bathroom cupboard. Just thought I’d mention it 🙂

Spelling Bee Intervieweee

Drinkses went well!

Whoohooo!

A great evening 🙂

p.s. Edited to add: since I got the Mac I’ve not been able to work out how to add a picture! Which is a major bummer, since I like including pictures. And piccies are supposed to be something the Mac does particularly well. Sigh… I must devote an hour or so to working it out.

Shower Door – Made-To-Measure?

Does anybody know of a reliable manufacturer of made-to-measure shower doors? I’m hoping to replace mine, but it’s considerably shorter than average (1770 rather than the more standard 1800, 1850 or 1900). It’s possible that I could manage with a slightly taller one, but only at the cost of virtually eliminating the space at the top for the steam to escape.

If anybody has any experience of this then any pointers would be very welcome.

Moved successfully, but tons of unpacking still to do

Piglet, Puss-Puss and I have successfully re-located from the thriving metropolis that is Southport to somewhere much lovelier a little further North 🙂

Eternal thanks to Caroline, Alan and Graham for the help last Friday and over the weekend. I decided in the end not to use a removals company, as they were going to charge £550 plus waiting time (plus VAT), and that seemed ridiculously over-priced bearing in mind that I wasn’t actually taking a great deal of stuff. Instead I hired a Luton van/truck, and Alan and Graham did all the heavy lifting. (My tennis elbow came in useful for that… heheh…)

Although I’ve been here almost a week it’s still chaos in the house. It needs a thorough cleaning, and so I’ve not been able to put everything away yet and I’m still surrounded by boxes. I’ll get there gradually, though.

Piglet is delighted with the walking. We’ve only had a chance to explore the local walks so far, but we’ve already been terrified in a cow field this afternoon. Eep! We were almost through what I thought was the last safe field before the cow fields began when all of a sudden an enormous ginger-headed beast appeared on the top of a small ridge about 20 feet to my right. I was horrified beyond words, and dragged poor Piglet to the end of the field and lifted her over a barbed-wire fence to what I hoped would be safety. I then had to follow, which was an anxious experience in view of what happened to Alan when he last tried to scale such a fence. It had to be done, though. Sadly, it had to be done again almost immediately but in reverse, when I realised that what I’d hoped would be a safe place was simply a continuation of the field I’d been trying to avoid. I had to pop Piglet back into the lion’s den and jump back over myself, and then drag her at a great pace, protesting, through great piles of cow poo and down the hill to the field full of aggressive little rams we’d negotiated about 10 minutes earlier. We survived, though. Phew!

Piglet is now recovering herself on my bed–I think I may be changing the bedding a little sooner than I’d originally planned–and I’m girding my loins for a fresh assault on the boxes and boxes of stuff that are cluttering up the sitting room. It would be nice to sit down in there at some stage, but at the moment there’s no free space on either of the couches.

When I get a bit straighter I’ll take the camera out with me and post a lot of pictures. In the meantime, though, I’m not sure how to get the ones I took this afternoon from my iPhone to my MacBook, and so this post will have to remain pictureless.

Back to unpacking…

Gmail — Google now demanding mobile phone number?

I’ve just tried to set up a new gmail address so that I can post to Usenet via Google Groups without receiving a ton of spam, but I got a message saying that Google had detected unauthorised activity on my account and asking me to give them my mobile phone number so that they could send me a verification code. I don’t like giving out my mobile number so I started again, this time choosing a different username. Even though all I’d done was complete the form, though, I got the same message.

It seems that Google is now requiring people to provide a mobile phone number in order to provide them with a Gmail account. I’ll have to look for something else. Does anybody know of any other easy free email accounts? I just want something that I’ll only ever use on Usenet via the web.

The very best of luck to William and Kate today. What a joy to see two people sharing such a happy day, and making so many other people happy in the process!

And what a great excuse to sit around with family and sandwiches and revel in the pageantry 🙂

My website — peewiglet.com is now at weepiglet.com

As I’ve mentioned on here before, I accidentally allowed my domain name (peewiglet.com) to expire last December. It was promptly snapped up by a predatory US internet company which specialises in registering the domains of those disorganised enough to forget to renew them, in order to attempt to sell them back at an easy profit.

I’ve looked into buying it back, but I’ve concluded that it’s too complicated, uncertain and expensive a process. So! Good luck to overseedomainmanagement.com with my old address, and I’ve uploaded my website to weepiglet.com instead. Hopefully I’ll manage not to let the new domain expire this time!

I hope it’s all working–it seems to be, from my computer–but if anybody who takes a look finds any problems then please let me know and I’ll try to fix them.

If anybody had any links to the site at its old address, I’d be grateful if you’d please update them. The new address is probably easier to remember 🙂

House surveys — how long?

Can anybody who has recent experience of house surveys give me any idea of how long the reports normally take to come back?

My buyer’s buyer surveyed my buyer’s house 2 weeks ago. Despite Easter, I’d have expected the report to have come back by now, but my Estate Agent says 2 weeks is normal and is reluctant to make telephone enquiries until later in the week. Since Friday is another Bank Holiday, though, and my buyer is currently only 1/3 of the way through a 3 week holiday abroad (and is going off abroad on business for another week the day after he returns from holiday), I’m keen to try to find out whether there’s been a problem with his survey or not.

Does anybody know whether I’m being unrealistic with timescales? Thanks for any guidance.