This morning it was David's turn to be 'tea boy' down at the bowling club. I dropped in for a quick cuppa and a look at this year's garden:
29 May 2012
20 May 2012
Police outsider looking tough
junior squad of the British Olympic Cycling Team
Torch runner passing on to the next person (unfortunately hidden behind)
http://www.london2012.com/torch-relay/route/
Events schedule: http://www.london2012.com/schedule-and-results/
Derby screen: http://www.london2012.com/join-in/live-sites/site=derby/
18 May 2012
As we'll soon be on the move, I've been sorting through stuff and deciding what to keep and have just found Great Housewives of Art by Sally Swain (http://www.theloosh.com/blog/great-housewives-of-art-by-sally-swain).
This fun book was published way back in 1995 and I don't think I'll ever throw it away. It's one of those books which, every time I look at it, there's something new to learn and to laugh over.
This book answers the eternal question of why, historically, there were so few women scientists, artists and composers. After all, whilst Archimedes was busy sitting in his bath saying 'eureka', what was Mrs Archimedes doing? Wiping up the water which Archimedes had slopped over the side of the bath in his excitement, that's what!
(according to Wikipedia: This exclamation is most famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka!" when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose—he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. This relation is known as Archimedes' principle. He then realized that the volume of irregular objects could be measured with precision, a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked.)
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Mrs Toulouse-Lautrec Cleans the toilet
(Thank you for the book, Fi, a lovely gift)
I've just returned from a visit to sunny Derbyshire where the temperature was much warmer than a month ago when it snowed, with gale force winds and sleet.
On Sunday afternoon we drove over to Calke Abbey, near Ticknall, for a wander (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/calke-abbey/), rather a special place as the National Trust have left the house much as it was. It's not pristine and new like many NT properties but shabby and shows how many grand houses declined over the 20th Century.
However, we didn't go into the house this time - mainly because it was such a nice day and also we hadn't had the foresight to book our time slot. Here are some of the lovely views:
On Sunday afternoon we drove over to Calke Abbey, near Ticknall, for a wander (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/calke-abbey/), rather a special place as the National Trust have left the house much as it was. It's not pristine and new like many NT properties but shabby and shows how many grand houses declined over the 20th Century.
However, we didn't go into the house this time - mainly because it was such a nice day and also we hadn't had the foresight to book our time slot. Here are some of the lovely views:
see the deer under the trees ...
beautiful tulips in one of the walled gardens
We also enjoyed seeing the orderly rows of vegetables and herbs and the fruit trees trained in espalier fashion. The grounds of Calke Abbey are so enormous that, although there were hundreds of people around, we didn't feel hemmed in.
Calke Abbey grounds was also hosting a craft market but we didn't fancy queueing to get in and the place looked packed - perhaps next time.
In memory of our good friend
Geoffrey Smith
Please join us at Little Eaton Village Hall (DE21 5EA) for a sponsored cycle or walk, stalls, gospel choir, tea, cake, raffle, games, face painting and fun to raise money for charities close to our hearts - the Prostate Cancer Charity and Macmillan Cancer Support. Please click for more info.
Description
"I don't mind if people give 50p or £50, I just want people, young and old, to join in and have fun" - Geoffrey Smith
Have fun with friends and family to raise awareness and money for charities that are close to our hearts.
Bring your picnic to enjoy on the park or eat en-route! Come and listen to the sounds of a Gospel Choir. Eat cake, drink tea. Browse, buy, donate.
For information:
16 May 2012
I'm very proud to post on here a photo of friend Geraldine Lane receiving her MBE for services to families, for her book and now website.
Geraldine wrote the book 'Parents Guide to Plymouth' nearly 30 years ago and, despite her children now being grown up, has kept the information up to date.
With the coming of the internet Geraldine translated her book onto the Web, with suitable links. As can be imagined, the past 30 years have been a labour of love,.
To add to this Geraldine has had many months, if not years, of being immobile due to foot operations.
We salute you, Geraldine for your hard work and service to the City of Plymouth!
Geraldine wrote the book 'Parents Guide to Plymouth' nearly 30 years ago and, despite her children now being grown up, has kept the information up to date.
With the coming of the internet Geraldine translated her book onto the Web, with suitable links. As can be imagined, the past 30 years have been a labour of love,.
To add to this Geraldine has had many months, if not years, of being immobile due to foot operations.
We salute you, Geraldine for your hard work and service to the City of Plymouth!
Geraldine receiving her MBE from Prince Charles himself
Comprehensive source of information for parents and carers living in, or visiting, Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall
5 May 2012
Excellent May Day Exeter Expedition
Yesterday we went on a trip to Exeter to sort out the Probate. Both now having bus passes, to avoid parking charges, we travelled by bus, from Paignton via Torquay to Exeter. It's one of those journeys with the bus going via nearly every little street in the town before finally getting onto the dual carriageway, when it takes very little time to actually reach our destination.
The journey was not without incident as on the way there a passenger fell down the stairs. The bus was delayed whilst the driver checked that she was OK which luckily she was, if not, we were fortunate as it happened right outside the local hospital.
We had a super day, the weather was kind and sunny, unlike the previous few days which had been gale-force winds and rain.
Firstly, we went to the Court for the legal business which only took five minutes so we had a free afternoon, wandering around the town, then down to the Quay (http://www.exeter.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2820) where we had a lovely lunch in a riverside pub: well, it was nearly in the river as the river had burst its banks. The swans didn't think much of this and were sheltering on dry land, ditto the pleasure boats, as the river was flowing so fast - presumably water making its way down from the Moors. So much for their being a drought at the moment!
We had a look around the antique and collectible shops and the craft shops, not daring to buy anything as we're at present trying to dispose of stuff, ready for the move. It'll be something to look forward to ... eventually.
Chudleigh
On the return journey, our bus would terminate at Torquay, so we would need to then catch a local bus back to Paignton. As we reached Exeter bus station early we caught the bus for Newton Abbot, via small towns, such as Chudleigh and Bovey Tracey (http://www.boveytracey.gov.uk/).
Then changed to the local Newton Abbot, Torquay, Paignton, Brixham bus which runs about every ten minutes. Whilst on the dual carriageway we came across a burning car and, although we were diverted into the outside lane, we felt the heat through the window of the bus, so it must have been burning pretty fiercely.
Yesterday we went on a trip to Exeter to sort out the Probate. Both now having bus passes, to avoid parking charges, we travelled by bus, from Paignton via Torquay to Exeter. It's one of those journeys with the bus going via nearly every little street in the town before finally getting onto the dual carriageway, when it takes very little time to actually reach our destination.
The journey was not without incident as on the way there a passenger fell down the stairs. The bus was delayed whilst the driver checked that she was OK which luckily she was, if not, we were fortunate as it happened right outside the local hospital.
We had a super day, the weather was kind and sunny, unlike the previous few days which had been gale-force winds and rain.
Firstly, we went to the Court for the legal business which only took five minutes so we had a free afternoon, wandering around the town, then down to the Quay (http://www.exeter.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2820) where we had a lovely lunch in a riverside pub: well, it was nearly in the river as the river had burst its banks. The swans didn't think much of this and were sheltering on dry land, ditto the pleasure boats, as the river was flowing so fast - presumably water making its way down from the Moors. So much for their being a drought at the moment!
We had a look around the antique and collectible shops and the craft shops, not daring to buy anything as we're at present trying to dispose of stuff, ready for the move. It'll be something to look forward to ... eventually.
Chudleigh
On the return journey, our bus would terminate at Torquay, so we would need to then catch a local bus back to Paignton. As we reached Exeter bus station early we caught the bus for Newton Abbot, via small towns, such as Chudleigh and Bovey Tracey (http://www.boveytracey.gov.uk/).
Bovey Tracey
Then changed to the local Newton Abbot, Torquay, Paignton, Brixham bus which runs about every ten minutes. Whilst on the dual carriageway we came across a burning car and, although we were diverted into the outside lane, we felt the heat through the window of the bus, so it must have been burning pretty fiercely.
2 May 2012
Diary of a House Seller - Part II
1 May: Yesterday the estate agent visited and spent two hours going round the house taking photos and then wandering around talking to himself into a machine. The house is so big that the machine ran out of tape! The resultant photos - and a floor plan - are now on the internet, with house details to follow. See:
http://www.williamshedge.co.uk/more_details.php?profileID=100394000510.
2 May: We still have a few jobs to do, such as painting of some outside walls and securing some brickwork on a garden wall which people repeatedly knock with their cars - me included! The workshop and store room need packing and tidying too. The jobs seem to be ongoing - and never-ending.
4 May: Busy day today, painting outside - mainly workshop and steps, shown in pic above. Also applying preservative to decking and hot tub and bitumen to tarmac near front door where a certain person had been mixing concrete and some of it had stuck. What a job it was applying the bitumen! It's thick sticky stuff and was reluctant to go into the cracks. Result - two ruined paint brushes!
The draft details arrived this evening, plus contract and information sheets. We spent ages going through the details, checking they were correct and making adjustments.
5 May: Our first viewer is coming today. Is it an auntie of one of the estate agents - or a serious viewer? Let's hope it's the latter. So tidying up, but not too much as we don't want to get our hopes up too much. Unfortunately rather drizzly day with grey skies, so the view of the Bay isn't looking at its best.
10 May: I've just returned from a few days away and much has happened. Following the viewing on 5 May we were made an offer of £370,000 - and this was before the house officially went on the market!
This was rather low, so we immediately refused. The following day the offer was raised by £10,000 - still rather low. A couple of days later another £5,000 was offered - the final offer that they were to make. This was still £10,000 below the price we wanted, although perhaps we would have met them half way. Unfortunately, they have now walked away.
Apparently they felt that offering £45,000 less than the asking price was quite alright but we were rather shocked. If we'd known this was considered the norm perhaps we would have asked more in the beginning!
11 May: I spent this morning tidying up the garden as it's amazing how much everything's grown over the rainy weekend.
Yesterday the Energy Performance Certificate person came. He was a little precious and made it clear that we were in the way, so we left him to get on with it and went out for lunch.
We wonder if these EPA certificates (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/
BuyingAndSellingYourHome/Energyperformancecertificates/DG_177026) are worth the paper they're written on because it looks like a lot of box-ticking. Looking on the internet these certificates seem to have a mixed reaction. The good news is that they only need to be renewed every ten years. To see what one looks like see: http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/
planningandbuilding/pdf/2116821.pdf,
14 May: We have received a copy of the draft details and spent a long time amending them, ready to return to the Agent for printing.
15 May: Had an email today from the agent, saying that someone had see the ad in a local magazine and had requested a copy of the details. Fingers crossed.
17 May: Well, heard no more from the person who asked for the details. But ... today received a slightly higher offer from the original people. Have decided to provisionally accept this offer, although it's lower than we wanted, on the proviso that we can gain a similar reduction in the property we'd like to buy.
18 May: We've had a busy time looking on the internet, contacting agents and looking through details of suitable-looking properties. Funnily enough, although there are masses of houses on the market, not one is exactly what we want. That begs the question of 'do we know what we want?' and "if we get what we want, will 'what we want' change?" Perhaps it's best in life not always to 'get what we want'! Or in the words of The Rolling Stones: 'You can't always get what you want, but if you try some time you might get what you need'.
21 May: I'm off up to Derbyshire tomorrow to look at properties and am being joined by David on Thursday evening .... watch this space.
27 May: Just returned from Derby after a whirlwind six days looking at properties. I was completely unprepared for the change in weather, where it went from being 10C down here at 6am on Tuesday to 27C up in Derby at lunchtime. As the previous day in Paignton had been about 17C, I packed gloves, coat, scarf and warm woolly jumper, presuming that it would be colder up in the East Midlands. After all, the last time we went up there it was about 17C here and the next day, in Derby, it was snowing with horizontal sleet and absolutely freezing. NB Next time, before we set off, will look at ukweather.com.
But I digress.
I, and later when David arrived, both of us, viewed several bungalows and houses around the edge of Derby. Each one had it's merits but none were perfect - probably just as well - as they were all priced rather higher than we thought they should have been.
We have now settled on one which ticks lots of the boxes and plan to investigate further - look at energy performance certificate (epc) - then put in an offer which we can afford. The house we're interested in is confidential at present for obvious reasons.
However in the interim I've found some interesting sites: http://www.police.uk/ gives crime figures and information about local police; to get an idea of house prices in the area you're interested in (but take their ideas with a pinch of salt!): http://www.findaproperty.com/house-valuation. and someone recommended upmystreet.com but that seems to be have been taken over by Zoopla so not sure how good it is.
28 May: Having looked at the epc for the house in question, we have put in an offer which understandably was rejected, so have upped it to our top limit. Now all we can do is wait.
In the interim I've been busy starting tidy up the shed, rather a daunting job so best done in stages. Also putting lots of stuff on freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org), most of which has magically disappeared within an hour or so.
We're still sorting and packing at least two boxes of stuff a day, cupboards are beginning to be bare. Wouldn't it be great if cupboards were half full all the time, it'd be so easy to find things!
29 May: With proposed new house we have upped the offering price by a little - and it's been accepted, subject to our moving within two months.
So a cautious: Yipee!
But's it's rather daunting as it's happening so fast... Will put a link to our new house (!) on here soon and continue to pack and sort.
30 May: Today we hope to instruct a surveyor to have a good look at proposed new property.
31 May: We have decided that the house is going to be too costly and a little small (!) (money will need to be spent on the property make give us more space), so are going to pull out. Have informed both estate agents and the solicitor accordingly, no doubt making ourselves a little unpopular in the process. .... and now we're back to square one. Luckily we're going 'up the line' this week so can start looking again but at least we have more idea of what we want. We've viewed rather a lot of properties which may well have disappointed many people. But on reflection realise that viewings of some of those houses could have been avoided if either
(a) the estate agents' blurb/photos had been more accurate (wide angle lenses have a lot to answer for); and
(b) I had taken the time to carefully read every detail before requesting a viewing, not easy when there's so much to read and so many properties, 'now which was the one with the tiny bedrooms?'.
Fortunately these days, by law, estate agents have to be more accurate that in previous times and it's easier to read between the lines, such as 'easy to manage garden' = 'small' which does help a little.
http://www.williamshedge.co.uk/more_details.php?profileID=100394000510.
The draft details arrived this evening, plus contract and information sheets. We spent ages going through the details, checking they were correct and making adjustments.
10 May: I've just returned from a few days away and much has happened. Following the viewing on 5 May we were made an offer of £370,000 - and this was before the house officially went on the market!
This was rather low, so we immediately refused. The following day the offer was raised by £10,000 - still rather low. A couple of days later another £5,000 was offered - the final offer that they were to make. This was still £10,000 below the price we wanted, although perhaps we would have met them half way. Unfortunately, they have now walked away.
Apparently they felt that offering £45,000 less than the asking price was quite alright but we were rather shocked. If we'd known this was considered the norm perhaps we would have asked more in the beginning!
11 May: I spent this morning tidying up the garden as it's amazing how much everything's grown over the rainy weekend.Yesterday the Energy Performance Certificate person came. He was a little precious and made it clear that we were in the way, so we left him to get on with it and went out for lunch.
We wonder if these EPA certificates (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/
BuyingAndSellingYourHome/Energyperformancecertificates/DG_177026) are worth the paper they're written on because it looks like a lot of box-ticking. Looking on the internet these certificates seem to have a mixed reaction. The good news is that they only need to be renewed every ten years. To see what one looks like see: http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/
planningandbuilding/pdf/2116821.pdf,
14 May: We have received a copy of the draft details and spent a long time amending them, ready to return to the Agent for printing.
17 May: Well, heard no more from the person who asked for the details. But ... today received a slightly higher offer from the original people. Have decided to provisionally accept this offer, although it's lower than we wanted, on the proviso that we can gain a similar reduction in the property we'd like to buy.
18 May: We've had a busy time looking on the internet, contacting agents and looking through details of suitable-looking properties. Funnily enough, although there are masses of houses on the market, not one is exactly what we want. That begs the question of 'do we know what we want?' and "if we get what we want, will 'what we want' change?" Perhaps it's best in life not always to 'get what we want'! Or in the words of The Rolling Stones: 'You can't always get what you want, but if you try some time you might get what you need'.
21 May: I'm off up to Derbyshire tomorrow to look at properties and am being joined by David on Thursday evening .... watch this space.
27 May: Just returned from Derby after a whirlwind six days looking at properties. I was completely unprepared for the change in weather, where it went from being 10C down here at 6am on Tuesday to 27C up in Derby at lunchtime. As the previous day in Paignton had been about 17C, I packed gloves, coat, scarf and warm woolly jumper, presuming that it would be colder up in the East Midlands. After all, the last time we went up there it was about 17C here and the next day, in Derby, it was snowing with horizontal sleet and absolutely freezing. NB Next time, before we set off, will look at ukweather.com.
But I digress.
I, and later when David arrived, both of us, viewed several bungalows and houses around the edge of Derby. Each one had it's merits but none were perfect - probably just as well - as they were all priced rather higher than we thought they should have been.
We have now settled on one which ticks lots of the boxes and plan to investigate further - look at energy performance certificate (epc) - then put in an offer which we can afford. The house we're interested in is confidential at present for obvious reasons.
In the interim I've been busy starting tidy up the shed, rather a daunting job so best done in stages. Also putting lots of stuff on freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org), most of which has magically disappeared within an hour or so.
We're still sorting and packing at least two boxes of stuff a day, cupboards are beginning to be bare. Wouldn't it be great if cupboards were half full all the time, it'd be so easy to find things!
29 May: With proposed new house we have upped the offering price by a little - and it's been accepted, subject to our moving within two months.
So a cautious: Yipee!
But's it's rather daunting as it's happening so fast... Will put a link to our new house (!) on here soon and continue to pack and sort.
30 May: Today we hope to instruct a surveyor to have a good look at proposed new property.
31 May: We have decided that the house is going to be too costly and a little small (!) (money will need to be spent on the property make give us more space), so are going to pull out. Have informed both estate agents and the solicitor accordingly, no doubt making ourselves a little unpopular in the process. .... and now we're back to square one. Luckily we're going 'up the line' this week so can start looking again but at least we have more idea of what we want. We've viewed rather a lot of properties which may well have disappointed many people. But on reflection realise that viewings of some of those houses could have been avoided if either
(a) the estate agents' blurb/photos had been more accurate (wide angle lenses have a lot to answer for); and
(b) I had taken the time to carefully read every detail before requesting a viewing, not easy when there's so much to read and so many properties, 'now which was the one with the tiny bedrooms?'.
Fortunately these days, by law, estate agents have to be more accurate that in previous times and it's easier to read between the lines, such as 'easy to manage garden' = 'small' which does help a little.
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