Stuffin'
I woke up today at an almost reasonable time, 9:15 as it happens. Of course I had no inclination to tell the rest of the family that I was awake and instead tried to enjoy being in bed as much as possible :) I did so because I knew I was due to be woken up soon as the surveyor was scheduled to visit and look at our house, or more precisely the parts where our house wasn't, such as the massive gaps between the stairs and the wall and the cracked plaster. I heard the doorbell ring and quickly slipped on my tracksuit bottoms in an attempt to make myself more presentable.
During his 'tour of duty' the surveyor also noticed that there was a hole in the roof. We had known there must have been a gap there because birds would fly in and annoy us whilst we tried to sleep. In fact the hole was substantial enough for us to see daylight in the attic, not a good thing. He also offered to hook up an antenna for us which made us very happy. For some reason we have aerial sockets in the house but they are not connected to an antenna, we instead found there was a position about 3 feet from the leftmost wall and at an elevation of about 6 feet from the ground where we received television. For this reason we first employed the little ones to take shifts of holding the aerial in mid air (You can imagine how that went) and then eventually turned to a makeshift contraption of a chair with a wooden pole taped to it, with the aerial attached to its peak. Now we simply leave it to fate and have a dish-like aerial sitting by the window. The reception is atrocious but no one has to re-balance the aerial (or indeed be the aerial).
Spoke to my father yesterday which was nice. I am not sure who out of my family reads this weblogg beyond the certainty that my Aunty Jan does (as she seems to know more of my activities than anyone else despite not being in the country :) and so I am not sure how much I can say. However indications are that he will be heading back to England in the near future, for a prolonged stay :D Actually it seems a bit pointless censoring any news of the sort as to be honest the only person who will not be told (for obvious reasons) is my grandmother who has neither the ability, nor the inclination to read anything displayed on a computer screen. (Those who have heard me complaining on IRC about her being in the room and talking to me as I type to friends will vouch for this fact :) )
So far I've had a nice day in with my mother, helping her out with dishwashing and drying and such. Just had an episode trying to slice onions. I did an ok job but then managed to positively rinse my eyes in their juices. I am still blinking now. If I couldn't touch type this weblogg entry would be significantly shorter and probably consist of "Ow! Ow! Ow! - Later - John". Anyhow the stuffing has been mixed and we've washed through the chickens. She's now off to go and run around town picking up my little brother and such so I guess the stuffing will be left to rest till she returns, as will the sumptuous roast chickens (well they aren't sumptuous at the moment obviously, they're just cold, dead birds but the end result is always superb)
Right it is time for me to organize what I'm going to do with my friends in the next few days as they might have some time off work or something, at least the weekend anyway. We love using the farm but its just not worth having to talk or indeed to listen to my grandmother on the subject of hanging out there. She's all "Yes yes sure son, Granny isn't like other people, I like having people round" then after I leave its all "bitch bitch bitch" to my mother... Fun!
Still I hope that later on we'll just bite the bullet and buy a bigger house here in Colchester because Renting in England 'suxxors'. The only place around Colchester capable of containing our family was this house and its tiny!
If we do get a new place my mother is certain that she'll ask for a place with a large basement my friends and I can sit around in and play games consoles (and limited nerf-quake haha!). Minus all the requisite pot-smoking which seems synonymous with teenagers in a basement.
Anyhow back to the organizing.. I think I'll have a cup of tea first :)
Oh and one last thing, my good friend Kevlar has moved to blogger and is now using his plastic-rabbit.co.uk as his base of operations :) Check out his site if you can (easy enough just lopp off the /wafflings.html from the URL) but don't get our URL's mixed up hehe :D
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at April 10, 2003 06:05 PM