NotSheep

….if this will work.

And if it does work, wondering whether I’ll keep up with journaling in
this way. I never was very good at keeping a journal. Ho-hum.

I suppose it would be good to write about what we’ve done so far today. Heck, why not so far this week

On Monday Barney & George started off with some Latin. They’re really enjoying the first Minimus book, so I’m keeping my eye out for the second book. I’d borrowed “What the Romans Did For Us” from the library, and we had a look at that too, especially the pages about the remains at Vindolanda (since that’s where Minimus is set). It would be brilliant to visit Vindolanda when we’re in England in May; I’ll have to see if we can work that in at all. After Latin, they did some maths and history. Freddy did some writing and some reading and some maths, and Jack pestered everyone as usual. Then we had a visit from my dad and step-mum, who we only get to see every few years. They couldn’t stay long, and Freddy did his usual “I’m utterly mad” act (that’s what he tells everyone), but anyway….Barney impressed them with his studiousness, refusing to put his maths away even when I encouraged him to (though he still didn’t finish the page).

Monday nights are Cubs, so off went Barney with dad, and home came Barney proclaiming that Cubs had been “excellent” - as usual.

Tuesday…after I’d nagged them all about doing their morning jobs without being told to (again), Barney & George went over their Latin again, then did some English. I’m not sure if there’s much point in George doing the English he’s on really, it’s all very easy for him and he just whizzes through it. Barney’s biggest problem is his handwriting, which is improving but still dreadful. If he could space his words out it would help! Freddy did some more writing and maths, and Jack smeared Vicks Vaporub somewhere (not sure where, but I can smell it!)

The afternoon was pretty lazy - I should really have studied but I couldn’t get into it. I took my OU stuff with me when I took Barney and George to Circus School though, so I did a bit then. They really enjoy Circus School and I’m told they’re both getting really good at juggling. Barney says his diablo skills are improving too, and George says he’s getting better at riding a unicycle. It will be interesting to see these skills in action!

Today is Wednesday, and we started off with taking the car to the mechanic, who, we hope, will get it through its MOT retest tomorrow. Fingers and everything else crossed.

On our return, Barney did some geography and worked some more on his maths. George did some history and maths, as well as ICT and science. I’m still amazed at how fast they can get through stuff. Freddy did his usual three r’s, and we looked at some stuff about Judaism and talked a bit about that. Barney is still working on maths, while the others trash George and Freddy’s room (again).

We’re now lounging about and watching more of The Life of Mammals; I’m not feeling energetic enough to do much else!

….does Freddy have to be so ***LOUD***????!!!

Some days are just…indefinable.

Good news - the car passed the MOT. Yay!

Bad news - George played with the electric sunroof controls and got the sunroof wide open - and it wouldn’t close again. (And he really should know better, since that’s what happened the last time one of them opened it…)

Good news - our nice mechanic managed to force it closed. And took out the fuse from the switch, so it can’t be opened again before it’s repaired (which we will do…sometime).

Bad news - because of having to drive back to the mechanic’s to get this sorted, the kids are only just having lunch, and by the time they’re finished, there won’t be time to get to the post office. So the non-working dvd player won’t be returned to Gladiator today. Sorry, hubby.

On the academic side, they all got stuck in pronto this morning, and by 10am, Barney had finished his maths and done some French, George had finished his science and done some maths, and Freddy had done some writing and French. Which would have made for a really good day, if we hadn’t had to waste ages getting the sunroof sorted *sigh*.

Forgot to mention George’s comment this morning.

I was trying to go through the car paperwork, to make sure I had everything I needed to get it taxed. George was trying to tell me something about Sonic’s Adventures. (Why my children think I’m interested in this, I don’t know - but they are quite convinced I am.)

Me, losing patience: Look, can this wait? I’m trying to sort this out and I can’t concentrate with you going on about Sonic!

(George starts to look upset, so I, knowing what he’s like, try to stop him from going any further in that direction.)

Me: I don’t play the Sonic games, I’ve no idea what they’re all about. I wouldn’t know Sonic if he came up to me in the street and gave me a big sloppy kiss!

George is quiet for a minute, then says, still slightly upset and very seriously, “Sonic’s not really the kind of person who would do that.”

Right. I’ll stop worrying about that happening then.

Bit of an unproductive morning really - been trying to figure out the best place to do a blog. I like LiveJournal, I like that I can set privacy levels on posts, that I can blog from my system tray (with LJ.net), and that it’s all easy to use. I’d like to have a choice in-between letting everyone have access and limiting access to those who are registered with LiveJournal and listed as friends though.

Blogger can be password-protected if I host it on my own webspace - which would be fine if I could get it to work. It doesn’t have the Friends page feature of LiveJournal though.

WordPress will, I think, do everything I want it to - except I can’t get it to work! Thanks to Jax who has been trying to help out, but it’s still defeating me. Will try again later.

Anyway, I have to stop now, as we have stuff this afternoon. Barney and George have a Drama class, and I have mystery shopping calls to make. Not sure how this mystery-shopping is going to work out though, as it looks as though all the calls I’ve got at the minute don’t pay any travel expenses - and it’s not worth my while doing them if they don’t. I’ll do the ones I’ve said, but if there are no travel expenses to be had, I won’t do any more.

Still don’t know whether I’m getting travel expenses, but I wanted to say that I did enjoy the one visit where I had to tell them at the end who I was. Great fun.

(Yeah, I probably *am* evil )

Done:
- worked out how to install WordPress and get it running
- worked out how to change the date-stamp
- installed a couple more templates and picked one to use (for now, anyway)
- edited a template!
- worked out how to password-protect the blog
- posted via email

To Do:
- figure out how to get the emailed posts to show up without me having to do it manually every time
- play with smilies
- figure out if I can create a page with RSS feeds on it as part of my blog
- think about how I’m going to use categories
- find out what I can do with that “custom field” thing

“The thing I love most about deadlines is the wonderful WHOOSHing sound they make as they go past.” - Douglas Adams

….and there goes another one.

Just realised we are now five days before Jack’s birthday. Guess he won’t be getting that bike we thought about buying off ebay.

Have to think of something else now…

Done:
- all the stuff previously listed as Done, plus:
- figured out what I could do with that “custom field” thing
- thought about how I’d use categories

To Do:
- figure out how to get emailed posts up without me having to do
it manually every time
- figure out if/how I can make a page with rss feeds on it as part of
my blog
- look for a weblog client that will work with WordPress and allow me
to assign categories when posting (without requiring extreme geek/tech
knowledge)

Sorta done:
- played with smilies - “sorta” because I’ve installed the Moody
plug-in, which works great, but I’ve not been able to change the
default smilies that appear within the text of posts. I have followed
the instructions - uploaded the files I want to use, changed, saved
and re-uploaded the vars.php file - but the blog still displays the
old smilies. Hm…maybe I should delete the old ones and start with a
brand new set?

I think I must be. Everyone else raves about the LOTR trilogy - I don’t get it. I forced myself to read the books, and while I can recognise their literary merit, they’re just not my thing. I found myself picking holes in the story all the way through, wondering how much longer it would take me to finish them…

Scratchy is watching one of the movies on DVD. I’ve glanced up for a few minutes periodically, just in case I could figure out what it was that everyone else seems to see in it. Nope. Still does nothing for me. Sorry

Barney caught the blogging bug

He’s been listening in as Scratchy and I have been talking about blogs over the past few days and has displayed some interest. I thought it might be a good thing for him to do - apart from being fun, the ever-aware-of-an-educational-opportunity bit of me thought it would help his writing - organising material, choosing words, spelling (not that he needs any help there LOL), etc. And of course the whole idea of recapping your day/feelings in a journal format, and the planning-ahead it seems to encourage. So I thought I’d suggest it to him.

I really should know better. Called him in this morning and showed him my blog. Started explaining bits and pieces about it, and a couple of minutes in, he pipes up “Can I have one?” That child has always been at least three steps ahead of me

So can you guess what we’ve spent the last hour doing? Of course now I have to get it all set up on the desktop for him, or I’ll never see my own laptop

…and what have I checked off my to-do list?

Well…I had planned to tidy the closet in the front hall. Never went near it.

I had planned to work on my Open University stuff. Never went near it.

I had planned to write up my reports for the mystery shopping spree. Never went near them.

Hm.

Friday night was a rough night. I must be getting old, because it used to be that if I said that, I’d been out late on Friday and maybe drunk too much. Now it means I spent half the night in the bathroom and the other half in bed clutching my middle Anyway, it left me exhausted, so despite a two-hour nap on Saturday afternoon, the weekend was spent doing things that didn’t require me to get out of bed. And I’m about to fall asleep again now…

Kids got up and had an argument over whose job it was to clean the kitty-litter. Nothing new there then.

Scratchy got up and hogged the bathroom for three hours. Oh, okay, it was only about half an hour. Still, it felt like longer to me. Nothing new there either.

Kids did some written work - Latin and maths for Barney and George, some history for Barney, some English and geography for George, and some reading/writing and science for Freddy. I tried to tidy up, and I even vacuumed - but it didn’t last long - Jack emptied a big box of books all over the floor. All in all, nothing new again!

Baby is kicking a lot today - very active. I think he/she likes the spinach tortellini I had for lunch :-). I’m not feeling so hot though - I had to lie down a while ago because it really felt like I was going to pass out (dark patches forming in front of my eyes time)

Plan for tomorrow is a visit to a Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust property - hope I’m feeling a bit brighter by then!

We’ve just had a visit from a BBC radio producer who’s doing a schools radio program about different kinds of education. The program will feature a nine-year-old girl who is at boarding school, and Barney. We met with her a few weeks ago and Barney was keen to go ahead, so today she delivered the recording equipment, explained how it worked, and went over what kind of things he’s going to talk about.

I think he’s really going to enjoy it - apart from the opportunity to actually be on the radio, he’s going to be involved in the editing process etc, so it will be a great chance to see how it all gets put together.

As she was leaving, she said that by the time they’d finished he’d be an expert, and I joked that we could get him a job at the BBC and he could make some money for us. Then I said goodbye at the door and turned back into the house - to find my way blocked by Barney, who said “Okay then! But I get half the money!”

Now he’s blogging about it

I just got the first comments on my blog! Exciting!

Update: Jack is fine after the excitement yesterday. I got the week wrong for the chess club, so they all arrived back home far too soon last night, and now they get to go next week instead. All the kids went to sleep about 9.15 last night, and woke up much too early this morning!

They’re now all playing quietly because I’ve promised that if I get some peace, we’ll go off to the big park this afternoon.

Jack’s birthday is tomorrow and I have not organised anything - pressie, party….nothing. Will do something on the weekend - honest!

Scratchy has confessed - yesterday was all his fault. I knew it had to be, somehow

Apparently it’s genetic, you see. Scratchy fell into Lake Ontario when he was about 9 years old. So Jack was just following in Daddy’s footsteps

The worrying bit of this is all the other things Scratchy has done - breaking his leg running across the street; almost castrating himself by jumping over the bar in his fraternity house and forgetting about the extension on the other side; breaking his finger playing basketball; slicing his forehead open playing blind man’s bluff (without a blindfold! he was squinting to peek, saw “someone”, lunged - and “someone” turned out to be a doorpost!)

Anyone know of a good deal on accident insurance?

OW OW OW!!! GERROFF MY TAILBONE!!!

Spent all morning lying around - literally - and only got up this afternoon because Freddy had a dance-class. I don’t know what it is that I’ve done, but I can barely move. My whole pelvis is aching, the bones particularly, and the muscles all around it have seized up. Walking hurts, standing hurts, sitting hurts, lying down hurts - which doesn’t leave a lot of options

Barney and George have both been in foul moods all day - Barney is doing his practising-for-being-a-moody-teenager bit, and George is throwing hissy-fits at every little thing. Scratchy has taken George and Freddy to Beavers (seeing as I wince every time I move), and I’m going to try to get some sleep, since I haven’t had a lot of that the last couple of nights.

So all in all, not a very exciting birthday for Jack. We’ll have to have a bit of a celebration on the weekend instead.

…it’s off to HESFES we go!

Booked the tickets for the campsite weeks ago, had a wobble about going at all when we found out about the changes this year, but have decided to go anyway, and have booked the tickets for the ferries and the flight.

Now we just have to borrow all the camping gear, pack, get everyone there, figure out how to put up a huge tent we’ve never seen before, unpack, and cope with a week under canvas with a bunch of hippy home-educators

There was a time when, at about this time on a Friday night, I’d have been having a bath or a shower in preparation for getting on my glad-rags and going out partying. Back in the early (or not-so-early) hours of Saturday morning, a very long lie-in on Saturday, bit of shopping on Saturday afternoon, then repeat shower-glad-rags-party routine for Saturday night.

So what are my plans for this evening? Well, I’m going to go and have a bath soon. Just like old times? - well, not exactly. After my bath I’ll watch the end of the DVD the kids are watching and then go to bed. Exciting, eh?

Tomorrow I will study - yes I will I will I will! If you catch me posting here tomorrow before about 5pm, you’re allowed to shout at me, because I have used this blog (and many other things) as an excuse for avoiding studying way too much this week. Okay, last week too. Anyway….study tomorrow, then bit of a party or something on Sunday (Jack’s belated birthday celebration) and then back to the books.

Beginning to wish I hadn’t started this OU malarkey now. I know it will be worth it in the end, but right now it’s all a bit of a grind

It seems that my children take pleasure in doing absolutely nothing until I’m just about to call panic-stations, and then, over the course of a day, they suddenly produce a month’s worth of “stuff we’ve done”.

Today Barney has done quite a lot of maths, some literacy work, science, Latin, French and history. George has done maths, literacy, science, Latin, French, history and geography, and set up his own blog (see? I said it was contagious!) Freddy has done some more three r’s stuff, plus they’ve all done some more reading/talking-about Judaism (the world religion we’re currently studying). Jack has insisted on getting “my workbook” and having a box to put it in.

Oh, and Barney is now making dinner for the family, because we had a discussion last night at dinner during which he was boasting about his culinary skills, and I said that at his age I thought he could be cooking a family meal once a week (he already makes lunch for himself and his brothers most weekdays). So he volunteered to cook dinner tonight. We’re having spinach-and-ricotta tortellini. Cool

I feel like the phone should be glued to my ear today. I’ve spent most of the day talking to various people about various things. We’re thinking of trying to buy a house before the baby comes - this might be a long shot, I don’t know, but we thought we might as well try. The problem is that most of the estate agents seem to be so laid-back they’re falling over. I’m keen to look at properties this week, but they all want to “post something out to you in the next few days”. There are quite a few properties within our price-range that look very appealing, but we can’t do much until the estate agents get their act together!

I’ve also been on the phone to the GP about getting a referral to a homeopath on NHS. Three of the children have had eczema, ranging from mild to severe, and two of them (as well as Scratchy) have had proper homeopathic help which was extremely effective. The third got treated by me (because we didn’t have access to a classical homeopath at the time) and the eczema on his face completely disappeared but some time later reappeared on his arms and legs. This fits well with the homeopathic idea of problems moving downwards and outwards, but I’d like him to see someone qualified. We used to have a GP who was a qualified homeopath, but she’s retired. If we lived anywhere else in the UK, we could get a referral to one of the homeopathic hospitals - well, we still could, but since all the homeopathic hospitals are in England or Scotland, travelling to one for an appointment would cost more than paying a private homeopath ourselves.

Anyway, we’ve had a recommendation for a homeopath about an hour away from here, and our GP is quite willing to do a private referral, if the health board will approve it (they have to approve it because they have to pay for it). Theoretically, it shouldn’t be a problem, since NHS homeopathy is supposed to be available to everyone, but in practice…well, I expect the first answer to be “sorry, no” - of course I won’t drop it there, but all the same, it’s a pain having to work for something you’re entitled to! Equally annoying is the fact that a homeopathic referral would cost the NHS less than continuing to provide prescription creams etc.

The boys have done quite a bit today - Barney has done loads of literacy and a bit of maths and science and other bits and pieces. George has done bits of everything, and has practiced his recorder - he’s getting quite good now, not nearly so many squeaks (which is even better news than it sounds, because he used to freak out every time it squeaked). Freddy’s spelling still involves a fair bit of guesswork, but his writing has definitely improved. It’s interesting how his speech has improved since he started reading. He has always been difficult to understand, and never bothered making sounds clearly, but now that he’s seeing them written down, he seems to be making the effort to say “ssss” instead of “th” for example. I can still see how he thinks of certain words, when he tries to spell them, but I expect that as his reading improves further, he’ll grasp what the sounds are supposed to be, and fix this himself. It’s so nice that we can allow him to do this in his own time, rather than forcing speech therapy appointments etc, as we’d likely have to do if he’d been in school

Barney is getting better on his guitar, apparently. I say “apparently” because I never actually hear him play it. I’m told he can even play a song now. Do I look cynical? He’s just come in and said he’s going to stop doing maths now - I thought he’d stopped about an hour-and-a-half ago

…kids and cats, that is.

Three of my children are currently in the bath. All three objected to the idea of having a bath, but now they’re in, they’re having a blast. The bathroom will be soaking by the time they’re done, and I’ll have to bribe them to get out

One of the cats is in heat - again *sigh*. I really must get them both fixed; apart from anything else, this constant meowing is driving me nuts.

The fourth child - well, actually the first, if you see what I mean - is at Cubs, having decided that no, it really wasn’t worth missing Cubs for being all moody and pre-pubertal

Me…I’m waiting for the bath to become free, at which point I will fill it with water the temperature of lava and sink in…..

Plan for rest of week:
tomorrow - HE outing to W5, where, no doubt, I will be the butt of many (more) bad jokes about going paddling and amphibious children - followed by circus school and chess club (and I have a tutorial but I’m not going).
Wed - BBC woman back to pick up recording equipment, unless I can get some house viewings organised.
Thurs - quiet day, showcase for Claymation in the evening. Claymation is a clay animation workshop that Barney and George took part in a few months ago, in our local library. They enjoyed it so much they signed up for a second week of it at another library
Friday - quiet day? no plans as yet (unless I’ve forgotten them…)

Why do I never see the typos in a post until I’ve published it?

Jack spent some time earlier in the evening crying and refusing to sleep. Scratchy said he thought he had a sore stomach, turns out he was right: Jack has just thrown up.

He’s now settled down beside me, having fallen asleep quickly after getting cleaned up and changed. Let’s hope that’s the end of it

Quick recap: we bought a dvd burner from a website. It arrived quickly, was installed, worked fine - until we tried a cd in it, and the drive refused to recognise it. Same with all cds. We tried different ways of getting it working, no joy. We tried a different pc, no joy. We contacted the retailer, who sent us a returns number and instructions to return it - at our expense.

Hm. Not particularly satisfied with that, but figured it wasn’t worth fighting about £6ish, so returned it.

Replacement arrived promptly. Slight cosmetic damage, looked like it had been hit or dropped. Installed. Whoa - noisy! Rattle swoosh hum…

Contacted retailer again. Received same return instructions again. Now we’ve paid £12 in return postage. Hm. Emailed and pointed this out. Tough, said retailer.

Contacted CAB, who put me onto Trading Standards, who said “nope, they can’t do that, completely illegal” and asked for the retailer’s details. Informed retailer of this. Pointed out that quite apart from being illegal, it wasn’t very good business practice to treat customers this way. Tough, said retailer.

Spoke to Trading Standards again, who confirmed previous info. Emailed retailer again. Retailer got even less helpful. Retailer apparently unable to comprehend difference between warranty and Sales of Goods Act. Retailer also completely misinformed re Distance Selling Regulations.

Received third dvd burner today. So far, seems to work. Also received today: phone call from Trading Standards, who want to come out and speak with me and see the paperwork etc. Very interested in story.

Wonder if will ever see £12 again. Doubt it somehow. Just hope third dvd burner continues to work

House-hunting is a pain.

You get a big long list of houses that look like they might fit the bill. You phone all the estate agents. Two days later the estate agents wake up and start phoning you back with viewing appointments, so that you have about four hours in which to see about twelve houses. And then you go look at the houses, only to find that none of them is suitable anyway.

At least I didn’t have to take the boys and traipse them around the houses with me - they spent the afternoon with a friend who has just deregistered her 9yo :-). She took them to the beach and fed them popcorn - I’m surprised they agreed to come home

Just got back from the Clay Creatures showcase. Clay Creatures (or Claymation) is the name of a scheme that Barney and George were involved in a few months ago. The kids who participated went for three hours a day, every day for a week (which put off a lot of schoolkids, but worked great for us :-D) and they learned all about clay animation (think Wallace & Gromit - or does anyone else remember Morph?) They worked in small groups with two trainers who are professional animators, and they had a fantastic time. They did every bit of it - from planning their story and drawing a storyboard to creating the clay creatures and the props, to taking the pictures and putting it on the computer and adding titles and music. They also did some animation which didn’t involve clay - fun things like pretending they were buses and animating that, or animating eating and drinking in reverse. The trainers were superb - very skilled at both the animation and the getting-it-across to the kids. There was quite a mutual admiration society going on between George and one of the trainers :-D. Barney and George participated in the course at the library just down the street from us, and had such a good time that they did it all again two weeks later in a different library (and convinced some other home-ed friends to join them)

Anyway, the original plan was that each child who took part would get a dvd with the work from their group - but the whole thing was so successful that the organisers decided to make more of it. Hence - tonight the kids and their families were invited to the “global premiere” of Clay Creatures. The kids got presented with a certificate each and a dvd with all the work from all the groups together. The woman from the animation studio which had provided the trainers and equipment stood up and said that they’ve done more than 20 different schemes in the last year, and this one stood out miles above the rest. She said that she’s an examiner for a new A-level course called Moving Image Arts, and that the work the kids had done was well up to the standard of animation expected in that. I think we were a bit disbelieving of that bit - until we saw the work - it was fantastic!

I’m really glad that Barney and George took part in this - they learned a lot, had great fun, and it was completely free - all the ingredients for a terrific experience

Did you know? They take pokey little smelly horrible houses and make them sound really great.

We saw about 15 houses today - a few viewings, but mostly drive-bys to see what they were like. Lots of them had descriptions that made me wonder, when I saw the houses, if the estage agents had even driven past them. There was the one with the cupboard described as a “bedroom” (it was big enough to put a computer desk and chair in - no way would a bed fit!) Two of them were even described as “detached” when they weren’t! - how do you miss a bloomin’ great house attached to one of your walls?!!

I was very surprised when I saw a house that was described as “deceptively spacious” and it actually was! It still wasn’t what we’re looking for though

Oh, and I found out something about Scratchy too. I’ve always thought he had a good sense of direction, because I usually lose my notion of what direction we’re facing much sooner than he does. Today, I found out that it’s not true - it’s just that we lived for so long in a city where “north” means “in the opposite direction from the lake” - always. So Scratchy doesn’t actually have a good sense of direction, he just always knows where the water is. And that’s how we ended up arguing today when he said we had to go north, and I said we had to go west. Turned out we both meant the same thing!

Less than impressed. My webhost’s email servers have been down for over 30 hours now, and there’s little sign of them coming back up. The ftp servers are down too. My websites are still up, but nothing else. Lots of customers getting very frustrated

Okay, it’s been nearly three whole days without email now - and I’m not a happy camper :-(. At this point I’m looking for a new hosting company, despite having paid up to July on one website and up to next January on the other. Of course the email I should have received in the last three days will be gone forever if I do switch hosts now - so do I hang in there and hope we’re back up tomorrow, or do I cut my losses and run?

Today wasn’t great overall, really. Barney and George had circus school this morning instead of last night (because of the Easter holidays), so we had to walk into town for 10am. Normally Scratchy would take the train so I could have the car, but the train service to where he works has been suspended until about December so they can upgrade the line. There’s a bus replacement service, but a) it’s slower and b) you can’t take your bike on the bus, so he has to walk the bits at either end.

Anyway, circus school was fine, though I didn’t have time to eat beforehand, so by the time it finished at noon, I was really ready to stuff my face. The kids had asked if we could go to Pizza Hut, so we did - to find queues outside it, which would have been understandable had half the tables inside not been empty! According to the manager, they didn’t have enough serving staff - and it didn’t really matter that most customers wanted the buffet so didn’t actually need a lot of serving, nor that all the customers in the queue agreed that they’d much rather be sitting inside waiting to be served than standing outside waiting to be seated! After about 20 minutes we gave up and headed off to look for somewhere else - unsuccessfully, since most places weren’t open. There really isn’t enough restaurant competition in this town; there isn’t enough of anything positive really. A friend of mine once called it “a wasteland of chain-stores and housing estates” and that pretty much sums it up. Anyway, I went to the bank, then phoned a taxi to take us home. The “be there in 5 minutes” taxi took half an hour to show up, and then refused to take us because there were five of us - never mind that the same company has taken us all at least twice before now. To say I was annoyed would be an understatement

So - we ended up walking home; by the time we got here, I was ready to just rip my pelvis out altogether. I swear this baby is going to come out and head straight for the trampoline. It was about 3pm before we got home, kids hadn’t had lunch, I hadn’t eaten since last night - we were not a happy bunch. So cheese toasties and quick-cook ravioli all round, and then collapsing-in-heaps for everyone.

Booked a few more house-viewings, still waiting to hear back about some others. This house-hunting lark isn’t half tiresome - let’s just hope we eventually find somewhere that makes it all worthwhile.