muuranker

Dear All,

York housewarming will be 1st March (arrivals/departures on 29th Feb and 2nd March fine: we have a fair amount of floor space, bedding, etc. etc. 

Demon got back to us promptly, but we were stimied as we couldn't work out that what we needed to do was put the new password into the router. And then trying to find out how to do this ...

Solution: buy new router! (Not as wasteful as it sounds, as old router is now in the fourth box of stuff heading for York on Sunday, and we have now found the old disc).

New router is in, and working just fine - or rather, I am typing this on ExMemSec's laptop, because my laptop is having severe switching on issues (I have got only so far with alitalf's scheme for making the computer recognise that it has a power lead).

We are getting Zen in York.

Best wishes,

Pat

Just heard that our offer on a house in York has been accepted. 

It isn't quite a windmill, but does have views
This is the view from the dining room window:



And the third bedroom:



For those of you who know York, the park is the Little Knavesmire.

Yesterday our second choice York house (the smokestack) has been withdrawn from the market.  And today ExMemSec went to see a nearby one that looked really promising, but turned out not to be.

Oh fnuf!

Fnuf, oddly enough, is also the word to describe ExMemSec's uncle at the moment, who has a collapsed lung, and the air has gone into his body (sounds like one of those medical impossibilities which children whisper to one another, but it's true).  The treatment is working, which is great.  But the poor lad has been pulled between sorting out crisise in York, supporting frail mother to the West Midlands hospital, and looking forwards to a Very Grumpy Muuranker (as I am having the other hand operated on tomorrow).  He wants to be in three places at once.

On Monday I had my trigger finger shot full of cortisone.  Thankfully, it didn't play merry hell with my blood glucose (as it sometimes does), and on Tuesday I went back to work.

But on Monday (while under the influence of painkillers, m'lud) I bid for, and won, two Knowle sofas on Ebay.

I have wanted a knowle sofa, or better, a pair, for some time.  Given that our spare bedrooms are used as studies, it seemed to me an ideal solution is to have knowle sofas in the living room (sofas with drop-down ends) so we could use them as beds.

The cortisone wored really well, and pain in both hands went back down to early-may levels.

And then, yesterday, we went to pick up the sofas. 

For those of you wondering what a knowle sofa is: it's the kind with arms that are tied up to the back with cords.  They are heavy.

ExMemSec (and, thankfully, not EmergencyMemSec) hired a van that had an intermittent handbreak, and sounded like a cross between a helicopter and a lawnmower.  I could tell it drove like this hybrid, too.

We drove about 20 miles, and 'picked up' my purchase.  Or rather, the seller rounded up various villagers who carried our purchase out ... she lived in a whimsical cottage, without a front door - the sofas had to go out the back door (through the kitchen) and then over two little picket-gates, via an obsticle course of planters, wind-chimes, aerials, and ornamental bushes, down a side-ginnel and out to a busy main road to the waiting hazard-lighted (intermittently) van.

ExMemSec then drove back to our house, and we had a glass of Chablis before we dared to take out a tape measure.

We discovered that the narrowest part of the route into our lounge is the patio door, which at 32 inches, is a mere 3 inches smaller than a knowle sofa. 

The big one (the 4-seater) we managed to carry - stagger without too much difficulty.  until I dropped it on my toe.  ExMemSec wants to know why I wasn't wearing my safety shoes.  Probably the same reason that I had looked only at one of the three dimensions provided, and misunderstood the length-of-cushion as the width-of-sofa at that).   Blood stains on living room carpet blend in with the wine stains, and all merges with the swirly pink pattern, I think.

The small one (the 3-seater) is much more difficult - at one point, I think we are going to end up with it in our side-passage in perpetuity.  Oddly enough (well, perhaps not oddly), the ex-owner told us that when they were first delivered, to a previous house, she could not get them in further than her entrance hall, and they had to just use the back door until they had a carpenter in to take out the windows.  And that she is selling them as they are Just Too Big for her cottage.

But my hands hurt so much less today!!!  I had ibuprofen at lunchtime, and diclofenac cream mid-afternoon, but otherwise no drugs, and they really do seem much mless painful, anyway.  My toe, of course, has hurt a bit!

I am very pleased with the sofas.  They are both a complication to the how-do-we-get-this-house-ready-to-sell effort, and a symbol of my commitment to the move, and a guide: the house in York will have a Big Lounge/Party room, Plus they are fantastic pieces of furniture.  As I type this, I am sitting in the small one, my back against one arm, my lap-top on my knees, and ExMemSec is lying on the big one. The cats can't cope with them yet (it is, I observe, very difficult to run around the top of a knowle sofa