Last night, as the clocks rolled on past 2, I hauled myself out of bed, jumped in the car, and took myself across the city to my friends’ house, where they were packing up their last few belongings into a pile of (14) cases and bags. Thanks to: a roofrack, enthusiasm, and a lot of tie-downs; my friends, their kids and their belongings were shoe-horned into / onto our decade old Prius and ferried to Bristol Airport (I leave it to you to decide what ended up in/out of the car).
Where I presume that they got on their plane, since I’ve not heard anything to the contrary, and are, I suspect, somewhere over the US now. Because they are also emigrating. They’ll be about 4 hours south of us, if we get a visa and land up where we want to be.
It’s weird though, I mean, I’m bad at keeping in touch with people. A few days ago I saw someone I consider a good friend – who I’ve not seen for nearly a decade. Nikki and Kate lived in the same city, and I write for Nikki’s website, and yet we’d probably see each other every few weeks at best. Despite that, knowing that they’ve gone makes the city feel a bit lonelier. It’s strange the idea that they’re not there. We’d hoped that we might manage to all get out of the country at the same time, but we’re here waiting on this visa appointment, and they’re in the air, exhausted and sleep deprived approaching the start of their new life.
In an effort to get some sleep (because I woke up at 9, having got back to the house at about 5am) and to progress the things that need progressing, I took the pile of timber I created from many pallets yesterday, and made a planter:
Which was, I felt, good progress. About an hour and a half’s work. It still needs some trim pieces attaching, and frustratingly despite grabbing what seemed like an enormous pile of wood, I’m certain there’s not enough for the tasks remaining (the other planter for the longer front section, and cladding the last few bits, plus some nice ‘trim’ pieces required for covering up the joint between the planter and the deck cladding). Obviously, were things ideal, I’d be asleep now. Rather than sitting writing this, but at the faintest sign of sleep I got disturbed by a double glazing salesman. Bah.
Anyhoo, yesterday we whipped the doors off their hinges and ran them down to the dip’n’strip place (yes, yes, we really should have done this long ago) and tomorrow I’m going to set to on the bathroom doorframe and the loft hatch (which both need a bit of prep then painting with white paint).
Also, I’ve realised I’ve got a big chunk of pine left over from when the kitchen was built that I can use to make the panel to go under the sink. It’s already varnished, so it’s just a case of cutting it to fit. Hurrah.
– Paint the entryway
– Paint the back wall (just touching it up, but there’s a lot of touching up)
– Remove the doors and get them dipped-and-stripped (being done)
– Touch up some paint in the kitchen
– Finish the deck and the garden path
– Weed the garden and chuck down 100s of litres of bark chip
– Paint the bathroom doorframe
– Remove excess grout residue
– Make panel to go under sink
Our sort-of-deadline is Friday next week, at least to get valuations done. So I have faint, very cautious optimism at the moment.
Now, if everyone could concentrate on willing that visa appointment in our direction, that’d be awesome*.
* Of course, they might say ‘no’, in which case I dunno what the hell our long term plan becomes.
