Move One Done.

Having set the alarm for 8.00 this morning I was awake at 6.00. The day was barely breaking as I did my exercises and this evening the light had almost gone as I finished off the evening exercises. A sort of full circle.

The removal men were here at 9.00 to take all the stuff that is going into storage. It took the two men a full two hours as there were a lot of pictures that had to be brought down individually.

Once they had gone the place looked a lot emptier. The sitting room is back in disarray as I emptied the wooden cupboard which filled 10 boxes and packed the rest of the loose stuff. As well as doing that I moved the big cupboard in the kitchen so that I can paint the wall behind it and paint the skirting board too. I don't like leaving things undone. Another job that had to be done was to check that the porch doors could be locked. I put in new locks a while ago but we've never bothered to use them. (Any burglars reading this, please note that the new owners will no doubt be vigilant in locking their doors.) The front door worked fine but I had to chisel out a new rebate for the lock on the inner door. That's another job done and out of the way.

As we are working on emptying the freezer I made a blackcurrant and apple crumble using our own frozen fruit. Red cabbage and prawn toast are also featuring on tonight's menu though the pork joint that was put in the fridge to defrost didn't and will have to be cooked tomorrow.

The other thing I did was to use masking tape to mark out the size of the new sitting room. It's quite big and in theory we could fit in both sofas but that would make it rather crowded. I did some furniture shifting and put the smaller of the sofas where the larger one was. I usually put my feet up at the end of the day and I want to see how that works on the smaller sofa.

We've had the usual frustrating time trying to sort out the change of address for various things. I can't do the electricity until the last day as they need the final meter reading. Peter had the best time ever trying to inform the tax people. You can do that on-line but it takes forever as you have to set up an account providing all sorts of details etc. Instead he tried phoning. He got through but then had half an hour of muzak, for which he had to pay for each minute, until the line disconnected. He did however have the satisfaction of telling BT that we no longer required their services. When they asked why he gave them a detailed account of the terrible service we have had from them which did make him feel better. (We were with BT because whichever provider you have they still own the lines and out here it makes a difference.)