1 month on.

So, it's been one month since we moved into our house and so much has happened.

The house warming was the best we have ever had. The weather was perfect and we had the first trial of Dionysus bars. This turned out to be a terrible idea. Thank you for coming if you were there, but I have forgotten. I have forgotten almost the whole night. I was looking at photos days later trying to figure out what we had been doing and, to be honest I'm still not sure.

The day after I wrote up with a start at half 6 when I realised Joni wasnt in the bed. I went on a search of the whole house and found him in a tent, in the garden, with Tim & Stee. No one can figure out why this seemed like a good idea, but they really regretted it when Charlotte and I started banging plans together by their heads! I was still drunk at that point. It didn't last.....

The Sunday that followed was the worst hangover day of all time. 4 people spent the entire day sitting in the dark, groaning slightly and failing to eat. Tim fell asleep on his knees, Joni had to be put to bed in the middle of the afternoon and Stee refused to leave the house when we finally worked our selves up to a walk and MacDs at 7pm. I think we are getting old.

The next day we discovered 11 cans of out of date beer, and being good people we decided to recycle the cans. After playing beer bowling with them. We also went to next doors BBQ party and meet all the neighbours. That was fun, I've never met neighbours before. Not heard from them since though, I was still fairly hungover......

Since that weekend we have had a couple of BBQs, had friends round and started gardening, so all petty business as usual. I have started decorating because I am having a little trouble settling into this house. It doesn't really feel like home yet, but I think that might just be because its so unreal. It's all happened so quickly, and also we realised we have mostly bought a house because people said we couldn't. That's a good reason, right?

After a 3 month break....

So tonight is the end of our 9 day holiday and it has been a crazy busy week. As everyone knows, it started with picking up the keys for our new home on Friday afternoon. So off Joni and I go to the estate agent, every bit of documentation we could think of in one hand, id in the other. We walk into the agents and say its Joni and Fiona to pick up the keys and..... they just hand them over. No questions, no form signing, just here is an envelope, have a nice day.

And then it was a very short drive around the corner to our new home. And no exaggeration, we just walked around the whole house, just looking and smiling, twice before we were capable of doing anything else. Eventually we got it together and bounced off to my parents to fetch the essentials (airbed, TV, champaign) and spent our first night eating fish & chips and sleeping on the living room floor. Can't say I slept very much.

The next day passed in a whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm as a whole load of people turned up once again to help us move. I promise this time it will be for more than a year! I suspect even a free MacDonalds wouldn't get them all to help again if we declare we are moving again before 2015! I am particularly grateful to the guys who stuck around after our first BBQ and found a final wave of energy to t tidy the living room at 10pm. I'm sure the beer had nothing to do with it!

Basically all we did for the next four days was unpack. We lost an entire day (and a few years off my life I suspect) to an IKEA wardrobe. Special mention must go to Tim who came round every day to drill holes, build furniture and generally be the man about the house. He left his tools which was definitely a big mistake. Today we managed toll makes a fair cockup of hanging a spice rack but it's fine. The last guy left us half a tin of kitchen paint.

On Thursday we spoke up early but we realised if we didn't get away for the diy soon we were both going to lose it, so we went to Chester zoo and it was amazing, if a little cold. We then went home and Joni got really really drunk in or house for the first time. It was a good day.

We spent the rest of the weekend making sure the house was ready for us to go back to work. We've reached a pretty good stage now. Nothing more really needs doing, just the odd little job it would be nice to fix. Strangely I'm really looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Tomorrow marks the official start typo the return to normality for me and Joni, and I couldn't be more excited.

All for one....

Following the success of the 2011 Bond Marathon, I think I have decided to embark on a new mission in celluloid. And it starts with spotting a DVD case at Tim's house, and getting a free book with my Nexus. These 2 things lead me to fancying watching The Three Musketeers. So we searched it on LoveFilm and got the longest list of films I have ever seen. At least 15 three musketeers films, and that before you reach the barbie version!

So that is the mission, To watch as many versions of The Three Musketeers as possible in one year, to try and work out why it is the most over-done franchise ever, and if any of them are actually any good. I will also attempt to read the originals book to find out what the story actually is.

So, I started this mission with the 2011 version, staring Orlando Bloom, Matthew Macfadyen and a whole load of other fairly famous people. This was a fully American version and it was given the Steam Punk treatment (for anyone who doesn't know, Steam Punk is a style which is set in the 19th or 20th century but with some 'modern' technology. Think the Robert DJ Sherlock style). In true American style everything was over the top, and all the writing budget was spent on lavish sets and dresses with some seriously tight corsets. But the plot just about held together and the acting was only a little over the top. And it was pretty enjoyable to watch. The biggest mystery to me was probably what Mas Mickelson was doing in this film, and why they bothered to put so much effort into setting up for the sequel which clearly was not going to get funded.

So first up was a typical American action film, but one of the better ones. Next Maybe to go further back in time... 

Solicitor-cide - is it a crime?

So on Saturday I agreed to buy the house for like the 10th time, and I suggested the date of the 12th for moving. The seller, being the total arose he has shown himself to be over the last 53 days took the best part of 4 days to get back to us and said... No. He suggested the 26th. I have to confess at this point I somewhat lost it. Actually,I lost it quite a lot. In a corridor at work. People in the next office heard. Vicky from marketing came to ask who had pissed me off.

I told the estate agent in no uncertain terms that the 26th would not do, and if he couldn't do the 12th, I can do the 11th. This time it only took 3 hours to get back to me - would the 19th do? The 19th will do, thank you.

And there, I thought we finally had it. We even celebrated a little. There was pizza and pop. And then came morning. And that quick call to the solicitor to organise the signing....

Yeh.

That.

Only my solicitor has gone on holiday all week. Without telling us. And the person she has left in charge is a full scale idiot. She had no idea what was going on with our file and couldn't get proper access to our solicitors stuff until the secretary was around. Most annoyingly, despite me calling 3 more times she didn't return my calls so I still cant confirm when I am moving. So I can't book my time off work. So I still cant sort my work diary out and confirm with my boss what I will be up to in a fortnight.

Not. Impressed.

Another birthday

Writing this on my favourite new toy, my nexus 7 just like I wanted!

Overall its not quite been as low key a birthday as I was originally planning. I didn't plan on planning quite so much but it was great anyway. My big night out was a success despite the snow! I am very grateful to batman, little red riding hood, Alice, danny & sandy, the captain, his gay pirate and my penguin for making it an awesome night. I've always wondered who buys those stupid photos in clubs- turns out it's drunk Fiona! I still haven't gotten over dogma turning us away,  they are well known for being the.....  let's say lowest- class club in town.  How can they turn away fancy dress? Mental! Still,thank you all for trailing through the snow with me and helping me get really drunk.  For those who missed it I feel obliged to report that when I slipped in the snow outside the hotel Joni had to physically pick me up and put me back on my feet due to my being unable to stand. 

The next day I crawled out of bed early and went for a walk around town in the snow and the peace of Sunday morning. It wasn't as peaceful as I thought actually,  although it did clear my head.  With Charlotte & Sean still around we took them to see the sights of Nottingham. This mostly involved being silly in the castle (photos of this will follow). It was fantastic to see have Charlotte and Sean around for the weekend.

This big weekend was followed by a fairly standard week at work.  My actual birthday was on Tuesday and my office treated me to a nice embarrassing round of facts about me (including discussions on why I was in Nottingham at 5am dressed as a zombie once and how you get uninvited from a wedding 3 days before it happens) and an impromptu Quiz about Denmark (9 out of 10, cause I rock).

The birthday celebrations ended with a family afternoon, with a buffet complete with party rings and jammy dodgers! And I got my last birthday present, from Jenny & Ben. Tea flowers, they are amazing! Just put them in boiling water and they open up into beautiful flowers and they make lovely tea. It was great to see everyone and my cake was awesome!

Overall a lovely birthday. Not exactly what I pictured when I thought of my grand 25th, but wonderful anyway.

Next week, on to a new house??

50 days later...

Exactly 50 days ago I received the txt message from our landlord asking us to move out of what we had come to regard as our home. It was a silly mistake to get so attached to a rented property but now we are well on the way to getting the first house we can truly call our home. Eeeeep!!

For those who don't know much about buying a house a brief explanation is required, to explain the stress-related snappy-ness we have both been suffering (and why its not going away any time soon).

The first step to buying a house if find out if, in principle, you can get a mortgage. This was easy - Yes. Banks were tearing our hands off to say yes, subject to checks, they would love to give us a 90% mortgage. The next step for us was to then get the other 10% for the deposit. This we did the cheats way - i.e. we borrowed it from a different bank because we don't have the patients to save.

Third step is find the house and get the owner to accept an offer. This is a stupidly time-consuming task. I am writing this blog post on the first Saturday morning I have't had to get up to go view houses in 8 weeks. We saw a grand total of 27 houses, luckily one of those was 'the one'. And everyone was right - The moment I stepped through the front door I knew this one was different, and by the time I had been to the bottom of the garden and through all the rooms I knew. And that was that, I was having that house. Getting an offer accepted took a further 2 weeks of hell. Waiting for the phone to ring, chasing solicitors and mortgage brokers. Luckily for me my new boss is extremely understanding and she hasn't said a word about me answering my phone at work. Finally we got an offer accepted, about £2500 more than we really wanted but the house is worth it.

Forth step turned out to be the real bitch, and largely because we didn't see the problems coming. Remember all those banks, desperate to lend us money subject to checks? Well it turned out that these were more SUBJECT TO CHECKS and these checks declared Joni and my borrowing too high, wages too low and generally just bad people to lend 90% value of a house to. But they would do an 85% mortgage giving me a heart attack on the the phone, and both of us 1 afternoon to find £5000. Due to the brilliance that  is Joni's financial planning, we actually did it. We called the mortgage broker back and told her to go ahead with it. What followed was the tense-ist 18 hours of my life but at 10:30am on Friday the broker called to say it had all been approved. New home, here we come!

Now I don't want to put a dampener on things but there is still 6 weeks to wait, approximatly. During which any number of a huge list of things can go wrong - The mortgage people can still change their minds about lending us money. The banks valuer can decide the house isn't worth what we are paying, or find some major problem. The solicitors can find some major problem. The owner can change is mind and withdraw, someone else can come along and offer more money than us. BUT if all these things don't happen you are all invited to the house warming in spring!

As promised, here are some pictures of (hopefully) our new home:

The one thing I'm never aloud to say, said more eloquently than I could ever manage.

In the weekend section of the Guardian newspaper they have a shorts section each week called "What I'm Really Thinking". This week my mum gave this to me and suggested I read it. What it said spoke to me in such a profound way I felt I had to share with with all my fans. Reading this article it felt like someone had reached into my heart and pulled out all those things I'm too cynical, too sarcastic, too defensive to say. I genuinely think it will have changed the way I express myself and in some ways that makes me sad. Below I present what I'm really thinking, but could never find the words to say:

I wish I could meet this person, I think we would be friends. I'd like to think we could go to the gym together and get coffee (....cake) together and not feel like we have to justify each others life choices with every conversation. To not slowly descend into a characature of yourself because it doesn't sit right with people - no normal woman could have made this choice. 

More than anything else this article scares me, actually. To read and write in to the Guardian (not to mention have your own home gym) suggests the writer is a fair bit older than me. I dream of the day people stop asking when I will change my mind, raise their eyebrows when I say I don't want children. "I bet you will have more children than the rest of us" is the phrase I hear most in my life. I wonder if anyone has ever considered how degrading it is to constantly have one of your life's biggest choices belittled on an almost weekly basis? If I took up going to church and people laughed and asked when I would give that up time and time again, you would be labelled bigoted or racist. 

If this writers experience is anything to go by I might have more years of defending myself than I would like.