😆 I quite like this new house buying thing this visit feels a bit like going for a 20 week scan, everyone fussing, making you feel important and special and generally fawning over you. I got a call today to say that we were invited to have our New Home Initiation Test (no that can’t be right, it must be something else… ah, New Home Familiarisation Visit, that was it) to learn where our stop cocks are.

(How do they check your insurance if you do it online? And if they can because they have it on a cross linked database, WHY THE FUCK can’t they have a similar database for Child Tax Credits, the ongoing saga of which is slowly driving me to a state of raving mania? “Oh no Mrs Puddle, we aren’t allowed to know your income details… it’s the Data Protection Act…FFS…)Īside from all that we did lots more Studydog, EC, Maddy did maths and endless sign writing, Fran is deeply into The Twits and a set of books on the lives of Famous Artists, made it to dancing and Auntie Kate came round for a good natter. Though you can do that online now apparently, so maybe i won’t. Which i’ll need, because i habitually lose the certificate immediately after taxing the car. However, it passed and only cost £100 for the tyre and test (which is good as now would be a bad time for it to need anything expensive!) and i shall now randomly mention the word ocean, which for some reason was the only word in last years MOT test post that would bring up the test date on my blog. All of which meant i went back and forward over the width of the city 6 times today. So legged it back to the harrassed looking MOT man (it all has to be done in time slots on a computer now or something?), realised at that point they only took cheques but i had the wrong guarantee card, looked winsome, legged it home, found cards and all but one ballet shoes (as per usual) of ballet outfits, rushed back to pay for tyre, rushed back to ballet. Offered to leave the children as surety while i went off for alternative payment methods but they looked slightly pained by the idea and allowed me to leave without paying or abandoning offspring. After it was fitted i realised i only had card that i didn’t know the PIN for (why?) and they didn’t take cheques. Fran and i got some nice time together, so we might do it more often.Ĭar failed, as it habitually does, on onew tyre and one headlamp bulb (i don’t know why but i ALWAYS have to go and get a tyre and buy a bulb regardless of what car it is) so we hurried up the road for the tyre. Everyone had a lovely time though actually and Maddy rose to the role of biggest playing sister magnificently. Felt rather odd as i’ve been gonig there since she was 2 or so and often mused about how eventually she would be too old and today she was. However, she and i took games and a workbook (history cgp book) and spent some time doing the Ancient Greek barely surface scraping depth and playing at making words out of letter tiles. We rarely go to this one anymore as it only caters for those up to and including 6 year old so Fran has been too old. We left for the 2pm appointment, arrived 5 minutes early, deposited car and made our way to the convenient soft play centre next door.

Most of today has been taken up with education cunningly fitted in around an MOT debacle. Didn’t actually shiver as i ran to the car and good lord, i’ve just felt the radiators and they aren’t on! Okay, a ‘little’ more spring-ish today, just a little.

And then there was light life of brian