I got sent home from work today after going down with what I believe is known colloquially as ‘the chronic shits’
I thought it might be a reaction to yet another imminent house move, but surprisingly once I got back to the chalet the problem seemed to clear up, so maybe it was work-related.
Last night tonight in this abode. It’s been nice but rather expensive for what we’ve had. It’s tiring and depressing to be moving again but at least this time we know it’s long-term. We can get our arses into the house in Suffolk knowing we’re keeping them there for at least two years.
The family are very relaxed about what how we look after it as well, which takes some pressure off. We can bugger off on holiday, we can have people over to stay, we can basically treat it as our own. They seem quite set in their determination not to come back to England, so I don’t suppose they give a shit really.
Hey ho - next time we speak I’ll be in Suffolk!! (and in July!)
RC 30-6-14
Philippa played badminton tonight so I took advantage of the spa facilities again. Might as well use them while we have them, eh? We’re being charged for them whether we utilise them or not, so I’m determined to get our moneys worth.
Trouble tonight was I’d forgotten it was Friday and the bloody place was packed. A sauna isn’t so relaxing a place when you’re stuck next to a fat 50-something businessman who insists on telling everyone who walks in “When you do this in Austria, everyone is naked”
I cut my visit short and came back to watch telly instead.
And I found out to my horror that I’ve been missing a series of ‘Wallander’ It was episode 6 of 6 last week and the bloody thing will disappear from iPlayer tomorrow. So now I either watch all six 90-minute episodes back-to-back or wait until the sodding expensive boxset is released at Christmas..
I’d better get the coffee on..
RC 27-6-14
I went to the ‘Ink Incorporated’ tattoo salon in Norwich today, to ask about their Special Offer Removal Service. I had a nice chat with a cute receptionist called Tessa, who then introduced me to ‘Buzz’ the tattooist.
Buzz may be a worrying name for someone who attacks your skin with a needle, but he had a fantastic idea… “Removal is quite a lengthy process and leaves some scarring, so why don’t you let me adapt the one you have to make the spelling correct?”
WHY HAVEN’T I THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?????????
He can use the A at the end to form the loop of the second P, he can add a new A on the end, and he’s going to use the renegade unwanted L in the middle to form the stem of a beautiful rose.
I could have kissed him. Even after quoting me £200 for the work, I could have kissed him. And maybe I will, after he does it for me next Friday.
I’m not going to tell Philippa - I’ll unveil it for her as a surprise that evening, so please keep this between us….
RC 26-6-14
I made the mistake of watching the England game with Ted last night. Jesus, I thought he was going to have a stroke.
What is it about watching some over-paid narcissistic queer boys kick a ball and each other that turns grown men into Neanderthal lunatics?
RC 25-6-14
I had a very clear head at work today. Maybe I needed yesterdays weirdness to wake me up, or something. Or maybe I’m just starting to realise that there is actually a pretty good chance that one way or another I won’t be working there much longer, and after countless months of dealing with unhappiness and threatening to do something about it, I might actually be about to do something about it!
My word, but this life we lead is a funny old thing.
Anyway, on a less insane-sounding subject - there is a tattoo parlour in Norwich that are offering quite cheap removals as they want to try out some new machinery. I am very tempted to give them a call. I love having my beloved’s name emblazoned on my body, but it’s not her name is it? It’s someone else’s name that sounds the same but is spelt slightly differently. I think I’ll pop in and see them before work one day. No harm in finding out what’s involved is there? Can’t be any more awkward and painful than having the bloody thing done in the first place can it?
While I’m there I might ask why it’s called a tattoo ‘parlour’
I overheard a gorgeous unintentional double-entendre earlier:
Man in Aisle 4: “SARAH, SHALL I GET SOME STUFF FOR A BARBECUE?”
Woman 20 feet away: “NAH, KEV, NOT TONIGHT - I’M WORKING. WHEN YOU GIVE ME TOO MUCH MEAT I FIND IT HARD TO CONCENTRATE”
Childish, I know, but a very nice distraction….
RC 24-6-14
I had some kind of weird mini-breakdown today. It was strange. I was sitting in the managers office after eating my lunch and was chatting to someone about my possible transfer to a Suffolk store. Listening to myself talk about it made me realise that there are some nice things coming up soon and I got this weird rush of excitement that made me a bit giddy. When I went to get up and go back to work my legs went a bit skewy and I had to sit down again. My head started spinning, my vision went odd and I noticed my fingers were trembling a bit. It only lasted a few minutes and then it all passed but it left me feeling knackered, and a wee bit concerned.
I called Sister Sophie when I got home and asked her about it. There’s no point having relatives in the medical world if you’re not going to take advantage of them, right?
She says it sounded like a kind of panic attack. I said “But I wasn’t feeling panicky. I was feeling fine.” Apparently, she tells me, panic attacks do not have to involve a feeling of panic, which sounds a bit paradoxical to me, but what do I know?
She said it was probably the culmination of all the hassles and heartaches about houses. We’ve been pent-up and anxious and unsettled for so long that we probably didn’t realise how stressful it all was, and now it’s finally getting sorted our bodies are allowing it all to come out. The relaxation brought on by the spa yesterday has kick-started us into recovery mode and this is the reaction.
So I called Philippa to see if she’d felt something similar and she said “No - I’ve been absolutely fine”
Bloody women.
RC 23-6-14
We had our first experience with the on-site spa today. Talk about the perfect way to see off the hassles of moving and dealing with agencies. What a great afternoon. It’s years since I’ve had a good swim, a Jacuzzi, or a spell in a sauna, and today I did all three. I feel so relaxed my fingers are almost melting through the keyboard. Philippa is a better mood than I have seen her for months. Maybe we’ll forget about the house-sit in Suffolk and just stay in this chalet for the next two years. Mind you, at nearly a thousand pounds a week I fear we’d be running out of money rather rapidly. And I doubt that even the spa would keep us relaxed if we were approaching imminent bankruptcy.
RC 22-6-14
Well we’ve moved house again…..
We’ve vacated our temporary, functional, basic holiday chalet and taken up residence in a temporary, functional, basic holiday chalet.
Being a tourist site in North Norfolk, there’s no free Wi-Fi or internet connection so I’ll have to limit my blog posting to work hours. I don’t mind really - I tend to have more spare time when I’m at work.
I shall miss being down by the river, but we didn’t really let ourselves get attached to that house. It seemed pointless when we knew we’d be leaving so shortly. Most of our stuff never even came out of boxes.
I have to be honest - after the last couple of years I am really coming round to the idea of buying a house and living in it until we die. If nothing else - housesitting has persuaded me that home owning is the way forward. Philippa, I can tell you, is delighted.
RC 21-6-14
We’re going ahead with the ‘holiday’ chalet, but Philippa managed to get them to knock £300 off the price. She said it was unfair that we had to pay full price for a week, and then full-price for a separate weekend, when we should get a reduction for a longer booking. I have to say I agree with her, and thankfully so did they.
So I’m happy because my idea has come to fruition; Philippa is happy because she got to change it somewhat and give it her own spin. So things are once again rosy and sweet in Chez Rory et Philippa.
I notice I’m falling into the habit of starting lots of sentences with the word ‘So’
Excuse me while I go and beat myself out of it.
RC 18-6-14
Philippa didn’t see eye-to-eye with me about the chalet. Bloody woman is obsessed with ‘saving, not spending’
She thanked me for my efforts but thinks she might be able to find somewhere else for us that’s a lot cheaper. I said “Good luck at short notice, sweetheart. If you want to waste your spare time re-treading ground I’ve walked already, you go ahead” and then I stomped off like a disgruntled teenager and went for a walk by the river.
I think this is less about the amount it’ll cost us, and more about the fact that it wasn’t her that found it, so I guess I’ll have to endure a few days of her pissing about before she finally comes round to my way of thinking and we go for it.
Thankfully the World Cup has started and I have an open invitation to watch the matches with Ted, so while Philippa spends ages trying to prove me wrong, I can lose myself in the throes of a sport I’m not really interested in….
RC 14-6-14
Just superstition
And yet still people worry
And avoid black cats
If you turn thirteen
On a Friday the Thirteenth
Would you be Satan?
‘Don’t break a mirror’
And ‘Don’t walk under ladders’
Are just codswallop
I just have to say:
‘If you believe in bad luck
then you deserve it’
Friday the Thirteenth
As it has five syllables
Fits well in haiku!
RC 13-6-14
God I’ve had a busy few hours.
I spoke again to the Agency to sort out our moving in date. It seems ridiculous that I have to go through them instead of dealing with the Bannermans direct, but I suppose they have to justify their fees somehow.
We can move in on Tuesday July 1st. Anytime after noon. This does create a slight problem with our immediate residential options as our current landlord has been very firm on Friday 20th June as the day we have to vacate. I gave him a call and explained the situation and pleaded our case and he would have none of it. So that gives us a 10-day window of homelessness to contend with. So I had a look about online and made some phone calls and I think our best option is to book another holiday home. There’s not much about that’s convenient, but I have found a chalet park in North Norfolk that will let us have one of their basic chalets for “a Friday to Friday week-long stay, plus an added-on Long Weekend package” Along with the accommodation we get unlimited access to their spa (with gym, sauna, steam room and pool) and laundry service twice a week.
It comes to nearly fifteen hundred quid but my thinking is “Sod it - we won’t be paying rent for two years so why not have a little holiday?”
I just hope Philippa sees it that way too.
RC 12-6-14
Let’s get the negative stuff out of the way first shall we? I called the Agency today to ask if there was any progress with the next sit, and the wet fish of a woman that we keep being unfortunate enough to deal with said “Oh, yeah…. Right…. Chesworth… Hang on, there was something…. Let me just check…. Oh, yeah, that’s it…. Yeah - the Bannermans called us on Saturday morning to say they’d love you to look after the house for them.”
WELL WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL US TO TELL US, YOU STUPID BITCH??!!??!?
We’ve been so nervous we can’t sleep, Philippa has been planning a suicide pact in case we end up homeless, we’ve both been trying to figure out what we might have done wrong on Friday, and they’d already decided they wanted us????
How incompetent, unprofessional and downright bloody useless can one company prove itself to be???
Anyway - that’s the negative bit out of the way. The positive bit now:
THEY WANT US TO SIT IN THE HOUSE FOR THEM!!
What a relief. What a joy. What a result!
Two years without having to think about moving again.
A fresh start in a new County - far enough away so it all feels new; close enough to home so it can still feel familiar.
I have tomorrow morning off work and I think we deserve to celebrate, so don’t expect any sense from me before midday at least…
RC 11-6-14
I had to cover for another managers sickness today. I’ve done it before, but not without prior warning, and never in a non-food department. Today I got lumbered with ‘Womens and Childrens Clothing’ and I can honestly say the only word in that department title I have a clue about is the word ’and’
I felt more out of my depth than a midget in the Marianas Trench.
I was asked to measure a pensioners bra size (which I declined to do), to give a refund on a dress ‘that didn’t fit when I got it home’ which had obviously been worn out to a party (which I also declined to do) and to help some fat bird choose some socks for her teenage daughters soccer team.
I have never known an eight-hour day to feel like eighteen months before, but blimey…
Next time Ginger Graham walks up to me and says “I wonder if you’d do me a favour” I’m going to scream and run away, or kill myself.
RC 10-6-14
My, but we had a grand old time in Suffolk last night!
The couple who own the house are as lovely as it is possible to imagine. Really, really lovely people. We all agreed that if we had been able to bypass the Agency completely and just deal with each other directly this process would have been a hell of a lot easier for everyone. They seem very, very keen on having us sit for them, and they have excellent taste in wine. That’s why I’m typing this with a fuzzy glow around the edges - I ended up a bit squiffy on a pricey Chardonnay.
Are working class people allowed to use the word ‘squiffy’? Or is it seen as an exclusive right of the middle and upper classes, like the words ‘fondue’ and ‘private health care’?
Anyway, I’m rambling a bit. But that’s because I’m relieved to have got yesterday out of the way, excited by the fact that we’re a step closer a big move South, and aware of the fact that I am running very late for work…
Do excuse me….
RC 7-6-14
It’s the 70th anniversary of D-Day today.
So what do we have on the main TV channels tonight?
An in-depth retrospective about conflict and those who lost their lives?
A documentary about the futility of war?
No - we have Inspector George Gently on BBC1 and Soccer Aid: The Countdown on ITV.
RC 6-6-14
Ignoring our obvious story of the week, I’d like to distract us all by saying how much I’m enjoying seeing the French Open tennis this year! The coverage on ITV4 is so much better than the tired, repetitive, traditional, same-old-boring-shit-with-the-same-old-boring-voices that the BBC churns out during Wimbledon; which is strange because it’s mostly done by the same people. I also have to say the red colour of the clay courts REALLY makes the sexy hue of athletic female human flesh stand out a treat, which I suppose is the most important point.
RC 5-6-13
Philippa and I have to meet the owners of the house in Suffolk on Friday. Talk about spending your life on tenterhooks… Apparently they were impressed by our references but slightly concerned about why the Agency seemed to have changed their minds about who they were recommending.…
And so it goes on…
Philippa is near suicidal with despair and nerves, but I keep saying “It’ll be worth all the hassle once we get there. We can ignore the Agency for two years while in Suffolk, then get our own place and forget about all this forever”
I think it cheered her up, but I’m not sure whether I meant it…..
RC 4-6-14
Today was so hot
I have sunburn on sunburn
My face is so SORE
Receding hairline
Means my head is now sunburnt
I’m REDHEAD RORY
Will I soon be bald?
If I keep burning my head
Then yes, probably…
RC 1-6-14