We're in!

But have we no internet at present so no pictures and am writing this on my work smartphone so know idea how it will turn out! We should be back up & running early next week so you can all get to see it then. It's huge in comparison, so we can now just hoard all the stuff we intended to throw out before we moved but didn't get round to....!

Move was pretty much stress free and we were in and done by just after 3pm (professional movers are well worth the money!) and the Small Man seems to have coped fine so far. We'd explained to him that we were going to be moving to a new house ("nu ha") and picked him up relatively early from nursery so he had time to explore and acclimatise. He went to bed last night, asked to get into his cot and went straight to sleep and was fine until morning. When he woke up I think he wasn't sure where he was and so was a little disgruntled but was ok really. He is enjoying all the new things to explore (read "pull on or bang").

The garden is fantastic and bigger than we remembered although this means we're going to have to expend a lot more effort on it to keep it looking good (or even just tidy)! It also has some good hiding places for small people. And we have trees... with real birds and everything! The garage will also be great for sorting out the boat (another project for the summer) and we also have a shed with veranda. We think we'll turn it into a beach-hut style cocktail bar for the barbeques....

The price we pay for all this is some VERY 70s decoration, electrics that pre-date Edison and a rather weird boiler & hot water arrangements. Just you wait for the pictures - you'll think we've photoshopped them (or you'll say, "oh yes, a bit like our house was..."). We also have no shower and haven't quite worked out how to get any water that's above "luke warm" to come out of the taps. When you need to have a bath to wash, and the bath is an old style enamel(?) one that sucks all the heat out of the first 40 gallons of water you put in, this means your bath is effectively always cold. Our friend Colin is coming to look at installing an electric shower asap....!

It's all good though. We'll greatly miss living in South Bank (with corner shops, butcher, baker, fish & chip shop and plumbing store all within 90 seconds walk) but we will have a larger than average house, a large garden of our own, a street that's quiet enough for small people to fall off their bikes in and Hob Moor Stray just 90 seconds away. We also got to hire a van which is always fun to play with!

Expect many posts about some trivial aspect of the new garden which we are fascinated by....