Explanation of absence

Hi folks, remember me?

As Cloud has given a public explanation for our recent absence - and return - I thought I would make my own here too.

Basically, Neil's dad took seriously ill and we had to quickly up-sticks and depart for New Zealand. It was always going to be a race against the clock, but before we could get our stupidly expensive but necessary flights out he had unfortunately died. So with heavy hearts we had to make the long journey to NZ knowing we were going to a funeral.

We left in winter, we arrived in high summer. We also left on the day our kitchen rebuilding project was due to start which did mean we missed the first two and a bit weeks of demolition (old chimney, former bathroom, outhouse wall to join it all together into one large space). However, we did come back to a kitchen minus a ceiling, minus most of its flooring, needing the outhouse roof to be raised and replaced, with pretty much every room in the house bar one (luckily the bedroom) layered in dust as we had had no time to properly pack away and dust sheet everything. And the builders (who have been lovely btw) were taking out and putting in the new windows. It was still winter in the UK - albeit no longer dark by 5pm. But it was - and remains - bloody cold in the ceiling-less, floor-less, unsealed windowed kitchen space.

We had three days at work last week: mostly sleepwalked them I have to say. After that we had our longed planned trip to London, and boy was it nice to not have to climb over things or take an hour to make a cup of tea [at home it is: find mugs, clean up sink, wash mugs, trace teabags and sugar and useable milk, clean kettle, fill kettle from struggling water-pressure taps, boil kettle, finally make tea in mugs as cannot bear to locate and clean up tea-pot].

London was lovely: we had glorious, if cold, weather and bright sunglasses days. Amongst our many activities, I was 'reluctantly' dragged to the Globe theatre where my inner geek screamed not just Shakespeare but 'The Shakespeare Code'.

Home again we are hoping that next week we get patio doors, a patio, a new kitchen/porch/pantry floor and a ceiling. At some point thereafter we should start to get fittings, cupboards and appliances. Basically a completely new and much more functional kitchen.

In the meantime, jetlag, work, the stress of a major house rebuilding project on top of bereavement has meant that blogging has unfortunately taken a big backseat.


Mind, I did watch both the BBC2 and BBC3 eps of Torchwood this Wednesday...