WOW.... Two whole months since I last got round to posting on here.

Things on the decorating front haven't exactly been going to plan, however I did get the storage unit emptied at the beginning of October. I also treated myself to a new full sized bicycle. Have kept my little foldaway though... just in case :O.

One of our neighbours moved away down to dorset the first week of october, but we haven't actually got to speak yet to the new family that moved in. She is one of the daughters of another neighbour, so I'm not sure if I got to speak to her when we met her parents.

We got the paving at the back finished and had the new gate etc fitted, but our neighbour has decided that he doesn't like what we've done to the bank outside the gate. When we moved, in March, it was all overgrown, so we tidied it up - he'd previously put decorative blocks along the edge and had put some plants into it. We'd dug it over and replanted, which he seemed pleased with, but certainly made no negative comments about it, but it now turns out that until his daughter moved he hadn't been able to use their garage as the daughter had been using it for storage, however once it was usable again they couldn't turn it their garage without clipping the blocks so asked me to alter the bank and path to give them sufficient turning. I'd had plans to change the path anyway once the inside was finished to make the path wider for GOM's wheelchair, so I didn't forsee any problems, he didn';t undestand that it was a'work in progress' and even when I did make a start, I didn't get as much done as I wanted as my old back problems came back and have since prevented me doing any more digging. I need to find someone to finish it off for me as I still have a quite a few hedging plants to go in too but haven't got them in. If I don't do it soon I'll lose them to the frost.

The original plan was to start the internal decorating at the beginning of October, but because the fine weather held, the contractor wanted to stick with the external work and get it finished. This put the internal work back so we had to reschedule and at the beginning of November started work on the kitchen instead of the some of the other rooms. This turned out to be more involved that originally planned as certain things came to light as it progressed, so we ended up with new base units and a new sink etc, still glad it was done unfortunately this meant the job over ran by 2 days and our contractor had to leave us to go off and do a 'small' job that was only supposed to take one day however this stretched to two days and then he went down with a bad dose of flu, which went on for TWO WEEKS. Finally we got him back this week, but it means that only half the rooms that I wanted looking presentable for Christmas (and GOM's birthday) will have been finished and the bathroom that was scheduled to start on Monday (4th) won't get underway until 8th/9th, and it's touch and go whether it will be straight by the break. We've been promised that the suite will be in even if the tiling isn't finished.

We had the new flooring scheduled for last week too which meant that only part of it could be done - the vinyl has been laid in the kitchen and hall but the carpet for the office/dining room had to be rescheduled and should be done on Monday