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Bank Holiday sunshine

Off to meet FiFi and Grumps for a walk 
(and yes, she is on the seat)
Finally after weeks of rain and cold weather, the tide has turned and we have glorious sunshine for the bank holiday weekend and half term - hooray, it's about time. 

Also just in time is half term as the kids were definitely ready for a break. They have both done brilliantly settling into the school, making new friends and finding their feet in an unfamiliar environment. Izzy has just had her exam week and felt it went OK given she hadn't covered all of the syllabus, and Abi's exams start as soon as she is back next week. I hope she's done some revision as she left for Devon with Claire, Adam and Mia today and isn't back until Saturday. There is talk of looking at some of her notes but who knows. My view is that a bit of R&R will probably be at least as beneficial if not more so than cramming all week so she should take the time to relax and have some fun - she deserves it.

So we packed Abi off and immediately Izzy comes into her own a little more. This always happens - Izzy is happy to spend most of her time in her room when they are both here, but when it's just her we see a lot more of her. She even came for a nice walk along the canal this afternoon with Mum, Dad, Amanda and Alex - I didn't even have to bribe her!

It's a good job we have these activities to take our minds off the fact that Stephen and his gang of merry men made zero progress on the various outstanding jobs on the house this week. Despite various promises he failed to have anyone turn up until Friday lunchtime, where upon they managed to do a whole 90 mins of work because they neither had the tools or the material they needed. You couldn't make it up. When I spoke to him he managed to blame everyone but himself as to why it had been impossible to get organised. He is a joke, just not a very funny one. So we have another week after which I have told him I plan to take him to task for breach of contract. I don't think he believes me but I am deadly serious. I also plan to write to the HSE, Trading Standards, NHBC and LABC as well as HMRC - hopefully one or more of them have sufficient interest and resource to go after him so he can't do this to other people.  

We have made some progress however on he things we can influence. We are exploring the covenant that Stephen swore he knew nothing about - we have now found out that the beneficiary is next door so I walked round the field with Izzy and practiced my opening line before going round to have a chat about how willing they wold be to flex it a little. As we thought there is some wriggle room if we are sensible with what we do and so Abi and I spent some time this morning mapping out the position of what she would like. Its a good job neither of us aspire to be chartered surveyors as we had to measure everything about 3 times to get it right but in the end we have the basics pegged out for us to contemplate and consider together. I'm still not convinced and think it would look better up against the hedge in line with Glenn's workshop so I'm also going to explore that option as well. We are only going to do it once so we might as well get it right. Of course we are making all this effort for a horse I'm not sure I even want, but hopefully between me, Izzy and others there will be enough people to ride with Abi. She's nothing if not capable at getting us all to bend to her will - always was quite good at that now I come to think about it!

Another day, another lovely sunset









 

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