Beautiful weather this weekend, which, annoyingly, thanks to the dreaded house saga, was totally wasted on us.

Latest update : while, barring a miracle, the house sale won't go through by the end of the month, our seller doesn't want to back out of the deal. If we can wait for the person our seller is buying from to find, and buy, an alternative property, we'll still be able to get the house. Of course, we don't know how long this will take. And, since our current landlord insists we leave by the end of the month, we need to find somewhere else to rent while we wait to see if the house sale ever does come through.

So, Saturday was spent in looking at every single currently available rental property in our town. This did not take as long as it sounds - there's precious little available here at the moment. Well, it's true that there were two or three properties that I didn't even consider, but that's because they wanted over £2000 a month for them. Insanely, ludicrously expensive at the best of times, but considering that we want to spend the bare minimum (because we will have to take a six month lease, and so may end up losing several months rent if the house deal does come through reasonably soon) definitely not an option.

Sadly, the places we looked at yesterday were absolutely horrific. Tiny, truly nasty kitchens, creaking floors, unhygienic bathrooms, the neighbour's washing strung up over the fire-escape, and views over decrepit sheds and rusting abandoned vehicles.

Their combined effect was to make the second property we'd looked at on Friday seem perfectly okay; pleasant, even. (They also made our current home seem positively palatial, but let's not dwell on that). So, we decided to go with Property B. We need to put down a holding deposit tomorrow, and then fill out all the referree forms and so on, and we should be on track to move at the end of the month. It'll be an easy move, since it's so close - just across the street.

We spent today doing laundry (it's all clean, ironed, and put away), packing books, and getting rid of stuff. It's amazing how much junk we've managed to accumulate this past year; quite good to be forced to get rid of it. We took piles of clothes to the charity-shop drop off this morning, as well as loads of toys that Sophie has outgrown. And we also dropped a whole lot of stuff off at the dump. I was struck by the contrast between the dump here and the dump we visited before we left Durban. Here, the people who work at the dump seem to be little wiry old men, the joky sort who like to chat, and who call every woman "love". And it's all very organised - different skips for recyclable wood, metals, computer bits and so forth. The time we went in Durban, it seemed like a post-apocalyptic landscape - huge mounds of assorted debris, and a scary armed guard stopping desperate people from stealing things. Hopefully it has changed there over the past five years.

So, we achieved quite a lot today; everyone seemed to have lots of energy. Bobby and Emily even baked a cake this evening; a rather strange cake it's true, (flattish and, thanks to the colouring they added, greenish) but, nevertheless, a cake which we all enjoyed very much.

The only really scary task that remains (aside from the actual move) is the cupboard under the stairs, which is packed full of ... well, I'm not actually sure what. I know the Christmas decorations are somewhere in there, and I can see climbing gear, wellington boots, badminton rackets, bike helmets, camping gear, a cooler, and, oddly, a few rolls of paper towels, but I think there may be some boxes back there that haven't actually been unpacked since we left Florida.