The plan for this weekend ...

Today is going to involve laundry, cleaning, and going through closets trying to get rid of things, on the principle that the less we have, the less we have to move.

Tomorrow we drive to my parents, bearing with us the lawnmower, the edge trimmer, the ladder, and anything else we can fit into or on top of the car. Very third-world, specially as our car is incredibly dusty and dirty; if only we had a goat or two it'd really be like returning to our roots. It's a fair drive to my parents' house (round about three hours, depending on the traffic) but I'm so looking forward to seeing them; aside from the pleasure of their company it'll be nice to spend a few hours in a peaceful, box-free environment.

There's no way that our sofa will go through the front door of the new place we're renting (it's a Victorian house, and older Victorian at that, with a teeny tiny front door), so the woman whose house we're supposedly buying has said that we can store our sofa in her conservatory until (snort) the transfer finally comes together. So next week sometime we'll have to get that there. I found her offer to let us store stuff at the house quite reassuring; presumably this means that she has no intention of backing out of the deal. And if the worst comes to the worst, well, it's free storage. Which is not trivial here; storage is way more expensive than I'd have expected. I suppose because space of any kind is at a premium over here?

And next weekend we do the actual move. I should think we'll be without internet access for a couple of weeks; we can't start setting all those sorts of things up till we sign the lease, which isn't happening till late next week.

In other news, I'm applying for a new job. It's along the same lines as what I do now, but for more pay and in a nicer environment. Unfortunately someone else I know (and like) is also going for it, and, while my paper qualifications are better, she has more experience. So, we'll see what happens. The trickiest moment when filling out the application form was the "address" field. We're only here for one more week. The house we're renting is described on the lease as being number 51b. The chemist to its left is clearly marked as number 51. But, the number on our house door is also 51, and the two houses on its right have 51a and 51b on their respective front doors. When I phoned the estate agent for clarification, she said the one we're renting is definitely 51b, no matter what the door numbers say. Um, okay, but does the postman know? Eventually I just put our current address, on the grounds that hopefully I can just nip back across the road and get our post from the new tenants.

Time to wake the others up. I find it sad that I am the only lark in a family of - hmmm, not owls, they are more like some kind of furry hibernating creatures. They even sleep with their heads under the covers, and if I were to leave them in peace they'd stay there till midday at least. Maybe if I get breakfast going they won't find being dragged out of bed quite so cruel.