We spent Thursday evening at Stephen's old school. We were there for prizegiving as, ironically in view of recent events, Steve was being presented with a monster trophy thing for getting all those good GCSE grades despite having to do two years' work in one.

He does seem to be doing a bit more work now though, so we are hoping that he is getting himself back on track.

And news from the house front - we have finally exchanged contracts. This is good news, as we have finally reached the point where there are penalties for the seller if she tries to get out of the deal. On Thursday, apparently, we are going to "complete" - which means the house will officially be ours.

We are thinking that we won't move straight away, though. We want to redo the downstairs floors, and repaint some of the bedroooms (certainly the master bedroom, which is currently a violent raspberry). And since we are stuck paying rent on this place for the next four months, we might as well get the new house properly sorted out before we actually move.

If we hadn't already decided to go away for Christmas I think we'd be tempted to move as soon as possible - our current home does not really lend itself to festive cheer - but as things are, it seems to make more sense to wait.

I can hardly believe that the house deal really is finally working out!!