My wallet smells of soy sauce.

So does my kitchen.

This is because Sophie dropped an unopened bottle of soy sauce, which shattered, drenching my wallet and much of the kitchen.

Carpeting a kitchen is really not a very sensible idea. However, only one more full day and we are out of this horrible purple-carpeted soy-sauce-smelling kitchen forever. Touch wood.

If you look beyond the falling-apart window frame, the view from our bedroom window across the roof-tops to the hills is one of the few pleasant things about this house.

I am not going to be sad to bid it goodbye, though. Only six more sleeps till we are out of here! The truck is hired and everything, so (touch wood) everything is on track. I can't wait!

Slightly disturbing moment in the grocery store this morning - I discovered that Morrison's (the grocery store) is selling their own store brand of deodorant - and one of the varieties is named Annalise!! I have grown accustomed to having a fairly unusual name, so it feels very disconcerting to see it on a deodorant can, and a Morrison's brand one at that. It smells quite nice, though, so I bought it.

In the category of things I don't understand (and, for that matter, the category of things which it may be better not to think too much about) - I discovered Sophie's recorder on the floor next to the loo when I was cleaning in there this morning.

Bobby has spent the whole day at the new house working on the floor, and I have spent the whole day here cleaning and tidying. This place had got really icky over the last while, since all our energy has been going into working at the other house, and the messiness was depressing me. I feel much better about life now that we are living in a clean house again. Well, I say living in a clean house, but I should really say living in a cleaner house. This place will never come properly clean, it is just too old and (literally) mouldy. The window frames, for example, are just frightening - they are actually rotting in some places. But, not too much longer and we will be out of here, thank goodness!

And, on an unrelated note because I don't have an email address for Angela - Angela, how have you been? I have missed hearing about your life! (My current email address is momonthemove@gmail.com, by the way.)

On this day last year, I found out that I hadn't got the job I'd just applied for.

Exactly one year later, things are looking up.

Today, I got the first of my new job's paychecks. While the salary is still rather sad, it's a lot more than my last job paid, and, more importantly, I'm loving work.

Also today, I picked up the keys for our new house. (Very easy to do, as I walk right past the estate agency on my way home from work.)

Yes, it's finally really and truly ours!

(Side-note on England vs Florida ... when we bought our house in Oviedo, the estate agent gave us a $50 gift certificate to a local restaurant when we got the keys. Here, the estate agent gave us ... a key chain with their logo on it. But I digress.)

I can't wait to move! We went round to the house this evening (of course) and started planning the redecoration. One nice side effect of living in our current quarters is that, this evening, we didn't get that sinking feeling one often gets when one sees the new house without its furniture and so forth for the first time - you know, when you see the faded marks on the carpet and the scuffs on the paintwork, and it all seems a bit smaller and tattier than you remembered it, and you wonder if maybe you made a horrible mistake when you chose the house in the first place. Because compared to this house, the new house, which is really quite ordinary, seems absolutely palatial, old carpets and all.

I got out of bed this morning and fell down the stairs.

Stupid bloody attic bedroom with its stupid steep twisty stairs.

Wrenched my back painfully, and have a very impressively bruised rear end. Will not be sharing pics, however.

At least I know exactly how I acquired these particular bruises.

So today was rather grim, as I was in a fair amount of pain at work.

Sophie had a good day, though. She got to dress up as a Victorian maid, and spent the day at Preston Manor. The dressing up part sent a chill down my spine when we got the letter home from school at the beginning of term, since I no longer own a sewing machine and was fairly sewing-impaired even when I did, so we opted out and bought her costume on eBay. I feel a combination of guilt and smugness about this.

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!!

Thank heavens Bobby has managed to get the heater in the girls' room working. It had got so cold in there that if one sat at the computer one's breath condensed on the monitor, and one's hands rapidly got too numb to type. Thing is, he doesn't know what he did to spur the heater into action, which makes me wonder if we'll ever be able to replicate his feat. Certainly he hasn't been able to work the same magic up in our icy attic room. I couldn't find any instructions for the heater online; in fact, even the manufacturer's website makes no reference to this model (a Dimplex XT18, if anyone's interested). I suspect that the dearth of information may be related to the age of the heaters; they certainly look like they've been around a while.

I am quite enjoying the cold weather, though. For the moment, anyway. When we lived in Durban, sometimes I used to get home tired and want to change into snuggly clothes, because they're so soothing and cosy. But it was almost never cold enough to be really comfortable in them. Here, however, there is a lot of scope for furry slippers and hot water bottles and big soft sweaters. Or, as they call them here, jumpers.

It is weird walking home from work at sunset, though. And, in a couple of weeks, the days will be so short that it'll actually be completely dark before I finish work. Last year we wondered why Sophie's school ends its hour-long after-school activities mid-November; now we realise it's because they don't want the children to have to walk home in the dark. Payback for the beautiful long summer evenings, I suppose...

Brrrrr. This house doesn't have double glazing or central heating, so we are really feeling the current cold snap. There's a gas heater in the living room, so it's toasty down here, but as one progresses up through the house it gets colder and colder until your get to the attic bedroom where Bobby and I sleep, which is positively arctic. There is an electric wall heater there, but, even though it is very expensive to run, it's also not much good at providing any actual heat. This house has prepayment meters for gas and electricity - you have these little key thingies that you have to take to the post office, put money on (like a pay-as-you-go phone card, sort of), and then insert into the meter when you get home again to get light and heat. It's an irritating system, in that one has to be organised or run the risk of being in the cold and dark, and it's also the most expensive way to pay for your gas and electricity. And,the meters are in the scary cellar, which adds to the bother of the whole thing. However, it does make one very careful about switching lights and so on off - it is quite sobering seeing the amount of money on the meter ticking down.

The good news is, though, that it seems as though we may yet be able to move into the house we've been trying to buy for the past six months. Our seller has found another house to buy, and her seller doesn't need to find anywhere to buy (she's moving into a caravan, apparently, which sounds absolutely deranged to me but hopefully she won't come to her senses till it's too late to back out of the deal), so there's no onward chain. According to our estate agent, we could be in by January. So with any luck we may not have to spend the whole winter here.

Even better news is that those blood tests I had last week came back "fine", according to the doctor's receptionist. I'm quite relieved; when you type my symptoms - unexplained bruising, fatigue and muscle weakness - into Google (I know, I know, one should never do that) you get a bunch of dread diseases. So while I still have the rather unpleasant symptoms at least I can stop worrying that I'm going to die of them.

Yesterday was my last day at work.

It ended on a rather sour note; my boss had been extremely snippy with me for the preceding couple of days (I have no idea why), and yesterday one of my co-workers, out of the blue, took violent offence to what I'd thought was an innocent remark about our working hours. Long story, but work has been a bit fraught this past while (contracts and conditions of service were being changed, and the union and management are in dispute) so tempers were getting a bit frayed. But even though I can uderstand why she might have been stressed and short-tempered, I still found being berated (she was literally yelling at me) quite upsetting.

My other co-workers did take me out for lunch afterwards, though, and there were hugs and promises to have dinner out once a month, so some of the day was nice - but still, it wasn't exactly the way I would have liked to end my time there.

I have a week off now - half-term holidays - and then I start my new job on the 30th. I'm a bit nervous, but I suppose that one benefit to the nastiness of my last couple of days at work is that I won't be nostalgic for my old job.

Still no internet access at home. (I'm at the library now). It's promised for Monday, but I'm not holding my breath. It's odd, you'd think that we'd have masses of extra time without the huge time drain that is the worldwide web, but it's not so. Neither is our house particularly tidy. We do seem to go to bed a bit earlier, though.

House fact of the day : to get from the front door to our bedroom you have to climb 32 steps, in the form of two steep flights of stairs. Definitely an incentive to become better organised: repeatedly having to run up and down the stairs in the mornings because you've mislaid your wallet/bag/shoes/hair brush gets old very, very fast.

And wonderful news - our niece had a baby boy yesterday morning. Great Uncle Bobby and Great Aunty Ann have a certain ring, don't you think? I can't wait to meet him. Maybe in the summer, if we can afford it ...

At 11.45 last night we, and our tired, disoriented children, were still wandering through the labyrinth that is Ikea, flinging random goods into our trolley. However, as of this morning, we have rugs to cover the dodgiest bits of the fitted carpets, curtains, and sofas in the living room. Thank God for Sweden.

We got quite a lot done this week. Among other things, I shampooed the carpets on the ground floor; a rather horrifying experience. On the third go, the water in the carpet cleaner was still coming out literally black. I ask you this - what kind of an idiot carpets a kitchen floor? Industrial sort of carpeting, but still. Ick.

And we now have a telephone at home. More of an achievement than it sounds, as in order to do that we had to establish our actual house number. It turns out that it's not 51B (the estate agent's first option) nor 51B (the landlord's preferred option) but 51. The same number as the chemist next door. But, ours is not to reason why. And at least I have got to know our postman, since chatting with him about this issue.

Still updating from the library, as we don't have internet access at home yet. Maybe by this time next week, if we're lucky. Probably all the delays are for the best; though I miss reading everyone's blogs, it's just as well that I don't have too many sources of distraction at home at the moment.

Oh, and late yesterday afternoon, in amongst the moving madness, I dropped my signed contract off at my new place of work. It seems like it'll be a lot nicer than my current work; when the deputy principal noticed me waiting in reception to speak to the personnel officer he came over to chat and tell me a bit about who I'd be working with. He was really friendly and pleasant, in striking contrast to my current deputy head, who still doesn't seem to recognise me when he passes me in the corridor.

And then, just as I got home, I got a message to say I have an interview next Thursday for a job I'd applied for just before the one I took came along. I'm not going to go to the interview; having signed the contract it's too late to back out. And I think I'm going to really enjoy my new job. But I did have a couple of if-only pangs last night, because this other job had a rather good salary.

Anyway. Today we need to assemble the girls' bunk beds (they have been quite stoic about camping on the floor, but they are starting to get a bit plaintive about it now), go grocery shopping, and do mounds and mounds of laundry. Tomorrow - if all goes according to plan - we'll do something fun. We all need a break from the non-stop chores that have been our life this past week.

Updating my blog from work during lunch, something I swore I'd never do. But, since I'm only here for eight more days, I can probably afford to be a bit reckless.

We checked out of the B&B this morning; the estate agent has promised us that the electricity will be sorted out at home by this evening. We are trying as hard as we can to believe her.

The B&B (run by an Irish couple named Mary and Joseph) was very comfortable. Certainly a lot more comfortable than our house. But it has been a real pain carrying clothes and homework and that sort of thing back and forth, so I am desperately hoping that we will actually be able to sleep in our own beds tonight. I do worry, though, given the scary state of the house in general, and the tangle of wires in the basement in particular, that the electricity man may take one look and say he can't connect the electricity, let alone certify it as safe, so we'll have to find somewhere else to live entirely ...

Oh, and before you ask, no, I didn't mention a basement before. That is because I didn't know that the mysterious door in the living room - the one I'd thought was a cupboard door - actually led down a rickety, dusty flight of stairs to a basement, home of our fuse box. A basement which, despite the fact that is accessed only from our living room, belongs to the chemist next door. A basement which, among other things, holds containers marked "Biohazard. Dispose of by incineration only."

I'm telling you, this is the strangest house I have ever lived in.