I have taken the plunge, and from now on you can find me at www.rabbitconfusedwithraisins.wordpress.com
I hope tis not too much inconvenience. I dont have too many readers nowadays anyway - so hopefully there will be only a few feeds to be modified.
See you in a bit.
Sam
Lenny is a stupid cat. He doesn't realise that cats aren't supposed to lie on their backs.
This is pretty much the way he sleeps most of the time.
Stupid cat.
We are currently in the process of buying a house. At present my 1.5 hour commute each way is killing me, so we are moving north - back to the land of my childhood, flat-caps, wellies and middle class ladies in SUVs taking their kids to school. That the life for me!
Lucy is still holding out some hope of being in the house before Christmas, possibly because everyone we speak to in the trade tells us that 'it should be around 4-6 weeks to get you in'. We have no chain, they have no chain.
Of course when you ask around, no-one in the history of mankind has ever actually been in their house within 4-6 weeks. I have no idea where than number has been taken from.
For a start you have to deal with inept banks. This time my frustrations are directed at NatWest who are organising the mortgage. Yes NatWest, I am naming and shaming you for all of your wrongdoings, here on the internet for all to see, on this here blog which very few people actually read! Ha!
Its a ridiculously simple thing which has been holding us up. In order to get our mortgage, I, who am not a NatWest customer need to take in my passport to my local branch and get it photocopied and stamped, with the photocopy sent through to the mortgage arm of the branch.
I took an hour off work to take my passport into the nearest branch (of course most branches only open 09.30 to 16.30 which makes this in itself a pretty difficult task). They did the required copying and sent it through to the mortgage bit. We waited...
...nothing happened. After a few days we were frustrated with the lack of news and called the mortgage centre up to find out what the delay was. They informed us that the passport hadn't been stamped properly. They agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority. We were annoyed but went back into our local branch on the Saturday morning to get another copy done. Then another wait...
...nothing happened. We chased the bank again and surprise, surprise they said that the passport hasn't been stamped properly. Again they agreed to make the passport an urgent priority and this time they gave us a list of all of the things that the branch had to do in this complicated photocopying tasks.
I had to make a round trip missing a meeting at work to a branch near Bradford, outside which I had to wait for 30 mins with a huge queue for the bank to open. They all open at different times you see, obviously for lack of demand at 9 in the morning. They dont percieve a queue of 10 people outside of the bank being demand it seems. I stood there and made them do the copies properly with the two different stamps. They sent it through...
... Surprise surprise, nothing happened. We called up and they told us the passport copy was smudged so they couldn't accept it. Lucy screamed at them, so they agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority (again). The guy in the mortgage centre offered to put us through to the branch so we could scream at them instead. Nice of him.
At this stage we had lost around 2 weeks of time and Lucy and I wanted to get this in quick. She had to go home at lunch to pick up my passport whilst we arranged to meet at Huddersfield NatWest - somewhere we should have both been able to make within 40 mins of our workplace - meeting in the middle.
I set off from work at 3.30 (I told your they close at the extremely useful time of 16.30 didn't I?) missing an important meeting and hightailing it to the M62. Just as I passed the last exit on the M606 heading onto M62 westbound, I hit a wall of traffic. The M62 was shut westbound and I couldn't escape. I spent 2 hours in that traffic queue going 1 junction. I have never been so pissed off in my entire life. If there was a camera in that car - it would make some very amusing viewing.
So. I set off to work yesterday to take my passport in before work (another bit of work missed), managed to battle through the snow as far as the inner ring road when - my power steering went in my car. The lord did not want this passport photocopy!
I borrowed Lucy's car and after dropping my car at a garage (£516 the repair is costing me!), we got to the bank and went through the whole rigmarole again. The girl in the branch couldn't really understand why we were so adamant about checking the photocopies - but we made sure she put every stamp on perfectly.
We rang the bank in the late afternoon (it takes 8 hours for the photocopy to get onto the system - didn't I say). It had been rejected again. this time one of the stamps wasn't quite legible. Lucy screamed and screamed. they decided that with the 4 copies of the passport, they would probably be alright actually and actually they would accept it.
Its amazing what a bit of screaming will do.
Its amazing the rubbish you can find adorning shop windows in some of the tourist towns of this country of ours. Little metal buckets with random words daubed on them, small wooden animals, wreathes shaped like hearts with little red bows.
I know this, for I spent the majority of the weekend chaperoning Lucy through the miriad of chintz shops to be found in the towns of Grasmere and Ambleside in the Lake District. Lucy has been somewhat distracted by home and leisure type magasines of late, for we, finally are about to lay down some roots and enter the housing market. A big step for two people who haven't lived in the same house for more than two years since leaving home.
The only problem is, that with Lucy in charge I think our house may end up looking a little like a cross between a Beatrix Potter scene and an old peoples home. Its all I can do to veto the purchase of porcelain ducks.
In between viewing tiny blue bookshelves which are not big enough nor strong enough to actually hold a book - we once more got a little walking in.
This time we were blessed with not only good weather, but excellent light for photography. I always love getting out in the winter.
Left behind!
Clucky the Chicken
Flat Light
We may have come face to face with some real ghosts this weekend. Or at least, if ghosts did exist, they would be sure to hangout at the place we stayed last night.
This weekend we went down to Lea Hall, in the heart of glorious Derbyshire. Yes, its a bit far south - but I promise you it looks a lot like the north, so it is probably worth a visit!
Lea Hall was the childhood home of Florence Nightingale and so had some proper history and that. The rooms were fantastic and Lucy got this rather shadowy shot of the bed which I like:
(the toblerone you can see was a present to me, and lasted approximately 2 hours)
The reason for this visit was the 6 year anniversary of us getting together. I didn't reveal to Lucy where we were going until the blooming sat-nav gave the game away when we were about half a mile from the house. I probably made a mistake by hinting that passports may be required for the weekend. This may have potentially led to a problematic heightening of expectations. It was a damn good weekend though!
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