Friday 13th

It could only happen on Friday 13th.

I got up in the night to go to the toilet. Fortunately it’s next door to our bedroom. I went back to bed and dozed for a while then suddenly woke up. The water tank was still filling up. The button on the toilet was stuck so water was just running through the system and down the toilet. There is nothing like working out how to take a toilet apart at three in the morning. Fortunately we could turn the water off easily.

It took several visits from plumbers and replaced parts before it was fixed. We flushed the toilet using buckets of water for a month. I still check that the button goes back properly today.

Finding our way around

The end of the first week was marked by the closure of the sale of our old house. It was a very strange sensation to lock the front door and hand over the keys which had been with us for the last 25 years. I didn’t feel sad at all.

As I said; “the last 25 years”, which meant that there was a lot of getting used to routines and finding things to go before we really felt settled in. Everything seemed to take longer than usual. One of the pleasures was shopping for new curtains, lamps and odds and ends. It took a few weeks to get everything just as I liked it.

Even going out in the car had its problems. There were lots of new village names to get used to (and some of them very similar). We even decided that a certain roundabout near to where we live was a second Bermuda triangle. Still it was fun exploring the beautiful countryside around us, either in the car or on foot.