All set for guests

Good grief, I’m back! And good grief, what a week that’s been…

/floor

We’ve made it with about 24 hours to spare; the lodge is now ready for occupation and our first guests will be moving in tomorrow. We’d not planned to do it this way, but took pity on these folk who are having problems getting their house repairs done on time. They'll be staying for four weeks and then we may well get a bit of time in there ourselves.

The main stresses have been getting all the stuff delivered; there’s been a load of waiting about in the lodge for Yodel vans to arrive. It didn’t help that a load I refused as consisting of the Dunelm orders we’d already cancelled (in order to get the stuff in on time by going straight to the store) turned out to include some things from Argos that we did want.

So yet another long phone call to an 0845 number from a mobile was needed to sort that out, then when that load did arrive it consisted of both the original consignment and the fresh one, so that we now had two patio furniture sets and two ironing boards and had to arrange for the second lot to be collected again…

/no

Anyway, as I say, it’s done now and we can look forward to a day of catching up on boat work tomorrow.

The visit by Graeme, Daniel and Alex went off very well, including a trip to Calke Abbey on Tuesday. The lodge survived two small boys racketing around in it, and I was able to cook two family meals without too much grief (though I admit I took my favourite cook’s pan over there to do a big chicken chow mein on Tuesday). We also had time for some catching up chat with Graeme after the boys were in bed, which was very pleasant indeed.

Elanor has continued to be brilliantly supportive, even tracking down the last six face cloths we needed last thing yesterday. She and I have a trip into Burton to do on Saturday to get two more egg cups and a storage box for the games compendium. The compendium itself is fine but the cardboard box it came in will not last very long. I’m going to get one of those multi drawer storage cabinets for it, the kind of thing you keep screws or fishing bits and bobs in.

We’ve also hung the final picture in the lounge, a photo canvas done by Lisa Grainger from the boat next to us of this shot:

She’s done a great job of it, capturing a real 3D effect looking through the bridge hole.

Heigh ho, next week it will be back to the routine of living aboard, hopefully; I’ve managed to maintain the supplies of meat and newspapers this week, but it’s not been easy…

/wahaha