Mid July '07

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Mid July 2007

Dear Bo and Dud,

Howard has put a countdown timer on the Blog - you may have seen it. It’s telling me that there is very little time left. It’s been a year from concept to ‘almost’ completion but I don’t think we realised how quickly the time would pass and how much there is to do to make a dream come true. While we’re away I think I may write a book on how life can become very complicated for what appears to be a good idea at the time.

Currently I am surrounded by a selection of Sainsbury’s finest banana boxes, suitcases, pictures down off the wall, paperwork and a huge amount of, well, ‘stuff’. Furniture has had to be moved to accommodate packed boxes awaiting transportation to storage. The storage space was wrong - far too small. Not our fault; the young man who was there on the day we went to kick it all off was, I think, on work experience from his secondary school. Not only did he give us a space that was too small, he charged VAT twice. Thankfully most problems can be sorted, but at the moment every bridge we try to cross has got a couple of holes in it.

Howard has found it very difficult trying to get insurance cover for all sorts of things for the year that we will be away. Take the laptop and camera equipment for instance, they can cope with the length of time we’re going to be away for, but when you say caravan and touring Europe for a year, it becomes difficult to get to the price of the insurance cover, they lose interest in trying to sell insurance. The next questions are ‘when are you going?’, where are you visiting?’ ‘have you planned a route?’ and inevitably ‘is there any room for me?’

We can’t load the caravan as planned because the motor mover on the left hand side has decided to slip. If only we had the space we could go around in circles beautifully. So with only 10 days to go before we move into the caravan we are waiting for the engineer to come. Howard has then got to get the caravan in for servicing, so everything that’s in there, has now got to come out!!

Am I stressed - no, I’ve not got the time, I don’t finish work until Wednesday and they’ve just decided to change my job description, I’ve a report to write, case notes to get up to date and meetings to attend. I can’t wait to wash my cup and lock my desk for the last time.

It’s all getting very real now, but I suppose until we’re sitting in the caravan with a glass of wine saying ‘that’s it then’ - we won’t believe it. This is our last Blog from Elwell Towers - look out for news from ‘Bertie’.

love Hilda & Howard

P.S. The knitted kettle holder for the caravan is a nice touch - although we do have an electric kettle!!

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