Joey Tempest in bed…in my garage?????

OK, before we do anything else I just have to cover one thing here.

As part of the admin features of this here blog, there is a tool that tells you what phrases people have typed into search engines to come to it.  Usually of course, there are lots of variations of mkingdon, but just now, a phrase appeared that made my blood run cold.

Someone typed “Joey Tempest in bed”.  Forget the fact that my one random mention of the Nordic rocker meant that they ended up here, but for the love of God, what type of sick individual wants to see the results from that search term.  The internet is a weird place.

Anyway, moving on.

Louise’s recovery continues, and she is getting more mobile each day, but she discovered this week that there are problems with her wound, and she may have a hematoma in there somewhere, oh and her wound is infected!!  We are of course delighted with this, and she is having to go to the clinic every other day for check ups and new dressings.  She has a cold too!!!!  Nothing is ever simple it seems.  Speaking of which…..

The more attentive amongst you will have picked up on the fact, that amongst all the pre holiday hullaballoo, we put our house up for sale.  Our main reasons for wanting to move where twofold –

1. We want/need more bedroom space
2. With my new job, I can no longer drop the girls off at Grandma’s for breakfast, from where they can walk to school.

We live about ten minutes drive from school, but it is no longer “on the way” for either myself and never has been for Louise, so the girls are now faced with walking or catching the bus.

They have always insisted they were fine to do that, but our trust in them to get themselves up, dressed and on their way in time was about zero.  If we are not rounding them up, shouting at them, and bundling them into a car, then they would still be sat applying make up at around 10.30am.

Anyway, since returning to school, they have done OK on the whole walking thing, and haven’t yet been late.  Of course, they have had Louise around, post op, who can still administer the relevant motivation when required, but still the signs are good.

Add to that, the fact that we’ve had less interest in our house than the East 17 reunion, and our thoughts have been forming in another direction.

As it looks like we don’t need to move the girls within five feet of school, we are hatching a plan to create another bedroom.  Don’t for one second paint pictures in your mind of our house sat in rolling hills of endless space, and us casually bolting on a new wing.  The only place we have not yet made into a room is the garage.

So, over the coming weeks, and no doubt months I shall be sharing the Grand Design style experiences and heartaches involved in a fairly major building project.  Like most things until you start to look into it, you have no idea how complex and involved they are, and this certainly applies here.

The idea is less than a week old and here is what I have found out already.

1.  Our lease prohibits the garage from being used as anything else but a garage, so we need to get permission.  To even ask this question involves a fee of £80, and then if they agree in principle there will be “other fees” to process the permission.

2.  We need to move both our gas and electric meter things.  Putting the astronomical costs aside for a second, trying to find out who to talk to in order to arrange this is a challenge they should put in place when recruiting new folk for Men in Black.  When you do, they then add considerable insult to injury by telling you their prices.  To move the electric board and meter, ooh, around a foot and a half to the left, they want £1400 and for the gas meter to go onto an outside wall is another £800.  I asked both parties how many men they were sending, and how many days they were staying for.  They didn’t understand the question until I pointed out that for those prices I was expecting the A Team to arrive by helicopter, and stay for at least a week!  No, it seems both jobs will take less than half a day.

It will also be at least eight weeks until they can get around to it too!!

3.  The bank seems willing to lend me endless supplies of cash, but despite banking there since 1987, I still have to spend forty-five minutes on the phone telling them all the information that they have on their computer, like, how much I get paid, how much we spend each month, and by how much one exceeds the other!!

So the pain has started.  However the end game still looks worth it, as we should end up with a decent sized fourth bedroom with an en suite.  Face it no-one wants to see me dashing through the house to the upstairs bathroom in my undercrackers do they!  Well, maybe the guy who searched for Joey Tempest in bed does?

All in all though, this to me still seems like the preferable option to moving.  Despite the cost of such a development, it gets us into a four bedroom house, in an area we love, without the pain of putting everything we own into boxes, and then taking it all out again.  When you weigh up the legal fees, stamp duty, removal costs etc, the conversion of the garage feels like a bargain!

Tomorrow we have our builder coming round to do some final checks, before he presents us with the official quote.  Depending on what that says, this could be the shortest development project in history.  However, if he is anywhere near our budget, we’ll crack on I’m sure.

Work has been hectic again this week, and the “highlight” was a training course on Wednesday in central Manchester at the offices of our PR agency.  A few of us were to be media trained!  I know, I know.

This basically involved learning how to do interviews with the press and how journalists try to trick you into getting info you didn’t want to tell them.  Then to my horror, a session on how to do pieces to camera, as we intend to populate our YouTube channel with lots of promo videos, explaining how great we are.  The horror of seeing yourself played back in 1080p cannot be fully understood until it happens.  Suffice to say, I don’t see a future in television for myself at this stage.  Plus, why didn’t anyone tell me I was losing my hair?????

They also say that the camera adds ten pounds.  I don’t know about that, I think it is more likely to be the 8,000 calories a day whilst on holiday!!

In other news, Rebecca came home with a letter this week about a school trip.  As you know, these days these are usually things like giraffe racing in New Zealand rather than a day in Cleckheaton.  This trip is an exchange thing to Germany, where she will go and stay with a “pen pal” and their family in November, and we shall return the favour next April.  It’s a good job we plan to have an extra bedroom by then!!

This may not seem odd to you, until you understand that not one pupil in Rebecca’s year actually learns German at school.  They all either do Spanish (like Rebecca) or French.  The benefits, of course, are around life experience, meeting new people etc, and learning to be independent, but you would think they could manage something like that in a country who speak the language they are learning??  I did study German for three years, and as a result, can now ask for a piece of Black Forest Gateaux with great confidence.  This is ALL I can do, but still, a glowing reference for a comprehensive education.

Ich mochte ein stuch schwarzwalderkirschtorte bitte.  Have that!

Till the next time….