This has never happened to me before...

some of you may know that i own a house in ongar in essex. when i moved here nearly two years ago now, i tried to sell this house, but it proved impossible. negotiations with the building society weren't particularly helpful either and it took the intervention of a financial adviser to allow me to rent it out. fortunately i struck gold and a potential long term tenant was interested, he had had to retire due to ill-health and his daughters, who lived near ongar, wanted him nearby.

today i got a letter from the managing agents telling me that he has died. as the title to the post says, this has never happened to me before.

in some ways this is a bit of a blessing, matthew and i are wanting to move, but found ourselves struggling a bit - to get the size house we want in the area we like we really need to sell my house. but you don't want to kick a tenant out, try and sell the house, realise that the market is still poor and then have to find a new tenant. so this does now give us an opportunity to 'test the market'.

however i now find myself with a couple of questions that fall under modern etiquette, and i have no idea of the answers.

firstly do i send a condolance card to his family? i've never met him or his family, but we have had a relationship over the last 17 months, he has paid me to live in my house and i in return have had to ensure that the house was safe and the gas appliances didn't poison him. so does one send a card?

secondly, how firm or lenient should i be in allowing his family to move his belongings out? technically i should have a months notice, but is it easier to tell them they have until the end of may (which has been paid up), but then again that is short notice for a bereaved family?

to be honest, once i realised that the property is potentially vacant, all i want to do is rush back to essex, bring the painters in get an estate agent around to start marketing the property. it will be a lot easier now that we no longer need hips - as announced, appropriately enough by Eric Pickles, the mp for brentwood and ongar!!

slight blot on the landscape, in hunting for a picture to put with this post i have just discovered that my neighbour is again trying to sell his house, my house is the one on the right in the picture.

handluggage only - update

i should probably be telling you about my time away with my lovely DYO colleagues, the sandcastle building, the comedian, the view of the sea from the conference room, the wonderful speaker et.

but i just need to tell you that airport security obviously isn't up to much these days. when i arrived at my hotel, i discovered that i had unknowingly taken some liquid shoe polish through security and it hadn't been picked up (probably in the suitcase from when matthew and i went to the devon life magazine food and drink awards last november!). but then on my last day, i realised that i had taken some tweezers by mistake as well, they had hidden themselves in the back pocket of a bag i keep my various medicines in. whilst this was a relief to my hairy eyebrows, i was begining to panic about getting this contraband back on my return flight.

i needn't of worried, my bag passed through the x-ray machine unchallenged, and because the two security officers were making a meal of frisking the two passengers ahead of me, i managed to go through unfrisked!

by the way it was a good few days away, and flying was worth it - even though i missed the begining, i had a lovely view right over the Eden project as we descended back into Newquay.

handluggage only

i'm off to a conference over the next few days in Lytham St Annes, it will be an opportunity to meet up with some of my colleagues from around the country and i am quite looking forward to it. back in february when i was considering how to get there i realised that it was cheaper and quicker to fly rather than go by the train. it does mean that i am missing most of the first day, but i also don't have to catch the 5.55am train to start a journey that would involve 3 train changes, take over 7 hours and i'd still get there late. in fact as i type they have already started. but my taxi (my father in law) is arriving in about an hour and whisking me to newquay airport for the first leg of my journey.

when booking i choose the handluggage only option as bmibaby wanted to charge for hold luggage. it is only in the last couple of days that i have begun to realise the limitations of only carrying handluggage. in terms of clothes etc not a problem, it is more that i am having to cut back on toiletries to comply with the liquid limits. i can't take my tweezers or nail scissors, so i am glad it is only two nights that i will be away. i'm also having to radically downsize my handbag as i can only take one piece of handbagage!!

however with the advance of the internet i have already checked in on my flights and rather bizarrely had to answer questions like 'did you pack your own case' and 'could anyone have tampered with your case since you packed it', when i hadn't even packed it or begun to think about what to pack. i know some people pack stuff for their holidays several days or even a week or two before going. me, i'm a bit last minute on this and tend to pack on the day of travel, or the night before if it is an early start.

however i can report that with an hour to go, i am packed and just sorting out the last few things and trying to leave a tidy house for matthew.

by the way don't feel too sorry for matthew being on his own for two nights. he has already arranged a meal at his parents on wednesday night and is going to see some friends tonight. he also told me that he is looking forward to having the bed to himself - cheeky!

GP surgery update

had a blood test and an inr test yesterday. after a blip the inr seems to be back at the level it should be, but unfortunately i have to go back for another blood test as the bottles weren't labelled correctly and so they couldn't be tested (ummm).

the surgery still looks a bit bare, but the out of date magazines have arrived - so there is now something to read, and there are some books for the children in addition to the toy cars that were there at the beginning.

but the latest arrival is an aquarium!!! the staple of chinese restaurants and gp surgeries the world over. it hasn't got any water in it let alone fish, but it is now in the waiting room reading to sooth all those waiting patients.

there is also a nice plaque on the wall announcing that the surgery was officially opened by the Lord Lieutenant Lady Mary Holbarow. if there were a pair of twee curtains there, they are there no longer!!

£7.50 cream tea!!!

i should be talking about how brilliantly matthew rowed over the weekend and how lovely the isles of scilly are or indeed about the sight of 122 boats lined up on the start line. however the real talking point of our weekend on the scillies was a £7.50 cream tea on st martin's.

this year we went a day earlier than usual (although i have only been once before so not sure i can really say usual) so that could go to one of the off islands and we chose st martins - partly so i could see Great Bay, which we were given a picture of for a wedding present, and so that we could visit some of matthew's relatives. i was also quite keen to visit another island other than st mary's as this was my fourth trip to the scillies in under two years and all i had seen was hugh town.

we had a very pleasant day, we walked across the island, dropped in on the relatives, had lunch on the beach at Great Bay and waked to the daymark at the far end. we returned to higher town to catch the return ferry calling in at a cafe for tea on the way.

we timed it well as it had just started to rain and the rain got heavier whilst we were there. matthew went to place the order and discovered that they only had one scone left so ordered a slice of apple cake as well. fortunately another mis-shapen (and previously rejected) scone was found so we were able to have one each, but when he returned to the table matthew was looking somewhat aghast at the cost of the tea which came to £13.95.

one of the other customers later discovered that the cream tea was £7.50 and tea for one was £2.50, so we had paid £3.95 for the cake (with clotted cream). the two scones were large, the quantity of jam and cream adequate but £7.50!! even accounting for the ingredients having to come from the mainland via st mary's it still rates as one of the most expensive cream teas i've had. the best value one was at oxwich bay on the gower- some years ago now but you got bread and butter and a piece of cake as well as the scones and jam. i can't remember how much it was but i was a student at the time and we all thought it an excellent deal.

i cannot write a post about a cream tea and not mention the correct 'cornish' way of preparing your scone, ie jam first as opposed to the incorrect 'devon' way, where the cream is put on the scone first. the cause of much debate even at a training day in somerset where we were given devon cream scones. a tourist 'emmet' can be easily identified by how the cream tea is eaten, you have been warned!

lack of focus

I've been a bit silent for the last ten days or so. partly to do with work and partly to do with a long weekend on the isles of scilly watching matthew rowing. i'll have to fill in some of the blanks later.

today i was back to being elizabeth as i had an opthalmology outpatients appointment. this was at penrice, the st austell hospital and meant that i could walk there. a good thing as part of the procedure of looking into your eyes is to dilate the pupils, which means you lose focus for a while and life becomes a little blurry and driving home would have been highly dangerous. it only took me 35 mins to walk there and slightly shorter on the return journey as it is more downhill. it was also a good thing to walk as the parking was particularly horrendous today. an older gentleman who was waiting for his appointment filled me in a bit with the history of the hospital and informed me that the land was given with a condition that there was never to be a charge for parking. which explains why it appears to be the only hospital in the world that doesn't charge for parking and would make a stay in penrice an awful lot cheaper than my recent stay at treliske.

another far too young consultant, dr jones (david) looked into my eyes and found nothing untoward except a tiny 'insignificant' cataract in the left eye. which is all good news, though one has to question when an 'insignificant' might become a 'significant'.

then i had a very painful walk home, trying to find shade from the sun and doing some of it with my eyes shut. why when it seems to rain in cornwall 95% of the time, was my walk home on a beautiful sunny morning? i'm at home now waiting for my eyes to return to normal so i can drive to work and have just hung out the white bedsheets, more pain! i might have to dig out my sunglasses in a minute.