When life gives you figs..

When life gives you figs.. move in. Yes, we have bought a house and it has a fig tree! Funnily enough it has a lemon tree too (for the bad days?) I guess the reason for all the different loveliness is that there is a strong borehole which means we won’t have to worry about water shortages. A cool little detail about this fact is that the house will suit its name, “Springs” which is written on a sign buried deep in our storage container. This makes me very happy.

Miraculously, we have been released from our rental commitment so we can get going at the end of this month. The people moving out of our house are desperate to get cracking so everything is happening quickly. We are actually moving in sooner than we would have if we’d bought the last house that fell through before the deadline last month! Let’s just read that sentence again. How did it even work out?

Our container has actually arrived in SA but it got held up in Durban because we were the lucky recipients of an inspection (which we had to pay for of course!) WHAT have they been doing in there I wonder, copying out recipes from our recipe books? Trying on our clothes? Playing our board games? It’s actually quite handy that they’ve held up the delivery as my secret wish has ended up being granted – it’s almost a bit too late to have everything delivered to our rental place so it’ll go straight to the real house. Yey! No Double Unpack!

So, my ‘cool box’ days are now numbered – they’re being literally ticked off on a Worthing calendar. It is hard feeding five from a cool box, and it is hard sleeping on airbeds. But we are nearly there. Soon we will have a sofa to sit on – we will feel like royalty!

I miss looking at houses because it gave me a sense of purpose every day. I miss my estate agent mates! Now it is just a waiting game, and I got soooooo lonely and frustrated the other day that I drew the fig. I could only borrow 5 felt tips from a small child, but I made myself focus and ended up having a very happy half an hour with the puppy on my lap.

So life ticks on. The boys nonchalantly told me they were going to Johannesburg for the weekend with the school (surely there’s a letter from the school, don’t you need a form, where are you sleeping,when are you back,why are you going,how are you getting there,when will you be back, how many teachers are going, how much is it, and what if you get lost or killed? Huh?) Term is nearly over and we have a few fun trips planned over the Easter break, ticking off some more of those calendar days. We didn’t have half term break here so it’s been a long slog since the morning of 13th Jan when we dropped off those shell-shocked kids.

The one remaining question is this: how will the Rand be doing against the Pound on the day our house purchase goes through?? Every time Boris Johnson mutters about leaving Europe the pound freaks out and we feel a ripple over here! So PLEASE, UK, keep it together just for one more week – stop flapping!!!!!

 

 

Category : God's big sleeves (you never know what he's got up them..), Makey stuff and food, Making my own fun (it's a gift!), Progress report