January Update

As the end of the first month of 2008 approaches, I thought that I would have a ramble through what we have been doing and see what comes out.

January, for the most part, has been wet and very windy here in Cornwall but for the last week there has been a marked improvement allowing us to make some progress in the main garden. I have now completed the first tidying up session on the borders and they now look more respectable. I have also started to clear the dead fern and other vegetation from the top of the Cornish Hedge running up the side of the entrance road. I still have to figure out how much to take off the top of the Leylandii at the bottom of the garden. We haven't yet managed to cut the grass because it is so wet. Maria has busied herself with tidying up other borders as well as cleaning both cars on the day that the sun shone; a great job she did as well.

Between us, Maria and I managed to clean all but two of the windows (outside) in the house with the two on the second floor defeating us because my ladders are not quite long enough. The window above the conservatory also proved difficult; pressure washing it and the conservatory was fun; I think that a little more thought and organisation is required to stop me:

1. Getting so wet and
2. Almost dropping the pressure washer from the top of the conservatory.

Perhaps a roof crawler ladder would help!

During the winter a friend and I tackled the Ride-on tractor, which had a petrol leak. With the help of two washers that has now been fixed; whilst doing that John noticed a problem with the exhaust, in that it was held on with only one bolt instead of two and even that one was not done up properly. I have two new bolts on order but am worried that the threads in the exhaust manifold are damaged, which might mean taking that off and sending it to the mower workshop for repair. I knew that the tractor was noisy but hadn't realised why! Now if I can get the driving wheels straightened up, we shall be ready for Spring.

We have looked after Annette's dogs on a number of occasions, as well as Annette and Clive. The dogs just love the freedom that they have here and we don't see quite so much of the rabbits.

We also had Dot and John Wastell for a weekend; they decided to leave the metropolis of Newquay for a while and spent a quiet time with us to celebrate John's birthday. The weather wasn't great but John did manage to fix the petrol leak as mentioned earlier.

On this last weekend, it was the RSPB Birdwatch and I decided to have a go at that; it was a little disappointing considering that we are surrounded by garden and trees and I had all my feeders full. In my hour, I managed to spot 4 Greenfinches, 4 Chaffinches, 2 Blue Tits, 2 Great Tits , 2 Coal Tits, 3 Blackbirds, 2 Dunnocks, 2 Magpies and one Robin. This morning, I had any number of Thrushes and my ever present pair of Wagtails, which were not "ever present" on Sunday; never mind I don't know what sort of Wagtails they are anyway.

On the Family History front, I have come across a small section of the HILLS family in Minnesota/California in the USA and some very kind soul, Duane Spicer, is currently looking for some more information for me. Considering that he has nothing to do with our family, it is most kind of him. Thankfully, this sort of help is not uncommon in the genealogy world. I have updated the HILLS family file on this site. In addition I have spent some time sorting out some of the 3,000 references on my TURNER Family Tree. The trouble with doing that, apart from the useful tasks of identifying wrong references and merging duplicates, is that it always identifies other tasks that need doing. Oh well it keeps me out of mischief.

So on to the future, well February will bring visitors in the guise of Andrew, Amy, Joe and Amy's niece Molly, followed by Nick, Karen, Charlotte, Curtis and Connor. It is fortunate that half term for the two families is on different weeks otherwise they could have all been here together!!!! Anyway, we look forward to welcoming them all.

BFN

JDT

Maria's Car

Having owned her Clio since it was new in 1998, Maria decide that it was time for a change in 2007. She has, for a long time now, wanted a 4 x 4, because they sit up high and give a better view of what is going on. Whilst we were waiting for the house to be finalised, we spent some time looking around and she fell in love with a 3 door RAV 4. I did try to persuade her to buy something more sensible but in the end, she decided that it was right for her so a couple of days before we actually moved house, there it was, sat on the drive at Redcap, along with its predecessor.


The Renault has now reverted to its original number plate and has stayed in the family, becoming a second car to Nick and Karen. We hope that it serves them as well as it did us, mind you it had only done about 22,000 miles in the 9 years that we had owned it!

JDT

Moving from Redcap after 23 years

Since the redevelopment of the Cumberland Hotel, followed by the purchase of the Kelsboro and Fort Wayne Hotels, we had been concerned at how the developments would affect us at Redcap, it had been in our minds, and that of our neighbours, that if we got a decent offer from developers, we would sell up and move. No such offer had been made so having returned from our holiday to Tenerife in April 2007, we approached the developers to see whether or not they were interested. Much to our surprise, after a little investigation, they made a joint offer for the two properties, which was too good to turn down.

We now had the problem of finding somewhere to move to and after looking all over Newquay we decided that we did not like anywhere that we could afford so started to look further afield. Having found somewhere that we really liked, we made an offer only to lose out to someone who made an offer that we could not match (the fact that the Estate Agents did not trust our developers did not help). Looking further, we came across Roseveare House at Gothers; where on earth is Gothers we asked? It turned out to be far too close to St Austell to be a viable option but we were persuaded by the Estate Agent that we would really like the place and that we could move straight in with absolutely nothing to do. We made an arrangement with the owner to view on a Sunday morning. As we had absolutely no idea where the place was, we set out on Saturday with the Sat Nav fully operational to plan our route. As we travelled down these very narrow country lanes, Maria was heard to say “if you think that I am going to live out here…” etc. We eventually found the place and both of us instantly fell in love with it without seeing the inside and decided this was the place. Sunday we went back and the inside turned out to be as impressive as the outside. Monday we offered the full asking price, which was accepted (more distrust from the Estate Agent about our developers). We then negotiated to buy most of the furniture in the place and sat back to await progress.
We approached the developer to make sure that they would match the completion date in September and they agreed that we could complete separately from our neighbours. There was a period when we thought that the exchange would never happen with letters to and from three solicitors seeming to be going nowhere however the exchange finally happened and on 17 September 2007 we completed – relief!
We moved in with the help of three truckloads of gear from Redcap, despite the fact that the new house was nearly fully furnished. The Removers were absolutely brilliant and Annette had taken time off work to help, which was another tremendous help. A couple of days later Nick arrived and helped with a lot of heavy moving including the erecting of part of our old kitchen into the garage. Goodness only knows how long it would have taken me to do all the things that he managed to do.
That is the brief version of how we moved into Roseveare House and four months later we love living here and have managed to get both cars in the garage and get rid of most of the cardboard boxes although there are still four in the garage and a couple in the attic.

What happened to 2007?

OK it is nearly a year since I last wrote anything so you, the reader, must imagine that 2007 was a very boring year during which nothing happened.

Well apart from selling Redcap, where we had lived for 23 years, and buying Roseveare House, the only other things to happen were that Andrew married Amy in June in Italy, where they now live, and I finally retired from work.

Oh we did have two weeks holiday in Tenerife, a couple of nights away in Peterborough at the 89th Entry Reunion and a few days up in Bradford visiting my Dad.

Finally, Andrew has changed my Blog so I am now in another learning curve to figure out how to edit this one.

I will close this now and write separate posts for the main events of the year.

JDT