The CrepeVine

[MrsSchadenfreude]

How did we finish the other thread so fast...? Less than a month.

Am so jetlagged - couldn't stay awake past 9 last night, but then woke at 4am - better than the night before when I woke at 2am. Feel knackered and am just stuffing my face I will have to be up at 6.30 tomorrow anyway!

Longhaul is so overrated!

I appear to have doubled my body weight - I thought the Mediterranean
Diet was healthy? (Don't think about the wine..)
Sorry to hear about the jetlag - we are back late Monday and I am in work Tuesday - I suspect I won't be in the best shape

BD I think Thai food must be the healthiest - I appear to have LOST a couple of pounds!!! And I didn't touch any wine (not really a natural Thai drink!) but I did succumb to the odd cocktail/cold beer fruit shake!

You should be OKish re jetlag - it's only a couple of hours time difference, isn't it?

Swooon! I have a young gardener here doing a quote - mmmmmmm

And breathe.

at BTM's Sunday morning swoon.

Ooh, BD, sounds fab - I love the time just before the beginning of the season when everyone is warming up - both literally and metaphorically.

My big computer is now up and running again and I have been able to view the party dresses. I like the design of the first and the colour of the second. Possibly not very helpful.

Today I have a bazillion and one jobs to get finished before facing a frankly abnormal workload for the next 2.5 months. This is both good and not good. And is also why - as the Intergalactic Empress of Procrastination - I am sitting in my pyjamas doodling about on the computer. I will now force myself to focus on my to-do list.

OK, maybe not just yet.

Stropps
I am not unfamiliar with the procrastination- pyjama -wearing Sunday morning. Today I have binned my to do list and taken a world weary dh out for a 99 ice cream and a stroll out to a lighthouse. My cobwebs are getting well and truly blown away
Still have an entire weeks washing to achieve, but at least it's a perfect drying day - sunny & windy.

I am procrastinating also before tackling the garden. Again. When the Chuckle Brothers dug up the garden, they mixed in all the highly expensive decorative stones on with the rubble and spoil. So my task is now to separate the stones from the soil and rubble, and bag up the soil. So far it's taken me about three hours to do 3 square meters. FFS.

Re MI dress, to add to the confusion I think either dress, but in cobalt blue!

Crikey Herbs sounds like a thankless task. Grim. Still really too cold to plant anything here yet.so garden looks appalling.
Whilest I was at work yesterday the enemy neighbour has broken ground on the itsy weeny plot of land beside us( up until yesterday a field of lambs ) we fought tooth and nail against the proposed house and lost despite our best attempts at the planning dept.
It is going to be the hugest house and will block all our southerly light
I was hoping against hope that they wouldn't build because of the market being as it is. But no, building gonna start next week just in time for dds exams. They will be selling it apparently and not living in it. They already think they own the neighbourhood. They own 6 empty houses already .

herbs, you need my gardener-man

Crem, we have a "development going up behind us in a triangle of land between 2 houses (bearing in mind this is squished London Victorian Terrace Houses) - a 3? bedroomed house with a swimming pool (the size of a pocket handkerchief in the basement!!!) - we fought the planning for nearly 10 years...

Hi BTM : this is a green field site within 2 metres of our side wall. It will be 11 metres high and a garden the size of a £5 note because of parking regulations needing then to be able to park 3 fucking rangerovers cars.
I am trying to not to get cross. My blood pressure is going to be affected by the banging wont it?

Cremo, I feel your pain. The ground floor of the house will be about the same distance from our wall.
Plus our lovely new next-door neighbour came round yesterday with proposals for an extension to their ground-floor flat which would butt up to our garden fence DH (in the nicest possible way!) told him we would definitely oppose it.

Crem' isn't there a legal principle - "right to light" or something like that. I know somebody who had to demolish their extension because of this.

Hatty, you are right - that is why it took the developers nearly 10 years to meet the requirements. And what we are hoping will preclude the NDN's proposed extension!

Love the title of the thread... Well done Mrs S.

Commiserations to all building works neighbours. It's such a horrible situation to be in.

Back to school tomorrow. I have spent all day shouting, shouting shouting (we are not one of those families who have done all the homework, washed all the kit etc, hence the shouting) and actually can't wait to retire to my peaceful office in the morning....

Coincidentally, we had a letter yesterday from a company expressing an interest in buying our property "for development purposes". Next door (and the next one along) got the same letter. We live in a village with a high proportion of £1m plus houses, and several nearby have been bought up, flattened and redeveloped, with either a monstrosity mansion, or "executive" flats. Probably the latter, in our case, as we are on the edge of the posh bit.

Our neighbour is classic fodder for such people - an elderly widow, living in a medium-sized (but dated) house on a massive plot. I'm less clear what they would do with our miserable strip of land (and we are on the end), but if she sold up it would almost certainly be in our interest to do so too. We had a brief word, and she isn't considering it at the moment, but it may turn out to be a godsend ten years from now, when she can't manage the stairs or get into her garden.

I do wonder whether they don't carpet-bomb villages like ours with such letters, in the hope of getting one or two responses; they may not offer anything close to what (we think) our house is worth. Anyway, food for thought.

My turn to be rescued/distracted from a ruck on a thread; it's the sunbed one, on which I and various other people are pointing out facts (they're really rather bad for you)....

Herbs, I look vile in cobalt blue.

Don't talk about houses. Ours is falling down some more and there is a mysterious whiff of dead mouse somewhere in my office.

my quest continues...

(JL has phase eight sale today but no good to me as I haven't tried anything on!)

Like that one MI - could see you in it!

Yes, I am wondering about a dress in PE - might go to my local store and try it...

Yes to Damsel in A Dress dress.
Very very pretty and definitely a ' its my birthday - suck it up'
Colour's beautiful. What colour is your hair MI?

It is dyed these days red.

I like the red colour but still prefer the design of the second dress (not very helpful really).

Have done a wool wash in anticipation of very hot weather forecast today and it is raining. The trials of domestic life.

Have had words with DH as he has spent all weekend on computer working and ignoring kids and me. Have pointed out that couple down the road divorced for less. He looked bewildered like he'd done nothing wrong. I don't think he understands the vibes he gives off when he's concentrating at dining room table and the kids feel they have to tiptoe round him.

Oh here you all are. Can't believe that last thread filled up so fast, am so dense that I couldn't understand why no one had posted on it... then I found this one...

MI that dress is definitely the right sort of vibrant, not sure about the "floatiness" in the hem area (but perhaps that's just me). If it's on sale at JL and you like it can't you get it on spec and return if not right?

Last few days of school hols here. Can't wait for dss to go back on Thursday and some semblance of order can return to my house / life.

Very nice thread title Mrs S!

All I can say is..

Tee, hee! Makes me think there is always hope.

Err, thanks DD.