Every cloud has a silver lining ...

Yesterday morning we travelled to Birmingham to look for a bathroom cabinet for our newly refurbished bathroom, and to pick up a new lens for the camera. We didn’t have any luck with the cabinet, although in hindsight the city centre probably wasn’t the right place to go. We did get lucky with the lens - a good price, with some extras thrown in – or so we thought!

On our way home we decided to take a route via the new John (never knowingly undersold) Lewis which has recently opened in Tamworth. I love JL and could browse for hours! Again no luck with the cabinet, but we did pick out a voile panel and a couple of café curtain poles to dress the velux window in the bathroom.

I’m very disappointed that when I find one of those special bubbly de-corkers that Jean wrote about a few weeks ago, Tim thinks it’s another unnecessary gadget. Surprisingly I listen, and meekly put it back. So now I’ll have to make another journey back to JL to buy it!!

The difficulty with the bathroom cabinet is due to the sloping ceiling where the cabinet will be sited, over the sink. It needs to be the correct size, with a mirror and light. I would also like it to be made from oak. I have scoured the shops, and the internet, and can’t find anything that matches our requirements.

We arrive home, and after a late lunch get ready for a long walk to try out the lens. The lens in the bag isn’t the one we bought - something to do with image stabilisation! We quickly ring the shop, who firstly can find no record of us buying the lens, but then agree to get the lens sent, at their expense, to our local shop. They are also persuaded (aka arm twisted) to give us £25 vouchers ‘for our trouble’.

Last night we try for hours, unsuccessfully, to get our LoveFilm subscription to stream through Tom’s PS3. We kept being told that our user name or password were incorrect. Of course they were correct, but we gave up and watched Casualty instead. Another exciting Saturday evening!

This morning Tim put up the curtain rails and we find that the voile panel isn’t the correct length…

Still, every cloud has a silver lining. When I change the voile panel I can pick up a bubbly de-corker or two at the same time!

STOP PRESS - Jean's gadget is different, and probably better, so I'll wait until I can find one. Isn't it lucky that I allowed Tim to persuade me not to buy it ....

Washday blues, whites and colours - all piled up .........

I don’t mind admitting that I have a ‘bit of a thing’ about washing in general, and dirty washing in particular. I think it stems from childhood when Monday was washing day and for the next couple of days we would be overrun with clean washing drying, whilst at the same time dirty washing was stacking up ready for the next Monday to come round!

If it was bad then, in the days when you wore clothes more than once, just imagine what the past two and a half weeks have been like Chez Brotherhood. My trusty old Hotpoint finally gave up the ghost. I got round to ordering a new machine and John (never knowingly undersold) Lewis finally got round (nearly 2 weeks later) to delivering said machine.

But what a machine it is; it does everything short of strip the beds, and therein lies the rub ……. I am finding it too difficult to understand! This machine must have been developed at Cern as an offshoot of their work on the particle accelerator. With my old machine everything was done on the 'F' programme, just changing the water temperature for different sorts of washing.  We aren't generally instruction reading people, as Tim has the kind of techy brain that can look at something and immediately figure out how it works ............ but not this time!

However, last night Tim and I went through the instructions for the new machine together as we put in the first of about 10 waiting loads. We couldn’t find a programme of less than 90 minutes and the ones we really wanted to do were over 2 hours! Even my Friday evening brain fade calculates that at 15 hours …….

Thank goodness my nest is empty at the moment. With Rhiannon and Tom still living at home I’d be looking spending at the next couple of days washing - just in time to turn up for the day job again on Monday morning.