Tuesday and Wednesday were stay at home days playing catch with all the stuff we let overtake us during our ‘Bao’ period. This included my obeying Helen’s demands (actually, she’s doing most of the work) to do some ‘minor’ kitchen remodeling in the flat.<\/p>\n

We continue to run into ‘having been away for years’ issues. The big one this week was car insurance. We ended up going through an ex-pat insurance specialist which should get our no-claims back on the rails within a year. In retrospect I am left feeling a little worried as the covernote doesn’t reflect the conversation we had. I called them back and the broker I used has been off sick since. Hopefully this is something we can resolve but it’s been a pain and remains one for now.<\/p>\n

On Thursday we had our first serious run at looking at a possible future home \/ home town. Our target was Great Missenden and, by extension, the neighbouring village of Prestwood. We had two properties we wanted to see, one in each area. The first, in Prestwood,<\/a> was recently renovated in front of the TV cameras. An interesting back story but when we looked closely, the workmanship was not at the level we’d expect for a modern renovation. On the plus side it is right in the heart of the village but that leads to the another downside in that the village is a bit too small. Small is ok and even being out of the way is not completely written off but this house simply didn’t sing out to us.<\/p>\n

We had a good walk around Great Missenden (including a pub lunch) which has a lot more character. We could more easily visualize ourselves living there. There are a lot more worries there about the building of a nearby high speed rail link (HS2) which may or may not be a good thing for potential buyers.<\/p>\n

The property we wanted to visit<\/a> turned out to have been sold that morning so we went to see another one<\/a> in an over 55’s residence very close to town. (One of us is over 55 but I’m too much of a gentleman to point out who she is). It turned out a second home in the complex was up for sale, by the manager. He saw us walking around, caught our attention, and showed us around this second home. We could much more easily see ourselves in the property and the gardens were wonderfully kept. It had character, being a farmhouse conversion, and was ideally located. But the complex had the feel of an old peoples’ home (without frail care) and I, representing a younger demographic so to speak, am not ready for it. It’s not off the list but as it is early days, we have plenty more places to look.<\/p>\n

On Friday I visited Amersham hospital to have my knees X-Ray’d. Won’t know results for a couple of weeks so nothing further to say. Being near a big Tesco’s, Helen was drawn in as if on an invisible stiff bungee leaving me to fathom out the new fangled recycling machine.<\/p>\n

In the evening we visited our old Karate friends (Rob and Erin). Rob has recently won his own battle with his prostate so we had much to talk about, including, sadly, a mutual friend who was not so lucky. Being good friends we have seen each other from time to time since we left the UK but being back in their home with the conversation (ok – and the beer and wine) freely flowing the thirteen and a half years that have since passed melted away. Good times.<\/p>\n

In the morning, Stanley, their newish dog took us all out for a walk to rid those of us suffering from hangovers of those same hang overs. It worked. During our worked we experienced the full lash of Blighty April weather experience sun, rain, hail, sleet and finally a smattering of snow. Six miles of (starting dry, ending up mud) following the dog left us feeling quite exhausted.<\/p>\n

Back in the flat we spent the afternoon with John. He helped us put up another kitchen cabinet (flat pack assembled earlier in the day) and chatted to Helen while I had an early afternoon snooze after the morning’s dog and mud fencing.<\/p>\n

Today we’re going to watch Iron Man 3 at the cinema with a detour on the way to the hardware store to satisfy Helen’s lust for cabinet doors, handles and shelves. We will of course be having some fun tonight. With the doors. What were you thinking?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday and Wednesday were stay at home days playing catch with all the stuff we let overtake us during our ‘Bao’ period. This included my obeying Helen’s demands (actually, she’s doing most of the work) to do some ‘minor’ kitchen remodeling in the flat.<\/p>\n

We continue to run into ‘having been away for years’ issues. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uk","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6503,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501\/revisions\/6503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}