I hope, (if anyone is still reading this) that you didn’t assume the worst. I had my operation last November and it’s been steady progress since then. Our ‘little’ lurcher has grown up to be a rather big boisterous boy who likes chewing stuff up, aww bless…

On the house front we’ve moved on a bit since last October. The fire was installed the week before my heart op. It was a bit of a god-send really, we got through so much wood but the house would have been uninhabitable without it.

All thanks to Dad for doing a stunning job restoring it brick by brick:

So now we have come out of hibernation, we agreed on a winter quote for underpinning, rather depressing as that was money we had earmarked for elsewhere. Rob came back to dig out 7 skips of mud which costs a fortune, turns out we could have saved £50 a skip before the latest budget. Ho hum. Now the back ‘garden’ looks like The Somme.

I put in an application to building control and last month the builder started work…

And then stopped…

He’s found some fairly hard ground under our high foundations, in fact he needed a kango to make any impression on it. So he duly called round the building inspector who has declared that the ground is so hard we don’t need to underpin. I think the builder was almost as relieved as we were. That’s about £9000 we have saved and he doesn’t wear out his shovel…

So now we are in the fortunate position of being able to recommence the internal knocking down of walls, buying a bathroom, and planning heating!!! HEATING!!! Hooray!!!