Anne Dickens | The Day After Yesterday

Bloody flaps. I am NEVER moving house just before Christmas ever again. My head is swivelling on my neck, a bit like that bird from The Exorcist. Looking on the bright side, at least I am not chucking up and speaking backwards.

The actual move went quite smoothly but it was all the other stuff afterwards that was the killer. But before I discuss that, I thought I would give you an update on the mutt's progress.

As you know, Naughty George sustained a horrible injury, cutting his head and nose open on barbed wire last weekend, and had to get stitches from the vet.

You will be pleased to hear that he is back to his usual self. Only this morning, he vacuously woofed through an entire conversation that I had with my next door neighbour. Then crapped in her garden.


But his encore was escaping from the garden and running into the fields behind our house. The herd of cows that live there were not happy with the invasion, and chased the little git back home. I found him quivering on the other side of the fence surrounded by soon-to-be burgers.




And as if all that wasn't enough, I also had to get ready for Christmas. I reckon that despite all the moving-house milarky, I managed to buy 80% of the presents that I needed ..... and I wrapped the bastards (I am only going to buy square presents next year). And I can quite categorically state that the most annoying facet of Christmas is trying to get the sticky backs off those silver rosette things that you stick to presents.


After wrapping the presents, I kind of breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I had done my duty. But then a chum from the village turned up, and expressed consternation about my lack of Christmas decorations.

"It's looking a little barren in here," he said.

"I'm not putting-up decorations," I replied (having been disruptioned-out by preceding events).

"You miserable bastard," he pointed out.

I must admit. I had decided that I couldn't be bothered to put up Christmas decorations, but I was properly shamed into doing something.



So dahlink, tell me about your Christmas plans ..... what have you got lined up?

P.S. Sorry I haven't visited your Blog in a while ..... I will catch up over Christmas. Have a good one! x

What a God awful day it was today.

It all started ok ..... although it was cold, the sun was shining, the evil cows were mooing by the back fence, and the Blue Tits were swarming round the bird feeder, darting this way and that.

"Shall we take Naughty George for a long walk?" I asked Izzy, knowing full well what the answer would be.

"Awww, do we have to? I want to play on my Nintendo," came the reply.

"Yes we do have to. And if you argue, I'm going to lob you over the fence," I said (I am like Supernanny).

"Ooooookaaay," Izzy acquiesced, begrudgingly making her way to the kitchen and putting her wellies on.

Five minutes later we were walking down the road like a camel train. There was Naughty George up front dragging one arm forward. I was in the middle, and with my second arm I dragged Izzy along behind me ..... shuffling and complaining about missing Nintendo time.

Disaster struck as soon as we reached the gate to the first field. Naughty George was in particularly high spirits, bouncing around like a puppy, and instead of waiting for the gate to be opened, he excitedly tried to dive under the adjacent fence.

I heard a massive 'yelping' sound and turned to see Naughty George looking pretty stunned. Basically because he is 16/17 years old, his eyesight wasn't keeping up with his body and he had badly misjudged the gap under the fence and had ran full pelt into the barbed-wire keeps.

I ran over to him, and immediately realised that his injury was pretty bad. It was his head and face, The cut extended from the top of his head down his nose, and it had gone right through his skin so that I could see the bone beneath. I felt sick and panicky, but bizarrely, NG didn't seem to register his injury for a while, and the vet later told me that adrenalin kicks in with injuries like this.

I made the decision to take him straight home and luckily on the way, I bumped into a acquaintance who lives in the village.

"Naughty George is hurt!" I shouted to him (in a bit of an upset, teary way. I am probably going to be labelled the village nutter from now on).

He surveyed NG's injuries and said that I needed to take him to a vet immediately, and gave me a telephone number of one that was open on a Sunday.

Ten minutes later, I bundled NG and Izzy in to the bling-mobile and we were on our way to the veterinarian's surgery. Twenty minutes later we were ushered into the veterinarian's consulting room.

"That's a very nasty cut," vet lady said after examining him. And then she added, "because he is so old, I think it is unwise to administer any anaesthetic."

Uh oh. All vets fall into this trap.

"I know he's old, but he is bloody strong and you won't be able to do anything unless you sedate him," I said.

"We'll give it a go," she replied, winking at me. Uh oh.

Suffice to say, she quickly realised that she was onto a loser after she'd wrestled with him for 20 minutes, despite the fact that NG had received three shots of Pethidine.

So then she gave him four shots of anaesthetic ......and nothing. As a final straw, an assistant was called in to try and hold him down. But he was still fighting to get off the vet's table. That's my boy.

But the good news is that she finally managed to get enough drugs into him to stitch him up properly.

And even better, Naughty George is back home after the trauma. 



So, after taking him to the Emergency Veterinary today, I have to take him to the regular Vet tomorrow to make sure that he doesn't get an infection in his injury ...... wish me luck dahlink .... I am worried about the little chap .........

P.S. How has your week gone?

Gordon-bleedin'-Bennett. It's been a helluva week. As you already know, I moved house last weekend, and I've had to muster all my strength to write this post. I feel weaker than Paris Hilton's funny eye. 

Basically, because I was only moving 100 yards down the road, I decided not to hire a van, and instead use my pimp-mobile. Plus I enlisted the help of my cousin Jane, and another chum, who is shy, so I shall call him Sabre for the purposes of this blog. 

We decided to start the move early at 11am, and I had a cunning plan to move a room at a time, so that I wouldn't have to work out where things were going at the new abode, which kind of worked out pretty well, but didn't negate the amount of hard work we had to put in. 

Suffice to say, we did 12 car journeys back and forth ...... and my car is like a van inside when the seats are all collapsed, so that's a lot of stuff. And, I can categorically state that I would rather twat my sofa into pieces with a spade, than try and get it out of the house if I ever leave. That's because the most painful moment of the move was manoeuvring the bastard through a door, and around a 90 degree bend without it touching the floor. It was harder than nailing jelly to a tree.

But Jane and Sabre were magnificent like a Mighty Meat Feast pizza, and by 8pm, we had pretty much moved everything into my new house.

And because I am kind like Florence Nightingale (except I don't tend to sick soldiers), I have got some 'before' and 'after' pictures for you ...........

















Also, as expected, despite getting a text from BT informing me that my services were going to be 'live' from last Saturday, (and them delivering all my phone/broadband equipment on-time), it didn't happen.

I plugged my phone and wi-fi router in as instructed and ...... nothing.

So I logged a support call with British Telecom (BT) which went on for two days. We had multiple conversations trying to diagnose the fault, but nothing came to fruition.

But then, a guy called Aaron - nice chap - who had lived in the house before me turned up to collect some of his post. I happened to ask him about whether he had managed to get broadband when he lived here.

"Yeh easily," he said, pointing to a plug socket near to the front door (a socket that I hadn't even noticed) .............................  suffice to say it was NOT the socket that my stuff was plugged into.

And would you berluddy believe it .... I plugged all my kit into the new socket .......... and it worked immediately. DOH.

Apologies to BT ............ they didn't miss a beat ........ it was all my fault. Great service, respect due.

 P.S. So Dahlink, how are your Christmas preparations going?

Gordon Bennett! As you already know, I got the keys to my new house last weekend, and even though I don't officially move in until tomorrow, I took advantage of the fact and drip-fed the move over a number of days.

And I'm glad I did, despite the fact that I have felt grimy all week: Hoofing furniture around ingrains dust into every proximate orifice, and I've been coughing like a tramp on meths. In fact, I am starting to look a bit like a tramp on meths. Except that I don't have a bowl with a sign saying; "will eat for food.'"

Another thing. How much shit have I got?

Jeez, I always thought I was pretty minimalist ..... until I loaded my seventh car-load of crap.

But then it dawned on me ...... there was a definite height-to-crap ratio. I'm 5'5" tall and have quite a lot of stuff. Izzy is only about 2 feet tall, but she has spent her 7 years accumulating crap that would rival a Bombay recycling slum.

"Izzy, do you really need this empty coke bottle?" I asked after eventually plucking up the courage to address her various hoarded masses.

"YES!" she hollered back, "I use it wash my ducks."

"What about this old doll with one leg?" I enquired tentatively, holding the offensive article up to her face.

"My teacher told me that she was disabled and I've got to look after her." 

DAMN

"But Iz," I implored, "surely you don't need six bags of marbles. You haven't played with them for months."

"I am going to sell them to Archie at school and use the money to buy an Xbox," she stated (that's my girl).

I gave it one last half-hearted attempt, "Iz ....... you don't really need this handful of gravel that you collected from the driveway?"

"That's precious because it will remind me of our old house," she replied earnestly. 

Suffice to say, I got precisely nowhere.

And oh, before I forget, here are some pics of my quickly emptying house ........ 





So thanks to my lovely cousin, Jane and my other chum (shy and doesn't want to be named) we got my house move nailed in under 24 hours. Literally, everything was moved and unpacked in less than a day.

And after moving into my new house (pics to come in another blog), I noticed that there are things that are universally annoying in every house move:

1. Programming the central heating / air con requires a PhD (oops big fail)

2.  Getting used to the position of light switches takes ages

3. There are never enough plug sockets in the right places

4. The shower always feels weaker than it did at the last house

5. No matter how much storage you have, there are things that don't fit

6. It doesn't matter how far you move, the mutt still stinks

So dahlink, I am now nearly in ...... do you have any top moving tips?

Apologies dahlink. You may have noticed that my blog had been down for the majority of yesterday (and thanks soooo much to you people who emailed me to let me know!). Just to clarify; it wasn't my fault. Apparently I had a DNS problem. It's something that I don't quite understand, but it sounded like something that should have been treated by the genito-urinary department.

I have now been informed that it is all up and running again.

My mate Dave does the fixing ..... he owns the hosting company that I use, and because we have known each other for many years - waaaay before we worked together - he always looks after me with extra special diligence. And for getting yesterday's problem fixed, I might even send him a flapjack as a thank you. The poor bastard.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the matter in hand .........

Do you know when NASA launches space rockets? Why do they always say 'T minus 9 seconds' when they are doing the countdown? What does the T stand for? And why is it needed? It's something that has bugged me for ages. Like, why do you have to dry-clean raincoats?

Suffice to say, I have 'T minus 9 days' until I move house and the pressure is mounting, despite the fact that I try to shrug it off like an errant baked bean on my shoulder.

Even though I don't consider myself to be a hoarder (in fact, I am non-sentimental about disposing of stuff), the main problem was that I still had too many things to fit into my new house, so I needed to jettison loads of crap.

But in doing so, I encountered a real mystery. When I moved into my house, it was totally empty. Every room was a blank canvas.

"That's not a bloody mystery!" I hear you cry.

True. But what IS a mystery, is that during the clear-out process, I have discovered a whole heap of weird objects that I didn't put in there, and I honestly have no idea where they came from (the same happened when I moved from my London house - I found a load of interesting antiques in the attic - which I'm sure was empty when I moved in).

Anyway, because I am like Mother Theresa, but with a better hairdo, I have got some pictures for you .......... starting with the cellar (or basement as you call it in the US) ...........













Wish me luck dahlink!

P.S. Today I called British Telecom and arranged for them to activate my telephone and broadband in the new house. They confirmed that I will get my new broadband equipment on Friday, and that the actual service will be activated on Saturday. If that happens, I will make a kebab out of Naughty George and eat him with some cabbage salad and chilli sauce.

P.P.S. Apparently I will be getting the keys to my new house tomorrow! (Even though I am not supposed to move in until next weekend). But the new landlord thought it would be easier for me if I could move over the period of a week .... and he is right. Awwwww, I love you, Dean (in a non-sexual way).

P.P.P.S. Naughty George has got a habit of sleeping outside of the closed door of the Guest Bedroom. As though he is waiting to get in. It's weird. As though there is someone in there that he wants to get to.


Hopefully the new house will sort that out.

Bloody nora! According to my Blog statistics, this is my 900th post. I feel like I should make a cake or something, but after the flapjack incident (opens in a new window), when I accidentally used self-raising flour instead of plain, I am not rushing back into the kitchen any-time soon. Man alive, those flapjacks looked like house-bricks. I used one of them to level my desk.

And even if I DID manage to successfully bake a cake, could you imagine what 900 candles would do to the ozone layer? Actually thinking about it, it would be quite cool. There would be an enormous hole over Oxford, and I might even get a suntan. The relevance being, that one of my nicknames is 'Stilton' (white with blue veins). 

Anyway, I digress. As you know, I am moving house soon, and my bloggy chum Robert asked how I was getting on. In fact, so did my other bloggy chum, Bren.

Well, I went through an anxious week and a half where I didn't hear from the owner despite three attempts at contact, but then I got a text saying that it was all on. Huzzar!

But let's rewind a bit. When I first viewed the house, it had been lived in by an old chap who had unfortunately died, and suffice to say there were a few things about the place that were a little, ummmmm .... outdated. His son had inherited the place and promised to modernise it prior to me moving in.

However, I needed a little more reassurance ........

Hence he invited me over last Saturday to view progress (they'd been at it for two weeks). And because I am like Mother Theresa, except that I don't have ear hair (why else do they wear veils?) ......... I have got some pictures to show you.








I need help here my bloggy chum!