Life is slightly better....

Well, the dark cloud has risen a bit. Thanks to all for the positive thoughts - they've worked.

Martin is down in London at the moment sorting a few things out like tidying the flat and seeing the real estate agents. He's also managed to get into some of the boxes that we'd sent home (thanks to the guys at Interpak - especially Hilary for restoring some of my faith in humankind for their help there) so that we can find all the documents that we've kept from when we bought the flat. We weren't sure if we had anything from our solicitors which showed that they were aware of the loft conversion but he has managed to find a document from them which mentions it, so hopefully we'll be to prove how ineffectual they were, and sue the arse off them! That does raise my spirits a bit.

HiG has also been touting us around (does that make him our pimp?) and he may have a contact for us at Adecco here in Darlington. He's been the best mate (well he was our best man) possible and has offered us to stay with him for as long as we need. His house needs a bit of redecorating and we figure we can repay his kindness by giving him a hand with a bit of DIY which he has motivational issues with doing. As long as we can make enough to cover our mortgage in London until the house sells it will definitely be viable.

I've also finished the new Harry Potter (unemployment will do that to you - finishing ~750 page books in just under five days). I enjoyed it - the death wasn't really that much of a shock - I thought it would be a more major character. I'm looking forward to the next two and what will happen to Harry eventually - I reckon he'll marry Hermione and end up with 2.4 kids with her, or him and Ron become gay lovers. Not sure yet.

The sad thing is I now have to choose another book. I'll probably start one of our classics that were going to be our Big Trip reading. It doesn't feel right to be reading them in a house as I had envisioned it more reading it under a tree whilst we stopped for lunch in France.... oh well, if our Estate Agent gets his act together it may still be achievable this year!