General Chat

Bakeries a definite plus.

Extended holiday sounds just fine -- serial swap, as I was on about. One week at DET's, one week at FBG's, one week by Lindsey's pond, one week at RR's friend's, etc. etc. -- it actually sounds absolutely perfect. Since I have ancestors all over the place there, I could do the tour for the cost of my lunches!

Thing is, you will all be responsible for cleaning up after yourselves while you're here, before the next one arrives.

:-P

Darn it! Thought we'd got next year's holiday sorted out :-0

I've even been going through the phone book looking for someone to install a filing cabinet size safe for the 'sensitive' stuff as per Shelley's suggestion!!!!!

JC - how about a 3 week holiday for you, 10 days in a remote area and 10 days closer to the Capital? No pets here, although we are au fait with cat care having had that responsibility in the past. But you would be asked to water the potted plants in the garden if is doesn't rain. ;-)

Hmmm,nice 2 bed with sleepable loft area(no windows or standing room) bungalow made of asbestos in the Wild West of Wales one field away from the local slaughter house to swap?
All paper work of a "delicate"matter will be removed to Bezzies for the duration,but she does sleep over one night a week on average to get away from her shrewish sister that she shares with so make that a 1 bed and sleepable loft 1 night a week...She cant cook though..Rubbish at it,but good with the microwave and kettle.
Oh,4 canines indoors and a couple or more outside to see to, as in feed,groom and poop scoop twice a day,but I would swap for a week or two in Canada with a couple of kittys that dont use litter trays and have their own front door.....
But only if they have charity shops nearby and its a short drive to Thunder Bay so I can go visit my nans half sisters (who was a British Home Kid in 1910) granddaughter that I have yet to meet...Oh yea..and you send me the right amount of sedatives to get me on the plane and see me through to landing and the the same back...I HATE flying...

We do have a very good Bakery in the village(open 8am to 12 noon) and 2 shops..Which charge the usual remote village shop prices,3 animal feeds stores, an estate Agents and a lovely Church,so I am told,never been through the gates myself but it looks pretty from outside them, plus 3 pubs and a long walk to the local bus stop and an even longer walk to the nearest petrol station 5 miles away if you run out of petrol at all...

I will even wash the bedlinen ready ,but make your own beds,I hate doing that and I will ask HID to tell you where he hides the hoover and Mop if you require it as I dont know... :-D

pocking my nose in now with the paper work side of things
a safe should do the trick nicely

and i wished i could do a house swop i have a 5 bed in a run down area use of a car and on top off all public transpolt close to city of london for site seeing and 30 min walk to the olympics park

not for geting research of many of churchies and libruy pluss regirstry office for them BMD certs

Just to add -- nobody else should feel jilted! I might think that a serial house-swap was a good idea. One week each at my house, and I get one week at each of your houses. It could just go on and on.

Oh, the cats, yes. Ms P is lying on my desk swiping at my left arm. Now she's crossing the keyboard to lie on my right hand. This from the scaredy feral kitten, now becoming a very large cat. She and her sister ... half-sister, cousin, aunt ... are part of the deal, remember.

Now August -- 2012, that is -- sounds like an excellent plan.

July is usually my driest month, work-wise, but August is no hot shakes either, and actually I've acquired a sort of partner recently I could shift anything over to. An Australian, in fact!

Speaking of which ... I've offered him part of a big job I hve that was due three weeks ago, and if I don't get some of it done, he can't do his part, and then nobody gets paid. So I should be off.

I'll let No.1 know he has over a year to clean the house. ;)

Not that having had 10 years has got it done so far ...

I could do you August, how's that? Schools out so no work,and your work may have dried up for Recess!

Skiing? No thank you. OH would not tolerate a winter in snow - having left the UK as a 16 y.o. he well remembers snow, ice and freezing cold. He isn't inclined to spend more time in such weather :-(

Sue

Argh, SM, 7 weeks?

How about when we retire we swap for 6 months of the year??

Your summer / my winter, of course.

You could take up skiing! Not that I've ever felt the urge myself.

RR, you slipped in there -- see, a woman after my own mind, a year to tidy up!

About this caravan idea, I should have thought, No.1 is 6'3" and can't stand in most of them, so I'd be facing a week or two with a sulker. Some holiday.

Lindsey, I very much like ponds. We don't have many around here. They have them in Florida, although they tend to call them "lakes", even when they're the size of a good-sized house lot. And they also tend to have resident alligators.

I do like locations that don't have carnivorous wildlife, I must admit.

You're right Janey - you would need to spend a couple of years here and you still wouldn't see it all. We've seen a lot of Australia but when you look at the map it's only a very small part of what there is to be seen. We had visitors over from the UK for 7 weeks and they were disappointed by how little they actually got to see which was funny they actually got to see quite a bit.

Sue

Now, anybody who wants to call dibs on anybody else's house here, feel free!

I don't want to hog all the venues on offer ... and besides, I never get holidays anyway, and I am incapable of planning ahead even if I managed it ...

If we made a deal and called it a year's notice, make it for next spring, say, that might work.

Oh wait, when are those Olympics things?

... Hmm, late July. Well, May should be fine. May was when I visited England in 1994, and that was pretty warm.

Now for the southern hemisphere destinations, I guess we should make it in about February. I get sun and surf, and you get ... snowshovelling!

I can only offer an early Victorian hovel, listed of course, owned by an eccentric artist ? Standing room only for one.

2 rooms and the hallway are the gallery , floor to ceiling artworks , materials etc, 1 small den for eating ,sleeping , a galley kitchen, not for swinging cats in, and an even smaller ablutions area. Lets call it primitive and rural !!

The village has the obligatory church , pond, 5 hairdressers ,6 estate agents and a Spar grocery for basics at twice the price.

For a quick jaunt on the mobility scooter you can get some local colour by visiting the local museum to look at more of my paintings .

This is of course in a housework free zone LOL

She is a very good friend :-) 30 years and only 'several' cross words! I maybe make it sound better than it is ;-) did I mention you have to be deaf not to be bothered by the dual carriageway approx 20feet away? I know her daughter would jump at the chance, she likes Canada !

I would offer my own very humble abode, if you can give me a year to tidy it up? either that or take it with a teenage boy in situ ? It is in a lovely county, if not a great location, but very good train links to all areas :-)

CARAVAN NOW THAT I CAN DO

AND IF YOU DONT LIKE THE VIEW

JUST CHANGE IT

XXX

Good of you, RR, volunteering your friends!

Don't get me wrong here -- it's not the Olympics I'm looking for! And I don't think what I have on offer would be seen as fair trade for that. A dumpy house in a dumpy neighbourhood in a lovely location, but hardly exotic. I'd have to throw in a trip to Banff to make up the diff, I'm afraid. ;)

Australia has actually been my dream since I was a teenager ... wasn't it everybody's ... Well, not Australians', I suppose ...

But the thing is, for Australia, you would't want to park yourself somewhere. You'd want to be out there exploring that famous outback!

I guess people would say the same about Canada, too. Unrealistic, sometimes, in both cases. I remember my dad's cousins's grandkids in Northamptonshire coming here and having this plan they were going to crisscross the continent a couple of times in a couple of weeks. And one, while he was here, was talking about doing Australia in a week or some such afterward. I tried to explain that the place was about as broad as the US, and look how he'd done on that one.

Got a caravan? ;)

My friend has a large house very near the Olympic stadium Janey, shall I ask her? lol she is clean but not over fussy, smokes, likes cats, and has some posters you might appreciate...womens emancipation and the like ;-)

What about Sydney Orstraylia - lots to see and do :D

Sue

There you are, RMS, I just assume everybody in BC is in Van. You know, how you go abroad and say you're from Toronto, say, and people say "I have a cousin in Calgary, John Smith, do you know him?" You go west of Sudbury, and you're just out there someplace. ;)

But yeah, if you let the Albertan riffraff in, you really will take just anybody ...

No cougars here, but urban raccoons aplenty. And I'm sure they'd take your money given half a chance. We actually don't have many these days, having lost the huge tree in the next yard over, but in their heyday they burgled our house for cat food nightly. Eventually we replaced the patio screen door they had shredded to make their own private entrance.


Dizzi, you know, I'm not actually fussy! A caravan somewhere that wasn't here would do me just fine!


You know, if I lived where Olympics were, I'd certainly either swap or rent. After using the down payment received for a week of housecleaning services. ;)