… moving on out… luckily, nothing has stopped us!

After a very knackering week which has included three journeys back and forwards in a hire van, we have successfully completed our move to the Scottish Borders and, for now, the sun is shining! 🥳🥳🥳

It has been both exciting, very tiring, and a little bit sad, to move… Yorkshire has been our home for the last 21 years after we moved from Kegworth in the Midlands to Long Preston in North Yorkshire the week after I completed my last London Marathon in April 2004 – I remember it because I could hardly walk! 🤣🤣

I swear I have never felt so tired as I did yesterday when I finally arrived at our new house in the Mini!

Since the last blog, we finalised our tenancy with “George” who actually let us start moving the day before the tenancy started which was great as it meant Pete didn’t have to stress about a loaded up van sitting on our driveway doing nothing for a whole day (we could only do a Saturday to Saturday van hire as no pick ups on a Sunday…)! We packed up the house & garage, Pete collected the tools he wanted from the allotment, and selected the plants to take from the garden… the van has been packed in Yorkshire and unpacked in Scotland (120 miles away) three times and, thankfully, we have found places to stash most of our furniture & belongings in the new house for now! We are in – woohoo! 🎉 The hire van has been returned and the old house locked up for a few days… Not bad for a weeks’ work!

Today (Sunday 17th August) marks the first time we will have stayed a a whole day at the new house (although we are going to go and explore Hawick, our nearest town, for supplies) even though we have stayed overnight several times.

… the decor isn’t quite what we are after but we will decorate in time! The outside needs a bit of sprucing up too, but we have brought plenty of pots & plants with us for the garden which is, at least, neat & tidy and will be a great project for Pete! Bottom left is the van we hired… I hope never to move ever again and certainly not by hiring a van and lugging all the furniture ourselves!

What else has been happening… been to see Mum a few times including yesterday which was nice but, feeling a bit knackered, not sure I gave her my best! She enjoyed the Mr Kipling Lemon slices I took her anyway… It must be a lovely bubble to live in when you can polish off 4 of these (because you don’t remember having one for “ages” 30 seconds after you’ve just had one! 🤣) without one concern about your waistline!

Pete had his PET scan which had been due tomorrow (18th August) but was brought forward due to them, we think, having a cancellation (don’t want to consider the reasons for that too much!). They called out of the blue and asked if he could make it the following afternoon (which was Thursday 7th) then, about lunchtime on the 7th, they called to say the isotope had failed and they would have to cancel… about 10 mins later, they called again to say they were having an isotope transferred from another hospital so the appointment would go ahead if, on arrival in Bradford, the good isotope passed the quality check… so we were then on tenterhooks for a few hours waiting for them to call back to say yes or no! It was a “Yes” from BRI so we headed to the hospital where Pete was then locked in a room he later described as a cell for a couple of hours whilst I went for a nice walk around the nearby reservoir!

We haven’t had the results yet but are expecting them this coming week – so keep everything crossed for him!

I managed to catch up with my ex-colleague & friend in Shipley for a quick coffee & offload a desk I know longer need or want (am not planning on using one again – 🤣🤣🤣) – it was good to see her even if it was only briefly!

We were sorry to miss Angela & Mick’s anniversary party and catch up with everyone… Congrats & love to them both – we hope they had a great evening!

We are also sorry to miss our friend Ruth’s 70th birthday this coming week too – have a lovely day lovely lady xxx

So, that’s the last few weeks of our lives… The main thing is that we have done it and completed our move to the Scottish Borders! Hurray! Hope all is good with you lot out there xxx 😘❤️