First thing in the morning Jon and I took Emily out to Lincoln with a budget of £30 for her to spend in Waterstones. Since we have accounts with various book wholesalers, we have only very, very rarely bought books from "real bookshops" over the last ten years, since it's a heck of a lot cheaper to get them from the wholesalers or from somewhere like amazon, but with fond memories of many mispent hours in bookshops when we were kids, we wanted to let her loose, lol, as a birthday treat for me and absolute heaven for her. In the end, we spent just over £40, but for that she has seven wonderful books. We also had a coffee and cake in the Costa Lot (ooops, sorry Costa Coffee) shop within Waterstones - another rare treat!
Back home, my Mum and Dad cooked us all a fantabulous birthday tea; Emily and Daddy had made me absolutely *the* most delicious carrot cake *ever* covered in candles :-) I was a very lucky lady with some superb books from Emily and Daddy and an extremely thoughtful present that had me in tears - I've always had a thing about golden eagles.......last time we went to a wildlife park in Cumbria I couldn't tear myself away from their eagles...... so my lovely hubby and daughter bought me a year's adoption of one of that park's pair of eagles as part of which I get to go and spend time with the keeper and get up close and personal with the eagle :-))) I'm so excited about that! To go with that part of the present, they also bought me a stunning eagle statuette which now has pride of place in our bedroom. I was spoilt rotten by my Mum and Dad too, who bought me lots of wine. Always a Very Good Thing.
Later that evening, we were just about to settle down for a family games evening when friends turned up unexpectedly and brought me another beautiful present, a stunning Chinese display plate. Jacki stayed and chatted for an hour or so while Mei Lin and Emily played in the garden in the dark, lol, much to the amusement of the assorted cats. After they had left, we played Balderdash, which had everyone in hysterics and which Jon won by a mile (as always) followed by lots of games of Coffee Pot. So all in all, a very special birthday - I feel very honoured :-)
Yesterday afternoon another friend and her daughter dropped by unexpectedly too, so that was a lovely chance to catch up on some news and for Emily and Maisie to play in the complete chaos that passes for our house at the moment.
The decorating continues apace. Yesterday we stripped the wallpaper; this morning Jon papered the wooden partion wall with lining paper to give the paint an even base and we all chipped in with painting the other walls with the white base coat; then I painted half of the sash window frame. Decorating and me don't mix well, alas - yesterday morning was very fraught when I started to clear the last shelves in the room only to discover that we literally had *nowhere* left to put the contents of the shelves or the two large chairs that needed moving out of the room. Tears and tantrums and other very un-adult behaviour followed. Not one of my finer hours. As ever, Jon came to the rescue and calmly moved stuff around, aided by a very grown up Emily.
Yesterday, the BBC finally got back to me regarding this month's payment. They sent a cheque. I was livid. It only arrived today, and even after depositing it same day it will take another 4-5 days to clear into our business bank account and then another 4-5 days to transfer to the personal account. I had been banking (definitely not a funny pun) on receiving the direct payment into the bank account on the 22nd, as they had promised, leaving me just enough time to transfer payment to our personal account to cover our outgoings on the 1st September. Obviously, that's not now going to happen, so everything will bounce - for the fifth month running. To cut a long story short, it's time to take legal advice over this farce since they are consistently in breach of the contract; it's also time to invoice them for the hundreds and hundreds of pounds in bank charges we've incurred over the last five months as a direct result of this fiasco. Colour me distinctly unimpressed.
I'm set for a crappy weekend meeting non stop deadlines, my mood not exactly heartened by the thought of our financial situation come Monday the 1st. I'm still trying to catch up with work that was lost when the PC crashed, although the super duper new (tiny!!!!! the box is about a quarter of the size of the old one!) PC that my Mum and Dad stepped in and save us with is up and running like lightning. Had to cancel our weekly Friday date with Jacki and girls this week, so we could press on with the decorating, but next week Emily's been invited to go and stay there for a couple of days, so she's a very excited bunny :-) One the new room is finished, she has a long list of people to invite for sleepovers here, lol, so it should be a busy few weeks ahead.
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