We Moved!

 As it says at the top, I wasn't born at the beach but I got here as fast as I could. Imagine spending your childhood in Birmingham as far from the beach as you can get! And then spending another 50 years trying to live by the sea. Well, we made it. A few years later than planned due to pesky Covid - and 50lbs less of me moved thanks to 15 months of long Covid. I'm just beginning to recover now.

We sold our lovely 1930s house in Southampton to the first couple who looked at it. Thankfully they loved the original features and didn't plan to turn it into a building site. Neighbours turning the road into a building site is one of the reasons we moved. There's not much people are allowed to do in a flat and we're the ones making the most noise at the moment.

I couldn't resist making a scrapbook page with the For Sale sign. You can click on any photo to see a larger version on Smugmug.

 

All was well and we started clearing out 38 years' of possessions ready to downsize. We looked at several flats in Bournemouth that weren't going to work, a couple of them because the owners had no intention of moving and were just wasting our time.

Anyone who has ever moved house will know the horror stories but just about everyone we paid a shedload of money to - agents, removeals company, solicitors -  conspired to cause maximum stress, most of it completely unnecessary. Why do we put up with this?

Moving Day was one of the rare very hot days this summer and we'd had very little sleep for days so forgive the exhausted look - and note the journalling about being homeless!

It finally felt worth it when we got there:

It's been months of work and plumbers and electricians coming and going (basically we had one single socket per room...) but new neighbours are lovely, we're 20 minutes walk from the best beach and there's a large outdoor pool which is a real joy. I'm sure swimming nearly every day helped with my health problems. Oh, and John has a man cave. In the first few weeks after we moved he'd go to the garage to get something and disappear for hours as his new chums wanted to talk to him.

Here's the pool (and my Dad snuck in there...)

On the balcony and at the beach catching the last rays of summer (such as it was...)

And the paddling continues well into the autumn!

Drop me an email if you'd like to see more photos! Credit: Many of the scrapbook pages on here were created with templates designed by Katie Pertiet.

Web Domains Nightmare

That fixed your insomnia problem right there...

So cunning plan this year:

1) Move house

2) Only tell some people the new address

3) Do most of 2) via Facebook, Whatsapp and other newfangled things.

The good folk encompassed by 3) already know joys and horor stories of our move and people - and my printer - moan about letters in Christmas cards so let's tell them about it on the blog!

First problem was that the blog proudly declared that we live in Southampton, in fact it helpfully points to the docks. Like this:

Well that won't do at all!

Much messing about followed and there is now a - sort - of- beach pic which will be replaced but some fancy schmancy header when I have time.

Next problem was my websites going nowhere. 123-Reg said there was no problem forwarding my domains, and the sites could be seen on all devices. Not according to my devices and those of the many friends I bugged to have a look. You have to love the kind of customer service where they're trained to tell the customer there is no problem rather than dealing with the problem. I've cancelled some of my lesser used domains so that's profit gone for them.

I spent an hour practising on one of my sites no-one looks at and tinkered with the DNS to get things to work. Do not try this at home. DNS is like the tension on your embroidery machine. Never touch it. So another support ticket asking them to fix that ... 

If you can see this blog now either I fixed it, or the web forwarding from Go Daddy (more money spent...with someone else, 123-Reg please note) works or you received a letter with some address like http://sharonhorswill.blogspot.com which looks really naff in print. But here you are, at least. Now scroll back up and read about our exciting move!