So where are we?

Well, absolutely literally right now this very minute we are in a room on the 6th floor of the
Premier Inn in St Mary's Gate in Sheffield.  We are very close to the city centre,  not far from the Brammall  Lane football ground, nice and handy for lots of restaurants and cafes of varying different cuisines and, perhaps most importantly, very, very handy for the X17 bus between Sheffield and Chesterfield.

We came here yesterday after Gareth, The Builder and Gareth's mid-20s nephew moved everything (including our bed base) to Tabitha's place, Freyja's place and, in the case of the freezer which has finally found a new home, to the kitchen of the Green Room, a central city pub in Sheffield. The three of them came into Sheffield in the enormous van that Gareth had hired.  I came in on the bus and got the hotel sorted out.

In the evening, we moseyed on out to Woodseats for dinner in what used to be Swanky Frank's American Diner.  It has now been rebranded as Rodeo Joe's Texan Grill and has a new owner and a new menu.  Disappointingly, they no longer have the mushrooms in peppercorn sauce which I had been hoping to having.  Excitingly, however, they do have tiger prawns in a mushroom and pernod sauce as an entree which was very delicious.  I ordered a steak for my main, as something a little lighter than all the burgers, fried chicken and so on.  You can imagine the mirth of Tabitha, Gareth, The Builder and Ginger Rich when an enormous platter came out, laden with (beautifully cooked!) steak, multiple salads, mushrooms and a sizeable bucket of fries.  They stopped laughing at me and roared with mirth at Ginger when his Texas Ranger burger came out

Photo courtesy Tabitha

He didn't seem phased by it.  He ate pretty much every mouthful and got a sheriff star badge for his trouble :)

So where are we at as far as the house is concerned?  After a very hearty breakfast this morning (memo to self: order less tomorrow morning!!!) we headed out to Tupton on the X17 and set to sorting out what was left.  We were actually doing quite well until we tried to take the leather armchair out to put in the skip.  It didn't fit through the side door.  It crossed our minds that it had actually been in the house when we moved in, and the porch door is very slightly smaller than the gate had been.  So we took to it with a sledgehammer,  a saw, a penknife and brute strength and eventually manage to disassemble it sufficiently so that we could get it out.  Alas, this set us back by nearly an hour so we aren't quite as far ahead as we would like to be for tomorrow. The upstairs is clear and cleaned, apart from the bathroom which has some cleaning things in.  It has been cleaned but I might give it another lick and spit tomorrow morning.  We have taken many things to the charity shop, but there is a bit left to go. Almost everything is on the skip that should be.  We'll finish that off in the morning and ring them to come and take it away.  Then there is just the cleaning of the downstairs.  I am hopeful that we will be back in the hotel in time for a glass of something bubbly to farewell The Sidings in an appropriate manner before we go to dinner at the Pot Luck Pantry.  They have closed the cafe tomorrow evening for my "farewell dinner".  I am neither expected to cook, nor to clean afterwards :-)

Tonight we are heading back into Woodseats for dinner with Freyja, Simon and Simon's parents in Spoon.  I have never been to Spoon, but I have heard good things about it.  I am not anticipating American diner fare!!

PS. I had emailed the Newcastle solicitors and asked them to send our house documents to the Chesterfield solicitors who we have engaged to act for us in the sale of our house, should anyone ever offer to buy it.  The local bods rang me up yesterday afternoon to say that they now had possession of our documents. Less than 24 hours after I had asked for them to be sent on.  You can't fault the efficiency, nor the attention of both companies