Settling in

When Jim went to unpack the freezer on Monday evening he found that the top of it was all bashed in along the front.  I don't know about you, but if we are spending several hundreds of dollars on a new piece of kit, we would prefer it to arrive without cracks, holes and abrasions on it!  Jim stopped unpacking and left it where it was - which was exactly where the delivery person had left it.

Lindsey picked me up early on Tuesday morning and we headed down to Melbourne to work.  This left the Honda with Jim so he could amble up to Hill House when convenient rather than me dragging him up there at the crack of dawn.

During a break from work I rang to arrange to have the freezer swapped for a new, unbattered one.  The bloke on the phone quizzed me quite a bit about whether we had dropped it while taking it home, despite me telling him several times that it had been delivered by them.  However, in the end he agreed that a new freezer shouldn't be battered along the front and arranged for a new one to be delivered on Thursday.

Thursday was a busy day.  I did more sorting out of the things on the study floor. We sorted out the kitchen a bit more.  The new freezer arrived and the original one was taken away.  Jim unpacked it.  It wasn't bashed or battered :-)  We went up to Hill House to play with Rupert and Hugo, while Lindsey was out. While we were there I chopped up the remains of the box of tomatoes that Lindsey bought last weekend, and the bag of onions that I bought last weekend and put them in bags ready for the freezers.  Jim brought in a harvest of zucchini and I chopped and added those to the tomato and onion bags. Not quite enough zucchini for all the bags, but we can add them as more come to hand.  Some of the bags are in Lindsey's freezer and some in ours.

We've been shopping. There is now bedding for the spare bed, which is made up ready for visitors.  There is food in the house. There is wine and whisky - but no beer.  Had better get in a supply!  We are settling in reasonably well, and a proper routine to the weeks will gradually evolve.  The bare bones of it are already in place.

Lindsey came to dinner on Thursday evening, bringing with her a bag of chicken kievs.  She was our first proper dinner guest. We used our dining table which had come from the UK for the first time.  We used our proper dinner plates (which we also brought from the UK) for the first time. It was all very exciting