Well the new owners have arrived all excited to be taking over and now I'm getting excited to be briefly unemployed! How's this for a conundrum. The owner of the house we are buying agreed very kindly to send us the keys as we shall be arriving late at night. In the meantime, I arrange with the post-office to redirect our mail from the 21st. Well, I suppose you can guess....they started right away and the keys have gone right back down to the house! Durr. Poor old owner has now to go to the house to leave us the keys - he moved about an hour away. I expect it'll all be alright on the night.

I have been packing the cats things today. They almost have more than me. I've got their travel boxes ready, Freddie's medicines packed (he's a true French cat with a whole raft of medicines) and they have more beds than is decent. The vet gave me some tranquilisers for them the other day. I am particularly worried about Wilma as she is not very good at being handled. The vet said I should try them out beforehand as the dose can be a little tricky to determine. Last night was Wilma's lucky night on drugs and within about 45mins she'd gone cross eyed and all floppy. Marvellous! She actually seemed a little pathetic, ahhh. Isn't it strange how a human would just think, Mmm, time for a nap, whereas animals try to ignore it and carry on. So we have established that one is enough!

I have had contact with 3 hot stone companies. There is a French one which owns the trademark 'Pierrade', a UK one called Blackrock Grill and another UK one called Steakstones. Blackrock Grill is a nice system, but incredibly expensive; Pierrade is nice, but not as nice as Blackrock Grill, but a third of the price, so pushes into favourite, but looks like it may be pipped to the post by Steakstones which strike a good note with nice presentation combined with reasonable price. Hurrah! I think our guests will have a memorable dining experience. It's great to decide now, as we can plan the kitchen around it. For example, I probably won't have a grill, as any steaks or grills will be taken care of by the hot stone side of the menu. I am making myself hungry writing this!

So anyway, how did we accumulate so much stuff?