Friday evening Ben, Kita, Mum (thanks Mum) and I set about cleaning our old house, working pretty much straight through the evening with all manner of cloth and chemical. Come about 11pm the old house was in a pretty good state. Clean, tidy and ready to be given back.

Saturday morning Ben and I went in the house about 9am and the first thing I said was “Where’s the post?” shortly followed by “Why’s the bed been pulled out?”. From that moment on I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach it wasn’t going to be quite as good a day as the glorious sunshine would suggest it should be.

We’d arranged for the landlady to go through the checking out process at 10am and sure enough she was there promptly on time. The first thing she produced was a letter addressed to the occupier of our Reading place from Thames Water. She thought it was evidence we’d not paid the water bill. In truth it’s a fairly harmless letter, just asking for the new occupier to set-up a new account as I’d cancelled ours. I know, I’d opened it a couple of days ago and left it in the house for the new tenants.

A part of me wishes I’d been a lot less tired and a bit sharper witted. Our landlady had been in our property after we’d left Friday night and picked up the post. That’s a breach of contract, entering the property without our consent whilst we still held the tenancy. If I’d have been more awake and a little quicker I suspect none of what followed would have happened. Alas, it’s a lesson learnt.

She basically complained about the state of cleanliness of the property throughout. In fact I think the only thing she was happy with was the hob which was shining…… as was most of the house. Many hours passed and many comments were made and ultimately Ben and I somewhat gave in on some points which means we’re losing a significant chunk of our deposit. On reflection we could have been a lot tougher, heck based on the previous paragraph we could have been very tough indeed.

In all honesty though my heart wasn’t in it. At the moment there are just too many more important things going on in my life that fighting for some money pails in comparison. Another time and  I suspect I’d have tried a lot harder, or more to the point taken something of a gamble. You see a big part of our problem was our letting agents.

The reason, the only real reason Ben and I negotiated with the landlady direct was because we both felt it would have been a far bigger, messier fight with the agents. Honestly as I type this I’m sure the agents would have gone for more like 85% of our deposit and we’d be fighting tooth and nail over it for the next 6 months. In my final year of uni and getting married in a few months I just didn’t fancy that over my head. If you’re looking to move to Reading drop me a message and I’ll tell you who to avoid!

There were so many silly little details on Saturday that I could write a book on them. It wouldn’t do anyone much good apart from this, my intentions to own the roof over my head have never been stronger.

So Saturday was a write off, I was exhausted mentally and physically and didn’t fancy moving any more boxes into Portsmouth that evening. Sunday though was a success. After a much needed lazy start to the day we went down to our flat in Southsea and moved the final car loads of stuff in and began living there.

We unboxed a bit, got the TV kind of working and made the bed. Thankfully though we both felt like a walk and so we strolled along the beach, laughing and enjoying one another’s company like we haven’t in quite a long time. It was a really great walk, probably the most romantic thing we’ve done since Sorrento last summer.

That would have been a good way to finish the weekend but it got better. As we were aimlessly wondering around we came across quite a crowd. Not really knowing what was going on (apart from a big boat on the grass) we stuck around and to our delight a fantastic firework show took place marking the end of Portsmouth’s Festivities, celebrating 500 years since the ascension of Henry VIII.

So a great way to end a very stressful weekend.

Dan

From what I was originally told an engineer would have to come out to determine if it was a reconnection or new line, seems either that step was skipped or just missed out or the people who arranged it all (the joy that is our letting agents) made it up (seems there quite good at this last bit).

So today the utility warehouse are going to call me with hopefully a BT report in their hand and try and explain how they charge £99 for 2 minutes work and miss out one step of the whole process, yeah, this is going to be fun.

On the plus side we now have a landline and given that Orange don’t seem to have a great signal at ours this will probably get some use other than for broadband.

Dan

I don’t know, I guess I’m just feeling a bit of a kick in the stomach over being apart again.

Dan

**edit**

Perhaps I just need a cup of tea and to get into something constructive instead of worrying about what I can’t quite have yet…

Surely a sensible system would be to have a Student TV license that runs from September till June. Not discounted as such but just sensible small payments and not paying large quick lumps and then to automatically start paying for the next license?

I checked that the values were all the right amounts and indeed it is, it just seems a little silly to me and somewhat wasteful of resources. I mean surely there are going to be thousands of students claiming back 3 months of their license?

Dan

Bugger.

Dan

This story has been in the news a fair bit the last couple of days and I thought about blogging about it but decided against it plus I was busy with coursework (I still am but I need to vent this first). On the BBC there are many very interesting comments varying in severity and side but one that keeps cropping up is Christians who are more annoyed with their fellow Christians for creating a storm in a tea cup etc

I was going to leave this subject alone as one it doesn’t really bother me and two I didn’t see the need to add to it all, until I got an email through today.

A forward about a petition to sign up to in protest of the law.

We live in a democracy, we have ‘equal’ rights and yet as far as I can tell some want to be more equal than others. It is absurd.

I think that one of the main subjects of various seminars, talks and sermons is that God love’s us all, you, me the person over the street, God is love and yet that seems to have been forgotten as soon as the word gay appears it’s gone in a flash and that is sad, very sad. In fact it makes me worried. Very worried.

So what if a gay couple ask for a room in a Christian guesthouse? I don’t get it. A house is a house. Surely one of the main lessons we learn from Jesus is that He is the person who would open his door to anyone, absolutely anyone. He is God and so He is love.

By blatantly discriminating against someone is clearly not showing the same love that Jesus shows this world.

It’s the 21st century and if we as Christians dont want to be dismissed as much as it seems we are at the moment then we need to learn to love the sinner. Jesus did it, cant we?

Why is it that as soon as the word gay is mentioned that it is this elevated sin, a super sin? We are all sinners and yet we seem to have this human constructed idea of super sin. Don’t judge others, remember John 8:6-8 :

“They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.”

Nope, I won’t be signing up to a petition that promotes discrimination.

We are all equal and really it’s a bit sad that it takes a law for that to be put in place.

God bless, love

Dan

Oh dear, how sad.

Dan

I can only see about 10-15 metres in front at best. Even when I know the road I end up seeing stuff I wouldn’t normally ‘cos I’m driving at the speed of an old woman, you know, the sort who really should have a pillow or three on their seat to see over the wheel!

But that’s not the worst but, nope, it’s the other drivers who whack on full beam. Why?

Just why?

All you can see is a white blanket and for the poor chap on the other side of the road, well…

Grrr!

Don’t worry I wasn’t ran off the road as such but just had to vent a little stress that if I hadn’t read what was going on ahead, well I may have had to take evasive action!

Dan

As I usually do at work on a Saturday morning I skim read the paper, as there is nothing really better to do. The downside is the paper, the Daily Mail. Oh dear.

Usually the stories are ok and I can kind of read in the morning but the front page said it all today. The main headline was some such about the high-street stores having to slash prices in manic 1 or 2 day sales to compete with the Internet stores.

Which seems ok but it was the second headline that got me. Kate Middleton apparently said (according to lip reading experts) that “Prince William looked sexy” in his passing-out uniform yesterday. How ridiculous is that. It isn’t news it just isn’t. There’s woman being murdered in Suffolk and yet some comment that is probably said a hundred thousand times a day makes the front page of a national newspaper. It has to be said I do use the word newspaper somewhat reluctantly, if anyone can think of a better name then comment it.

Maybe it’s just me but it seems crazy and bizarre that something so serious could be dropped (I think the story is eventually mentioned by the eighth page or so) in the place of a throwaway comment.

Admittedly it seems a little weird to me that consumerism gets the front-page over (I guess would be called) humanism.

What a strange day we live in.

Dan

Quote, “Many leading scientists argue that theories about intelligent design should not be allowed in school because they are simply not scientific.” Or maybe it’s that they cant explain the science? Or they don’t like the idea of a being greater than themselves?

What was most interesting was the quote by the teacher:

“There’s a sense that if you criticise Darwin you must be some kind of religious nut case.

“We might has well have said Einstein shouldn’t have said what he did because it criticised Newton.”

Wish this had been around when I was at school. I wish there had been the opportunity for debate but alas there wasn’t.

Shame really.

Dan