WE'RE BACK AND WE'RE IN CORNWALL!

Well we're finally here in Cornwall and it is absolutely beautiful, the people are friendly and the weather... well... it's being weather... all kinds of weather!

The move wasn't without hitch, first of all our removals company tried to rip us off. After turning up at 7pm in the evening after being told they would be at our flat at 1pm they loaded half our stuff onto a van and decided that it was overloaded... it wasn't. Anyway, being 10pm by this time and very unhappy they demanded full payment asked for the keys and told us they would have to fetch another van and it would cost more money. We came to an uneasy arrangement with them and with a dreadful feeling in the pit of our stomachs we set off down to Somerset to stay with P's parents overnight and we had to be in Cornwall at 12 noon the next day to pick up the keys. It was a 5 hour drive in the ice, snow and freezing fog which could have been avoided if they removals firm ironically named Move Me Easy turned up at the time they we supposed to. They had already broken something while taking things out to the van, we heard it smash inside one of the boxes so we were less than happy already.

We set off bright and early the next day down to our new home still feeling awful and 12 miles outside of Truro our car blew a head gasket which was cheerfully announced by the billows of oil smoke from the engine bay just after we pulled over into a lay-by. We called our agent who came out to meet us at the lay-by to hand over the keys and some other documents and we got back in the car and waited for the relay we had called. The sun went down, it was freezing and we ended up waiting 4 hours for someone to arrive... we were miserable, angry and frozen to the core.

The relay guy informed us he'd only got the call 20 minutes before he arrived so what had our insurance people been doing for 3 and a half hours?? Anyway, he was really nice and as he lived locally gave us a guided tour of the local supermarkets, garages and the likes.

We arrived at the house at 7pm and the removals company had sent just one guy with the half of our stuff which by now was all over the back of the van... this company obviously hadn't heard of rope or cargo nets. P helped the poor guy unload and by 10pm we had the stuff in the house and being fed up, cold, angry and tired I swore we had made a huge mistake coming here.

For the next four days the removals company ignored our calls and we had to get P's Mother to ring and low and behold he answered, he told her he was going around to the house on Monday but it was going to be expensive... so in effect, he'd quoted us a low price to get the job and then tried to rip us off by adding another £1300 to the bill of £1000 we had already paid. We weren't going to pay that and instead borrowed some money off of my parents and P hired a van and went with his Dad and moved everything else down here. We told the removal guy to post the keys through the door and forget it, we would be seeing him in court for breaking his contract but there were no keys and definitely no apology for leaving us for 4 days without a bed, anything to sit on, anything to cook with or eat off. Lots of things were broken when we unpacked which we are adding to a rather large compensation bill the removals company is going to be dragged to court for.

Anyway, despite all the disasters and even after the first night of sleeping in a cold house on a blow up mattress, we went downstairs in the morning and were greeted by a beautiful sea view and somehow it all felt worth the hassle... almost!

So now we're settling in, it's beautiful here, the cottage is just beautiful and we get to see the sea every day... unless we can't because of the fog but then we know it's going to rain that day so it's really quite handy!

I've been busying myself with making stuff for the new place, I finally finished my humongous colourful blanket and started a new one in blue stripes for the living room.

I have also started dabbling with cross stitch as the cottage has a beautiful window seat in the living room so I thought I'd make a cushion for it. I hadn't really realised quite how long cross stitch takes... until now!

Still, all's well that ends well... Cornwall is beautiful and we are going to be very happy here for a long time!