Tim's Blog

We've Exchanged Contracts :-)

Finally, after looking at every day from 21st May to 8th June our chain managed to agree on a date and exchanged contracts today.

This means that at last we are really moving house and so on Monday 4th June we will leave the lovely Plantsman Close and start our latest project 2 miles down the road in Cringleford :-D

Buying a house? Be careful!

Fortunately this is nothing to do with our house purchase which is still looking good and hopefully we will exchange next week :-)

Anyway, I just wanted to warn anyone looking to buy a house that the land registry website (and therefore others that use it's data - e.g, www.ourproperty.co.uk) can be wrong, and if it is you may be paying too much for your house!!!

The reason I know this is that I get email updates for areas I'm interested in and recently I had one saying my old flat had just sold for £130,500. Well it was me that sold it and it actually sold for £113,500 - £27k less than suggested. The scary thing is that there is now a similar (not quite as nice) flat for sale in the same block for £125,000 almost certainly because of this false sale report.

So much going on, so little time

Life seems to have got way to busy recently and so even though lots of interesting things have been happening I haven't had 5 mins to blog about them.

For example, I'm working in a new office and I've started cycling to work which at 11 miles a day is really quite tiring. A helicopter landed right by my the other morning as I arrived at work - a business gent got out of the heli and I wonder if it might have been Duncan Ballantyne as it was right by one of his gyms.

Our house move is all back on and going well - some very random issue came up the other day, after local searches, where our local church can apparently ask for hundreds of thouands of pounds for it's upkeep! Luckily a £60 indemnity policy can take care of this, phew!

My parents are moving house, away from where I grew up which will be quite odd, my little sis has got a fantastic job, we're really pleased for you and proud of you Victoria :-)

Oh, and I found out that I can surf the web on my Nintendo Wii, and it's really usable too!

Tim's Blog - The Global Phenomenon

Ok so, it might not quite be a phenomenon but this blog is viewed across the globe. I recently started using Google Analytics, a free service from google which enables you to track the usage of your website, and I am amazed by some of the stats. For example, the picture below shows all the locations my blog as been accessed from in 2007. (the little orange dots are locations the blog has been accessed from)

That's bonkers don't you think? Of course the majority is from the UK but look at this list of countries...

Oooooo, the power of the World Wide Web ;-)

A moose walks into a bar...

...

Just had to share this incredibly random picture I found whilst sorting out my photos from our recent holiday in the Alps :-D

In case you were wondering, he had a Budweiser.

We're Moving!

Slight sense of deja vu? After a week of major uncertainty about our house move, it's all back on again! Our original buyers pulled out last Thursday, this gave way to a flurry of viewings and then ended up with sealed bids on Thursday evening :-D

Birthday Ferrari!

Ok, so no one managed to stretch to a F430 or even a second hand F360 for my 30th but this is definately the next best thing - it's a Supermag F1 Ferrari :-D

Thanks Lizzie and David.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I've just had a call to tell me our house sale has fallen through! Seeing as I was expecting a call to say we can exchange contracts and agree a moving date, this is more than a little annoying :-(

Driving vs Flying

Well we're back at home after a fantastic holiday in Les Gets. More pictures to follow but in the meantime I just wanted to report back on the whole driving vs flying experience.

In short, we loved it!

On the way down we took an extra day of holiday and stopped off in Dijon. This really broke up the journey made the whole holiday feel much longer. It also meant that when we got to resort on Saturday we were very relaxed and already fully in holiday mode. Just as a comparison, two of our friends had to get up at 2am that morning in order to catch their flight and so were inevitably exhausted when they arrived.

On the way back however we drove from Les Gets to Norwich in one stint! I though this was going to be really tough but thanks to the quality of the french roads and the Eurostar it was a breeze - in France we drove 500 miles in 8 hours, including getting down the mountain and stopping for fuel/food etc!

From comparing with the rest of our gang who flew, driving took about 3-4 hours longer (this could be more/less depending on where you live) but avoided all the faffing associated with flying, it allows you to set your own agenda, costs about the same and most importantly, we also contributed about half the carbon into the atmosphere :-D

I'm sure it's not for everyone but I am definately converted!

Bonjour, tout le monde!

So, my first blog after turning 30! Thankfully I still seem to be able to operate modern technology and I didn't go bald or grey over night which was another concern. My actual birthday (on Saturday) was very cool; room service breakfast in Dijon with a few presents, a quick go with the new skis on slope near our chalet in the afternoon and then a BBQ on our balcony overlooking a beautiful snowy valley in the evening :-)

Here are a few pics...

Another Mini adventure	Our very nice chalet, thanks Ellen
The view from the chalet	If Carlsberg arranged BBQ's...
Thanks for the Champagne Dad :-)	I'm a man, I had to light the fire.
First day on the slopes looked like this...	....not bad we thought ;-)