It's so peaceful

 It's still one problem after another here - still no landline phone and husband cannot get the TV working, even with the new freesat box he bought - no signal with either the outside aerial or the satellite dish.  Neither of us knows why - well, I wouldn't know anyway, any kind of technology but especially TV stuff is beyond me.  He'll just have to get a man in to sort it out - eventually, when we've built our savings up again.  In the meantime, we can watch TV on our computers.  I'm actually not bothered about having no TV - although I was glad to watch Strictly on my laptop, and even more pleased that my favourite couple won.  As for the phone - I just despair with BT, they've smashed my already extremely low expectations.  Incompetent idiots.  Husband expects me to sort everything out, which is very draining and does my head in when tech stuff is my weakest point.

We bought a towel rail for the bathroom on Friday, from a popular DIY place.  They didn't have it in stock, but said it would be in their store for us to collect next Tuesday.  Fine.  Except yesterday I had an email from a courier company - one with the most terrible reputation for incompetence - saying that they would be delivering the towel rail to our house in the afternoon.  Eh?!  And then they sent another email, with a photo of the parcel....having been delivered to OUR OLD HOUSE!  Words fail me sometimes.  So now we've got to go back to the DIY store and get a refund and find out why they arranged for it to be delivered (and to our old house, despite husband telling them we've moved), having already told us we would have to go and collect it from their store next Tuesday.  As for the parcel - who knows whether it's still outside our old front door?  Or how long it'll stay there?  We're not going back to collect it, it'll be a 34-mile round trip.

I'm having a day off of unpacking and rearranging things today, my brain's frazzled and I need a day of rest.  I actually slept well (for me anyway) last night, so don't feel as physically tired today.  I have to fill in the forms for both of us to register with the local GPs - certainly a lot more forms than I recall doing the last time we registered with a GP, 11 years ago.  Everything is so complicated nowadays - or perhaps I'm just so much older!

There is almost total peace here - we thought it was quiet at the old place, living in such a rural area surrounded by farmland - well, despite there being twice as many houses around us here, it is very nearly silent.  I don't just mean now, at 07.30 on a Sunday morning, but anytime.  And being a detached bungalow, there's no noise from next door neighbours either.  Our little close of just 12 bungalows doesn't have any through traffic, obviously (and some of the residents are housebound or don't drive), and the lane which the close opens onto, which has several large houses, also has very little traffic.  The lane goes up to a main road, I guess about 200 yards away from us, but traffic noise from there is so quiet I can barely hear it....although that might be one of the advantages of my partial deafness!

I went to the freezer shop yesterday and got an obscene amount of ready meals - although most of them are relatively healthy ones - so the freezer is now nearly full again.  Well, 2/3 full.  This week I shall go and buy a lot of fresh veg - most of the supermarkets are doing their annual big reduction on Christmas lunch type veggies.....potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sprouts, red cabbage, that type of thing.  I'm intending to get several packs of each and have come up with a plan for keeping them - the car port, which the kitchen door opens into, is very sheltered but obviously very cold.  I'll layer all the veggies in one of the large lidded plastic boxes that we now have several of and are now stacked in the back of the car port.  I'll put paper - which we also have lots of - in between each layer, put the lid on and keep the box near the kitchen door in the car port.  I reckon they'll keep for several weeks that way.  We'll go shopping Wednesday early morning, and that'll be the last time until January.