So things seem to be moving at last - though it took a few phone calls to Premier Lawyers to get them to look at the file and action things. I have the impression that if I had not called it may be Friday before they looked at the responses from the buyers.
But if things go well then it should bed one by Friday and Ffynnon Wen is scheduled accordingly to be Monday 6th July. Which is also the day that Wales is scheduled to drop the 5 mile travel rule, and allow "bubbles" - addition of one family to the isolation group..
Probably a good thing as the living room is filling up !!
Personally, I would just like to go to bed until Friday.....
But it is a new week so time to change the profiles...
And today's Shut-Down Serenade brings us to No 66 - an old favourite - Puff the Magic Dragon.
Saw this nice cross-over picture... and decided to just leave it here ..
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
- Knowing when to come in out of the rain; - Why the early bird gets the worm; - Life isn't always fair; - And maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death,
-by his parents, Truth and Trust, -by his wife, Discretion, -by his daughter, Responsibility, -and by his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 5 stepbrothers;
- I Know My Rights - I Want It Now - Someone Else Is To Blame - I'm A Victim - Pay me for Doing Nothing
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.
If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.
In other news - chasing solicitors. Buyers say that they are ready and able to go and need mine to give a date. Mine say they haven't confirmed that we have answered all the questions. Theirs say oh yes we have - mine say ....
But it is still Gastonbury weekend and 20 years ago last night Susie and I were sitting on the path leading down to the Pyramid Stage, in our brand new folding chairs. Something we had never seen before. They even had a place to put your glass - on our case the gin and tonic!. And everyone was envious of us sitting like lords of the manor in our luxury as they squatted on the floor..
I remember they even had a website for the chairs - a great new innovation. You can buy them anywhere these days but then!!! it was very new...
So, a song from me... We are on to 65 - Hares on the Mountain. a nice traditional tune.
Sunday, and temperature is back to the cool normal for the time of year. And what a year it is turning out to be...
But it is also Glastonbury weekend and so I cast my memories back to 2008, when I took a stupid amount of tentage and stores into the Festival - to set up a Crimson Moon Medieval Encampment. I no longer remember how man trips it took me - but I was younger and fitter then and it was worth it.
Galleries are still there on Facebook .... LINK | LINK 2 | LINK 3
So.. Have an Air Guitar!!!
Shut-Down Serenades get to No 64 - An Old Favourite Donna Donna Donna
In other news, I saw this rather inspirational image today
Little news today... It is cooler. It is Saturday. We didn't exchange contracts last week. Susie is busy re-painting and recovering chairs for the kitchen. We have a Dresser and cupboard painted white.
Material for the chairs arrived today.
Put the Filing cabinet up for local sale yesterday for a fiver. Probably should have put it higher as 6 people were after it in the end - but the buyer turns out to do house clearances and bought a number of other small items and I made £45 in the end, selling a wooden ladder,and old drinking horn and a paper rack form the old police station in Pwll - that is how long stuff has been gathering with us!
Friend sent this from Germany - languages are great..
As I pointed out - the one would lead to the other anyway !!
So on to No 63 - Remember the Moredhel. A Curious Pastime LARP Song based upon The Alamo.
So another heatwave day yesterday and the world went nuts to get to the beaches. As one comment showed, of course with the amusement arcades, the cafes, the pubs, the restaurants all shut, and the hotels shut so no-one can use their car-parks, and the toilets closed, there was nowhere for everyone to go except onto the beach - and then with a half million people there - where did they go to the toilet?? I would not have wanted to be swimming that day ...
A quick comparison for England and Wales
Still glad that I am in Wales and that we are still shut down..
Then, into the evening we discover that we have not escaped the madness as crowds filled Ogmore on Sea and ended up in drunken brawls...
Videos on social media showed large crowds at Ogmore-by-Sea, Vale of Glamorgan, followed by violent clashes on Thursday evening.
Current travel restrictions are set to be lifted on 6 July.
But Mark Drakeford said if behaviour continued his government would "not be able to continue easing restrictions".
South Wales Police said two men in their twenties had been detained following the incident at Ogmore-by-Sea at about 20:00 BST on Thursday.
Officers broke up crowds on the beach, but some returned a few hours later.
In a post on twitter on Friday morning, Mr Drakeford said the scenes "threaten the health of people in Wales and undermine the sacrifices the majority of people have made during this ongoing crisis".
House.
A week of solicitors talking to each other and after sorting the boiler indemnity out with the buyer's solicitor at half the price, I am told this morning that the buyers have signed the mortgage agreement and the contracts and are putting them into their solicitor this afternoon. They hope to complete next week... My confidence is waning ... But my hope remains high ...
Serenade No 62 and an old Paul Simon Favourite - Homeward Bound. Vollsanger Version
Homeward Bound
Need to get back in the studio today...
Out of current songs ..
But selling a Filing Cabinet for a fiver today - put it on local selling page on Facebook - was going to give it away on free-cycle but put a nominal £5 on it and had 6 answers. Clearly should be putting my prices up.
So, it is not looking good in the world, with China and Germany getting a second wave, while we are hardly through our first.. And in the UK we have a heat wave. Luckily I have a warehouse which contains everything...
So an early morning trip to pic these up. (11am)
But the sun has a detrimental effect upon the sensibilities of people - Bournemouth yesterday!
Meanwhile in the USA..
Though the latest is apparently...
And the two meter rule...
There are reasons that I want to move up into Ceredigion...
From the Times last week,,,,
"In a quiet corner of Wales renowned for the beauty of its coastline, a former biology teacher named Barry Rees has emerged as a reluctant hero of the battle against the coronavirus. He would much rather no one talked about him, in case all his good work is undone.
As corporate director of Ceredigion county council, Rees, 51, is credited with designing and implementing a “homemade” contact-tracing system that has helped turn Ceredigion into the safest county in mainland Britain, with the lowest infection rate of any local authority.
“Barry is a bit shy,” said Ben Lake, the Plaid Cymru MP for Ceredigion, which stretches along Cardigan Bay with a sparsely populated hinterland climbing into the Cambrian mountains. “He’s very modest, but a lot of credit needs to go to him for driving this effort forward.”
Last week the council recorded three new cases of the virus, bringing its total since January to just 45 out of 75,000 residents. Only seven people have died in Ceredigion since the virus took hold of the rest of the country, a death rate one-tenth of the worst-affected parts of Wales. “We are very proud of what Barry and his team have achieved,” said Peter Davies, one of 13 councillors named Davies on the 42-member council.
There is only one snag to Ceredigion’s record, summed up by a Lampeter student on Facebook. “Shhh!,” wrote John Voloudakis. “If we publicise how low the Ceredigion infection rate is, the infected hordes will . . . seek out places they think will be safest, but bring more incubating virus with them.”
It was early in the year that Rees read reports of the contact-tracing schemes of southeast Asian countries. Before his county recorded a single Covid-19 case, Rees and his team set up a tracing scheme that has since been copied by the Isle of Anglesey and is being adapted by Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire councils.
On Friday, Rees appeared before the Welsh parliament’s health committee with Ceredigion’s chief executive, Eifion Evans, to explain how his tiny scheme succeeded where a broader national test-and-tracing effort stumbled. “It has inspired everyone,” said Dai Lloyd, the committee’s chairman.
Barry Rees implemented a ‘homemade’ contact-tracing system Barry Rees implemented a ‘homemade’ contact-tracing system “In Ceredigion we were facing losing 600 residents by the end of June if we did nothing,” Evans said. As Easter approached, the county’s population was close to twice its usual size, with thousands of students at Aberystwyth University and visitors flocking to Cardigan Castle and the sandy beaches of Tresaith, Aberporth and New Quay.
Even after the university closed and holiday camps and caravan parks shut down, epidemic models were still predicting 200 deaths in the area, Evans said. “We asked, what else can we do? Loss of life is not an option.”
It was at a “gold command” emergency strategy meeting that Rees “piped up”.
“We had scope to create a homemade system. We had colleagues with experience of tracing cases of legionella and food-poisoning. Given that our [virus] numbers were very low, we thought contact-tracing could be effective,” he said. It proved more than a question of ringing around to ask locals who they had been in contact with. “We were moving to new ground in terms of using personal data,” said Rees, who joined the council two years ago after a 16-year career as a teacher. “We had data protection officers to ensure we were operating within legislation.”
For national tracing efforts, he noted, “the starting point . . . is receipt of a positive test result”. But Rees found a way of getting started much earlier. As one of the largest employers in the county with 4,000 staff, the council had “good information” on employees calling in sick with coronavirus symptoms. “We could follow them before they were tested. The fact that we were able to pick up some of our staff at a symptomatic stage, rather than waiting for a positive result, was very beneficial in turning this around.”
Rees is the first to acknowledge that many other factors helped contain the virus in Ceredigion, from the low density of the population to its distance from the main travel corridors of the M4 and A55, and the council’s rapid introduction of restrictive measures. Rees said his team had contacted every one of the confirmed cases and every member of council staff who reported virus symptoms. Not everyone was thrilled to hear from the tracking team.
“Some people can be quite defensive,” he said. “But the vast majority welcomed the intervention and felt supported by it.”
Last week it became clear that the council’s pride in its virus-beating status was tinged with angst over word getting out. The main fear in Ceredigion is that a return of tourists and students might mean a return of the virus.
The Welsh government has come under increasing pressure to follow England’s example in easing lockdown restrictions. “There is serious concern about the impact on the Welsh economy,” said Matthew MacKinnon, director of the Centre for Welsh Studies in Cardiff.
The one thing everyone agrees on is that Rees has done a terrific job, even if he shies from media attention. The council declined to make him available for interview, leaving unanswered the big question posed by Bev Espley on the county’s Facebook support group: “Why hasn’t it been done on a national level?”
In other news - I thought I would add my family tree - how to tell your cousins...
A sad story of patents... I went to the Patent office to register some of my camping inventions I thought up while in lockdown. I went to the main desk to sign in and the lady at the desk had a form that had to be filled out. She wrote down my personal info and then asked me what I had invented. I said, "A folding bottle." She said, "Okay, what do you call it?" "A Fottle." "What else do you have?" "I have also invented a folding carton." Again she said, "what do you call it?" "A Farton." She sniggered and said, "Those are silly names for products, and one of them sounds kind of crude." I was so upset by her comment that I grabbed the form and left the office without even telling her about my folding bucket. And so to the Shut-Down Serenades - and today we get to No 61 - Rambling Boy. Tom Paxton.
And with that I shall leave you .. Cheers ! I think I need this Spa...
Well, I am glad that the instructions from the Government are clear and unambiguous..
Things are not looking good, even though we are opening up here - the states are showing some rapid rises.
Going to face the shops later (we are in a heat wave at the moment and it is very hot out there) and will see how it looks now that more shops are open.... though I will be going to Tesco Only !!!
On the house front - had some queries today about the gas boiler - and with the estate agent calling in at the house, established that the Gas Boiler records that we had are not for our boiler at all - so we have no idea when it was put in and no record of the certificates.
Sadly, the requirement for our buyers to have a mortgage means that this is a requirement to show that the house is safe! My solicitors (Premier Lawyers) step in and say I can have an indemnity insurance for £117 plus £72 administrative fee!! Seemed a bit steep so spoke wit the buyer and it seems that his solicitor can arrange for £74 and no admin fee, so have instructed my solicitors to pay their solicitors, and charge me. I know it is a small amount of £405K but I resent paying out more. But I am not going to delay on that account!!...
Other than that it seems as though we are progressing in the right direction.
And so we get to number 60 in the Tavern.... Ride On.
I know I put this out there out of sequence before - but for the sake of regularity we will take it one day at a time ....
Hopefully we are getting closer to completion. Everything signed and told that the letter for the mortgage has been passed to the buyer's solicitors. Mine contacted regarding setting up the Trust Document. Susie is painting again .. and looking to re-upholster the kitchen chairs...
And so we get to number 60 in the Serenades... Ride On.. Mentioned earlier as a commemoration for Steve Boland who died tragically but putting it here again to keep in order.
Meanwhile in the UK, it is rumoured that Boris Johnson thinks that painting an official plabe with the union flag would be beneficial to the country. The wags have posted as follows..
Can't disagree....
And as we pass the Solstice and start towards the shorter days we can look forward to what the rest of the year will bring us...
Seems about right as well..
So onto the Serenades, and we get to No 59, and a fishing song from Ewan Mcall..
No 59 - The Shoals of Herring
Walk for Father's Day yesterday with Vic and Susie...
