www.OllyAndBecca.uk
Random family photos from this year

Damn kids……

Our car got broken into last night, they had a go at the rear window and passenger window. Completely destroyed them and made a right mess. They didn’t even look for anything to steel though, the door was still locked and the glove box still closed. We got it fixed on our insurance, then when we tried to lock the boot and it wouldn’t go, sigh, so now we have to go get that replaced, all the way in Bedford of course. Our neighbours heard it at 4:30 last night and a couple saw a kid cycling away. Damn kids. On the plus side, it means we finally get rid of those horrible stickers we couldn’t get off the window 🙂
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My Birthday…

So yesterday Olly and I visited Bath, a day trip organised by the University. We left pretty early :s and our coach managed to make it to Bath [unlike the other OU coach that took a long detour round the outskirts of Oxford looking for one of its passengers!].

We managed to pack quite a lot in one day:

  • First we went to the Roman Baths/Temple complex (I have visited the Baths once as a child but can’t remember too much and it was nice to visit after studying about it during Latin GCSE) . Olly learned about Aquae Sulis and the Goddess Minerva, Roman cleanliness and bath house etiquette. We touched the water it was nice and warm, and you can still see the hot springs flowing around the complex into the great bath and other smaller baths. We have some great pictures which we will upload to the phots section. You can also clearly see the Victorian/Georgian influence on the place where they built over and above the existing Roman baths.
  • After the baths we managed to find ourselves in a quaint little tea shop enjoying cream teas.
  • We meandered past Bath Abbey – magnificantly ornate for a relitavely tiny building!
  • We meandered past losts of shops and things and made our way to the Jane Austen Centre, a privatley run museum. We listened to a fascinating talk about Jane Austen, her family and their connections to Bath – where they lived etc. The museum itself is very tiny and focuses on 3 aspects i) where Jane and her family lived in Bath [which are still standing so you can go and see them] ii) Aspects of Bath used in her various novels: which was absolutely fascinating! and finally there were some constumes from various TV drama adaptations of the novels. The museum is small but a must-see for any dedicated reader of Austens books, as i’m not sure Olly enjoyed it as much as me!
  • We then took a meander through the streets of Bath and managed to find an antique map shop – we purchased a lovely antique map of Bucks to add to our collection, and got to look at some really old maps from 1600s which were ornately decorated with crests and things….unfortunately these were thousands of pounds outside our budget!!!
  • Somehow we found ourselves in yet another tea shop enjoying cream teas (i know – very naughty of us!) before getting the coach back home.

All in all i had a lovely day – unfortunately we didn’t get to make it to the Herschel museum or the glass blowing place 🙁

I also got a great birthday present and am having much fun playing on it and it has distracted me from the crapness of B&Q! Cheers everyone!

B&Q Suck donkey balls.

So K-day arived and our kitchen started to invade our house. We are one day in to the fitting proess and we already have a catalogue of errors to report 🙁 So where to start, at the very beginning I suppose;

  • Forgotten splash back – They completely forgot the stainless steel splash back, so Becca spent a long while on the phone getting them to sort it, in the end it took a several of attempts to sort it, and so the splash back had to be express deliveryed.
  • Early delivery – Despite giving an 8 hour delivery window starting at midday they decided to deliver the tiles at 8:30, telling us they would come back later to give us the rest.
  • Scratched splash back – The splash back turned up out of the blue with no warning from the delivery people after the origional delivery, we were of course at work, so they left it with a neighbour. On closer inspection it looked like it had been dragged across a concrete floor for several miles, the box was knackered and the steel very scratched. No chance of a new one being sent until June.
  • Bent sink – The fitters turned up this morning and found the sink was as bent as a banana.
  • Much longer fitting time – We were told it would take three days to do the whole thing, the first thing the fitters said was it would take over a week.
  • Forgotten larder bit – Having made a lot of progress today the builder left this evening, when Becca saw the larder he had fitted we realised that he had put shelves in it instead of the magic pull out draw thing it is supposed to have.

And so that brings us to the end of day one, we have one partially fitted kitchen and a draft complaint letter. It currently looks like the timetable for completion is:
Units fitted by Friday,
Tiling done next week,
Splash back delivered and fitted in a couple of weeks,
Larder unit delivered and fitted sometime in the distant future.

Yes, that is, 3 days to over a month to fit our kitchen 🙁 The moral of this story is to never ever ever get anything from B&Q.