June - the rest of it!

This month has gone by so quickly that this posting is being hurriedly made to ensure that there is a posting for the rest of June!

Having done that, I can now write the rest (at the start of July).  Having not had time all month to write anything I now find, looking back, that we didn't do very many things to write about.  The month was busy due to work.  Ben and Beccy both had exams.  Ben had his AS exams in biology, physics, PE and history.  Beccy had some GCSEs, English and biology, and some creative and media diploma coursework.  Brian is still trying to sort out cash flow problems.  He needs to get enough money coming in to create a surplus but it comes in too slowly and he is always too busy to look at how to improve things.  I had loads and loads of marking and have been working overtime.  Although it is nice to have the extra money, I am now not getting a day off and am often not home when the children come home from school.  Even though they are old enough to cope with this, I don't feel comfortable with it.  I will quite likely work five days again next year but will try to ensure that each day finishes early enough for me to beat them home from school.  At least then I will feel that I have an evening.

Beccy's main events this month were a dance presentation evening at school where she was in charge of the sound production and a win at another football tournament.  This is the second production that she has been involved in and it looks like it will become a regular thing.  She is really keen to be involved in all school productions but not in the limelight.  Aylesford Girls Under 15s won the Castle Colts tournament on the 5th June and she brought home yet another trophy.

Dan, Helen and Alexander came to visit on the 20th, Father's Day.  We had lunch, which I cooked on the griddle of my new(ish) cooker, then played in the garden for a while before going for a walk.  Alexander ran around in the garden having a whale of a time.  Dan would spin him round a couple of times and he would try to walk, staggering from side to side.  He made us all laugh.  Ben and Beccy played ball with him and Beccy fished a newt out of the pond for him to see (he wasn't impressed and didn't even try to touch it - he wanted to get back to running).  Dan had cooked Brian some delicious custard cream biscuits as a present, really tasty (obviously he wasn't allowed to keep them to himself).  After lunch we went for a short, local walk and found a thatched house in a residential street not far from home.  It was quite an unusual sight for us.  Dan and Helen have many thatched cottages in their area.   Many are very old.  This one was quite strange for three reasons: one, because there are very few, if any, thatched houses in this area; two, because the house was relatively new; and three, because most of the roof was obviously a replacement for a tiled roof (some was covering a new extension)!  The house was named 'The Thatched House', presumably it had been renamed.

On the 27th Dan, Helen and Ben ran the Stansted 10k.  It was incredibly hot, which made it really difficult to run, but Ben and Dan ran it not too much slower than other 10k races they have done and Helen managed an impressive hour and a quarter.  There were, apparently, a number of casualties from the heat.  A few days before this, Ben competed in the Kent Indoor Rowing Championships and came third in his race.

 

 

After the race, and lunch, we went for a short walk to the local park.  Alexander showed us how he can slide, ride the roundabout and swing (with a push, of course)!  Then he showed us his climbing skills, climbing the frame to the top with little difficulty and without using his knees.  Impressive stuff!

 

For Ben, I think the highlight of the month (or possibly the year) was a trip to Wimbledon with Jeni. They travelled there by train, leaving Chatham only after Jeni's final A level exam finished at 4pm. This meant that it was nearly 6pm by the time they got there. They bought evening admission tickets, which let you wander around the courts and, presumably, get a seat in the outside courts where there is one available. They were quite happy to do this but shortly after they got into the complex, an older couple came out of centre court and asked Ben and Jeni if they would like their seats as they had to go. Obviously they said 'yes, please' and they got their seats in time to see the final set of Andy Murray's quarter final match, which he won. They must have been so pleased with themselves. Ben rarely phones home when he is out but he phoned specifically to tell me where he was. That was how important is was! Many thanks to the couple who were kind enough to think about those who can't afford the extortionate cost of centre court seats.

 Indoor rowing championships.

We have had to pull out of the flat purchase, which I am really upset about.  There was outstanding work from the conversion (6 years ago) which means that there is no Building Regulations certificate and some of the mortgage was withheld until the work has been completed.  Unfortunately, to get the work completed it seemed that the property management company would be charging all the leaseholders, so it would be unsurprising if they said 'get lost we're not paying, charge the development company, whoever they are' and the work didn't get done, which could cause some problems for us, and them, when it comes to selling on.  As the mortgage offer will soon run out and we wouldn't then be able to apply for another mortgage until the work was done, we couldn't do anything but pull out.  I felt really sorry for the lady who was selling it, she had waited such a long time already while we got all the information and now she could have problems selling it at all.  From our point of view, we know at least one property management company to avoid in the future!