Fliss and I made a quick trip back to the house in Liverpool at the weekend there, leaving on Saturday morning and returning on Sunday afternoon. Normally I wouldn’t have wasted the fuel on such a short trip, but we needed to go back to check on the place, collect some mail, cut the grass, and bring back some other odds and ends now that we’re more or less living back in Scotland.
The drive was fairly smooth in both directions, even if the rain was lashing down from time to time. “Lifters” were the main problem – folk who just let off the loud pedal when the rain got harder, without moving themselves to the inside lane. I have quite a list of them, but that and morons who use their fog lamps in clear conditions are up there with my top pet hates for motorway driving.
Aside from the occasional bottlenecks caused by the lifters, it made a pleasant change for the roads to be so clear. Normally we hit heavy traffic in at least one of the directions, but this time it was good going both there and back and that really helped maintain good fuel economy. 47.5 mpg isn’t bad at all for a petrol car, although it still hurt the wallet at the pumps with the way the prices have soared over the last few months.
When we arrived on Saturday afternoon the house was fine, except for one of the For Sale signs that had been blown down and was lying in the driveway. Maybe that was the reason we haven’t had any calls? 😉
What was odd was stepping in to the place and finding it so pristine after not being there for a month – like a large, short-term time capsule. Less odd, but still weird, was the sheer racket that the Sky box was making. It had crashed at some point due to its hard drive getting full and was just sitting there with its fans blasting away loudly. I wish they’d make them with a cut-off switch, as it hadn’t recorded anything in over a fortnight and was just sitting there wasting electricity.
On Saturday evening we decided to take advantage of being child-free, as we’d left Elisha with her Grandma and Aunty Hazel, and headed down to Allerton for a meal in the Yates’ place down there. Sadly, it was crap – we shouldn’t have bothered.
That evening we went back to the house to catch up on the stuff that the Sky box had actually recorded. It was kind of strange being there without Elisha upstairs in her bed. I almost popped an eyeball out trying to stifle an almighty sneeze at one point because I didn’t want to wake her, before remembering she wasn’t there and I could blast away to my heart’s content! 😀
On Sunday we woke late and spent some of the morning checking email, before heading down to the retail park to get a rear wiper blade for the car and to see if I could pick up a hand luggage sized suitcase. Halfords drew a blank with the wiper blade, but the sports shop that’s permanantly having a sale turned out to have a near perfect suitcase for £6.99 – bargain!
After picking that up we met Graeme in Boots, who was buying plasters for the fingers he’d sliced putting his hand into a pocket he’d previously filled with Stanley knife blades. It looked painful, but with Graeme being so manly he didn’t seem to mind. 😉
We went to eat at the recently refurbished Pizza Hut, which was very nice, but didn’t stop the staff being as sloppy as ever and delivering us a pizza with the wrong base. It did the trick, though, and we got a salad for free for the inconvenience.
Saying goodbye to Graeme at the retail park, we got back to the house and packed up in preperation for the journey back to Helensburgh. Just as we were set to leave there was a hell of a cloud burst that delayed our departure. It was a preview of what was to come, unfortunately, and a lot of the drive back was spent in heavy rain and spray. Like I mentioned before, the traffic was thin, so it wasn’t too demanding a drive and we got back at a little after 8pm in just under four hours.
We’ll need to do the trip again in a couple of weeks to do a proper inventory of the place in order to clear it out for renting. As fond of I am of our first proper house, I’d love to be able to sell it and put the money towards our next place. Which is why the thought of renting it out doesn’t appeal to me so much – I want a clean break.
Needs must, though. Hopefully we can get it emptied and have some paying tenants covering the mortgage within the next couple of months.
