I belatedly wish you a joyous Easter!

Apologies if you have been the recipient of a demand for payment notionally from me. I love your friendship but have no intention of demanding your money! It seems to be the new spam attempt. I have alerted the help desk but they are all on holiday.

I have enjoyed playing house over this weekend. The former owners left everything in a great state but I found it helpful just to clean my way through the house - it is the best way to become familiar with it. When cleaning I enjoyed only having one window per room not seven (though it does mean less light) and picture rails that I can just reach rather than up and down a ladder to clean them (needless to say Coventry's picture rails are seldom cleaned!). Our new location is very peaceful unless a kookaburra gets worked up about something and I found some rasperries (my favourite) just ripening in the garden. We are short of living and storage space as I guess the house began as an Australian version of the traditional English 2-up 2-down (i.e. 4 on a flat) so I am meeting with a builder this week. I have pieces of paper on the floor trying to estimate sizes as I am just hopeless at visualising 3D reality from 2D plans. I really miss Mark's reality checks in such planning, though Elisabeth manages to get the same tone of astonishment that I could be so silly when I suggest something.

Rowena got safely back from her Duke of Edinburgh expedition adventures - though one member of the party got sever tonsilitis and another a dislocated knee which gave her challenges that were not in the planning. She expressed no desire to go hiking int he Brecon Beacons in the near future! She got home to a blocked sink, a brown toilet, and her Italian coffee maker gone black. She is off to stay with cousin Laurence and I have told her just to abandon it all.