Busy (and expensive) week

Mum's memorial fund currently stands at just over £1000, so thank you to everyone for their generosity. The money is going to research into and treatment of ovarian cancer at The Christie Hospital in Manchester, which looked after her so well.

Anyway, this time last weekend Jon and I were in Erquy, Brittany, with the outlaws. We went over for a long weekend but the rest of the family were there until the end of the week. Pictures of our trips to Dinan and Fort La Latte are over in the new photo album =>. At Fort La Latte we all (including 4.5 yr old nephew) went up the very dodgy steps on the outside of the roof right to the top of the donjon (the very top of the tallest thing in the picture above). It was bloody scary looking down the walls of the donjon for a couple of hundred feet and then a few more hundred feet down a sheer cliff to the sea, with only a rope to hang on to, and Jon was the only person brave enough to walk normally back down to the ramparts - Claire and I came down backwards and Neil came down on his bum!

When we got back home Jon had a couple of days off to 'supervise' the installation of the new boiler - I'm still trying not to think of what it's cost! And, sadly for you, I promised to post photos of it when we originally thought it was going to be done in Jan 2010! Our new Vaillant boiler has officially been named Michel and seems to have already acquired fridge magnets of Bob Cramer and Jo Barett.

At the same time we've had (thankfully) to remove the noisy water- and energy-hungry power shower from the en suite 'cos it wouldn't work with the new boiler and replace it with a rather sexy chrome mixer. It's so quiet and lovely! But we now have some holes to fill in where the power shower was taken out.

We also have a hole in the kitchen to fill because we've had the new boiler moved into the airing cupboard instead. Unfortunately, that's going to mean a trip to Ikea to match the existing cupboards - so I can't see us putting ourselves through that agony anytime soon! So, this week has seen: a trip to France, a new boiler and shower, my car being MOTd and serviced and next week my bike gets MOTd and serviced. I think we're going to be on bread and water for the rest of the month 'cos the bank balance is in meltdown!