2nd April 2014
Today’s photographic offering from an early morning tour of the garden is one of a host of different hellebores.
Jackie and I continued to marvel at our new home, as we struggled to acquaint ourselves with its quirkiness and to find our way around it.
The colour schemes are somewhat bizarre, and a really serious deep clean is required. Some things don’t actually work, and others require more than our combined intelligence to understand. 
An example of the first is the beautiful ceramic door handles of the spare bedroom in which we spent our first night. When they came off in our hands we realised that they had not been screwed into the connecting bar. Strangest of all is the cooking arrangement which we are still unable to fathom. The equipment is part of a top quality Moben kitchen installed in 2009. 
The unconnected and unused oven sits perched on top of a work surface. Instructions suggest in belongs in a floor-level cupboard below in which it would not fit. So, no effective oven.
The Neff hob unit nestles in the opposite work surface. This appears to have a child lock applied. We would need an infant to help us unlock it. So, a possibly effective hob we cannot fathom.
As we wander about the place, we keep our eyes peeled for a telephone point. The only one we have found is in a bedroom upstairs. Mind you, most walls are obscured by assorted belongings for which we haven’t yet found a resting place. The task of sorting things out might be eased if we got into our heads which doors lead where. It is the ‘royal we’ I use here, because Jackie has a better idea of our surroundings than I do.
Our predecessors had their washing machine plumbed into the garage. Ours lies, inaccessible, in there behind boxes of books. We’ll run out of underclothes soon.
The sellers left a kindly informative note welcoming us and saying that they had left a few items we might find useful. Some, especially the treats in the garden, will come in handy, but we will need to hire a skip.
My tongue is not in my cheek when I say that this is going to be a fun-filled adventure we will relish.
We are not fastidious people, but when we took ourselves back to Curry/PC World in Christchurch to buy a fridge/freezer we were pleased there was a B & Q behind it, because the need for three new lavatory seats was urgent. We bought two, one of which Jackie installed.
After this, we went in search of Wi-Fi. Lymington was the nearest area adequately suppled. Just as we reached Costa, they were switching out the lights, which was a little disappointing. The Angel & Blue Pig hostelry made up for it. After I had posted my blog entry for the moving day, we dined on their excellent meals. Jackie had pork cooked in two ways followed by Grannie apple crumble. My choice was burger and chips followed by sticky toffee pudding. Peroni and Ringwoods Best were respectively imbibed.