This has been a week full of virtual chats, so it’s been really nice to catch up with lots of people. Annoyingly, after my lovely day on Wednesday, I came home to the news that when Peter caught up with Susan in the morning, she’d changed her mind again and had decided she is going to list the apartment. She’s been in touch with an agent and is planning to list it for four weeks, so said she’d try to get an agent over in the next few days to take photos etc. Peter had Thursday off, so we made our way over to the Yurt Café nearby for a cute little brunch. It was a warm day, getting up to about 28, so after having a lovely brunch of eggs and smoked salmon on gluten free bread, we headed back to the apartment. We were supposed to go for a big walk but Peter was feeling a bit off, so we rested and drank lots of water and kept cool. In the afternoon we went for a walk up through Spitalfields market – I was looking for a t-shirt stand I’d seen there a couple of weeks ago, but they weren’t there. We had a good explore of the market stalls (masks on, of course) before heading to a cute little wine bar called Grapeshot, not far from Spitalfields. We sat down for a glass of beautiful Australian chardonnay, and a French chardonnay to compare, and had some delicious snacks for a late lunch.

On Friday I woke reasonably early and skyped Jaimie for a little while, but she was doing her hair (dyeing) so we had to cut it short and reschedule for Sunday. At 10:30 though, I joined in on part 1 of James and Alice’s virtual 30^th celebrations. We were doing a ‘James and Alice’-themed trivia ‘night’ and they’d also done a virtual cocktail class beforehand, which I’d skipped, it being 10am and all. It was a fantastic evening of trivia, hilariously grouped into three rounds themed by each decade of their lives, and we had a lot of fun talking in our groups about silly memories and catching up. I got off the phone at around 12:30 and had a pretty quiet afternoon of doing a workout and some yoga. We skyped Peter’s mum in the evening and spoke quite a lot about the house situation and how it would probably be a good time for Peter to buy a place instead of us looking at renting somewhere else as interest rates are so good and it’s such a flexible market. After talking to Ruth, we sent an email to Susan, as we still hadn’t heard from her regarding the agent coming over to look at the place. Then it was time for me to go to bed!

Saturday was similar to Friday in that it was loaded with Zoom calls! I spoke to Mum and Dad in the morning, and then participated in part 2 of James and Alice’s virtual 30^th. This session was a scavenger hunt, in which they’d prepared clues designed around the layout of the house they were supposed to be staying in for the weekend. It was very fun and hilarious to decode the clues to find each location, to be given a next clue, and they did very well converting it to a virtual activity. We ended up staying online and just chatting for a long time afterwards, and by the time I hung up the phone it was around 2:30. Once again, I just went for a run, did some yoga, did some cleaning and gardening and had a quiet night.

On Sunday I had a proper zoom call with Jaimie and we spoke for ages, after which I had a quiet day of workout, yoga, walks around the neighbourhood and cleaning up the apartment ahead of an appointment with the real estate agent for valuing the property on Monday – which Susan notified us of on Sunday morning. She clearly knows she needs to give us 24 hours notice and is just cutting it as fine as possible. We also spent quite a long time looking at properties online and had the surprising realisation that actually it might be nice to move south of the river. The property prices are a lot better, it would be easier for me for work, equally as close for Peter, and there are some really cool areas down around Camberwell. So perhaps a reasonably big move in the works, depending on what happens.

On Monday morning, the agent came around at 11:30, with Susan in tow as a last minute surprise. He did a quick walk around and then they went downstairs and had a talk. It was Peter’s day off so we headed off for a property viewing at 12:30, which was not too bad a place, but in a really dodgy location and with a few little bits of water damage that looked quite suss. Peter’s cousins had already told us to write it off the list based on the online listing, but it was good to go and have a look and get into the routine of looking at houses again. It was a shame too, because it had a beautiful little yard! We rushed home afterwards to have a quick meeting with Susan, who told us she was going to try and list it for 4 weeks, and that the real estate agent would be in touch ASAP for coming over to take photos/do the floor plan to get the listing up. We went upstairs and sent her an email with our availability over the next month and crossed our fingers she and the agent would be organised and communicative. Peter had a dentist appointment but I met him afterwards and we went for a walk up Brick Lane to drop off a painting at a framer’s and then worked our way down to Wapping for dinner at the pub. They’re doing an ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ promotion here at the moment, where if you eat out Monday – Wednesday, you get 50% off food and non-alcoholic drinks (up to a limit of £10 per person). This was great for us, so we ate at the Town of Ramsgate, a cute little pub on the river in Wapping. My steak ended up costing £6! After a delicious dinner, we had to waddle on home to meet our Amazon food order, and then had a quiet night in watching The Umbrella Academy.