Well, I predicted it would be a busy week and it certainly lived up to that prediction! All of the children were back at school on Monday and they were mostly thrilled to be back – if a bit over-excited at times. We spent a lot of time talking expectations and reminding them of rules on Monday but jumped straight back into curriculum on Tuesday. It’s quite strange being in a room full of people again, particularly since most of the children have had a growth spurt and I’m now eye-to-eye with a lot of them! It’s been really nice to get back into routines again, and for them all to have the social contact that they need. We’ve changed a few of the school routines around, and they have a lot more choice about where they play during breaktimes, so it was definitely a week of adjusting and settling.

On top of getting back into school routines, we also had the ongoing landlord crisis to cope with. Thank goodness we hired the soliciting firm, as the senior caseworker (apparently they don’t use the term ‘lawyer’ here) we’re working with has been invaluable this week. The landlord has been emailing us at least once (sometimes twice) a day, with increasingly bizarre requests to get into the property and demanding ‘proof of purchase’ on the house sale – which of course we do not have to or want to provide, as it has Peter’s bank details and the address of the house on it! She even went so far as to call up Nollienne (our caseworker) and accuse her of not reading the tenancy agreement, saying we’re breaking the tenancy contract, telling her that she is an ‘assistant’, and generally ranting like a crazy person. Nollienne’s in the process of drafting the pre-action letter and I just can’t wait until it’s finally sent.

On Wednesday we had a lovely wine-tasting event on Zoom, run jointly by the Cambridge Wine Merchants and Kalfu, a Chilean winery. We tasted five of their wines – a sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, pinot noir, merlot and syrah. The chardonnay was definitely a clear winner for us, it was absolutely beautiful, and we learned a lot about the region in terms of its wine-making history.

We decided last week that we needed to remind ourselves what we’re waiting for when it comes to the house so we’d organised a viewing for Saturday afternoon. It was funny to take the train to go anywhere other than work, but so nice to get out and do something. We arrived down in Penge at 3:30 and headed to the house where Katie, the wife of the owner Tim, showed us around and had a chat. It was funny to find that we’ve got a lot in common with them – she gave us some great tips on little breweries and street art around the area. We took some measurements and had a look around in daylight and took note of the fact that they’re definitely as packed up and ready to go as we are. She talked about their frustration with their vendor and we explained our situation with the landlord, and we all agreed to continue to put pressure on the people up the chain.

Once we were done at the house, we walked up the road and grabbed a takeaway pint at Craft Metropolis, a cute little bar-turned-beer-store, then walked up to Crystal Palace Park and went for a walk around the lake that contains the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. These statues were placed in the park in 1854 after they were displayed at the Great Exhibition that year and it’s so funny to see how much our understanding of dinosaurs has changed in that time. The park was beautiful and it’s very exciting to think we’ll be so close to it once we move.

Heading home after our walk, we had a quiet night finishing off ‘Behind Her Eyes’, a show we’ve been watching throughout the week. This morning I had physio for my dodgy knee, then we enjoyed a very exciting brunch of a ‘Breakfast en Bread’ we’d ordered partnered with some champagne. The breakfast in bread was a big roll (sourdough for Peter, gluten free for me) filled with bacon, sausage, tomato, spinach, cheese and an egg cracked on top. It was delicious but very, very filling! After going for a walk to help the digestion, we began watching It’s A Sin – a Jaimie recommendation which is on Stan in Aus. It’s very good but very sad so far. We’re just planning a quiet evening of food prep and an early night!