Monday, July 24, 2006

Exchanges

It was a pretty good weekend and now it’s back to working for my head of unit again. She seems to have got the idea that she should mentor me until she leaves. I could therefore become an expert in how to use copious amounts of Elnett hairspray and how to delegate so that I don’t have to take responsibility for anything. What I don’t want to learn from her though is her dancing technique. She came into my office the other day and did a full Scottish jig with her own musical accompaniment. When she had finished I just said to her “I take it you have good news then”. Afterwards I spoke to the other person who had been in the office and we agreed that we would never speak of that moment. Ever.

The exchange students have gone. I was woken at about four this morning by one of them loudly banging around the place and phones ringing and so on, as she was heading odd to the airport. Sadly there is no respite though as two new students turn up today. They were meant to be two Chinese girls but have now turned into two Chinese boys, one of whom is 12. I am not relishing this prospect. The students are also not supposed to use my bathroom, even though one of the last students did sometimes and if it is boys I hope their aim is good, as I don’t fancy walking through their wee. *shudders at the thought* Anyway, they turn up tonight, so we’ll see what they’re like.

I spoke to my friend J yesterday about the housing situation and said I might put an offer in on somewhere. As it turns out, she hasn’t even found out if she can get another mortgage yet, so there doesn’t seem much point in dragging my feet if there might not even be a possibility of buying with her. I looked at the lease details of the place I am interested in and there are actually 80 years to run at the moment but it drops to 79 years some time in September. When a lease goes below 80 years left to run it can become a lot more expensive to extend it, so I have found an organisation who can advise on these things and am going to phone them in a bit to find out what they think the impact might be. It could become something to negotiate the selling price to might make it unviable. Given that September is rapidly approaching, time is of the essence though.

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