Is that Jo Brand warming up her vocal cords?

View from Arnside Knott across the Kent Estuary

Just asking as I think the fat lady may be about to sing.  We were with our solicitor on Friday and we exchanged contracts, with him absolutely assuring us that we will definitely complete tomorrow.  I hope so as we've now told loads of people and will look really silly if it all goes pear shaped!  I can't even begin to comprehend this properly, which may sound really wierd, but it's been a very long journey for us in every sense of the word and to now be within sight of the finishing line seems somehow surreal.  The new place is so perfect in so many ways and we're buying it fully furnished which means we can sort of move in right away - with a little creative thought.  The bed will have to be a split single bed and the furniture is designed for a little old lady rather than two sprawling 40 somethings, and don't even start me on the kitchen - an absolute symphony of 1970's brown and orange - I mayhave to post pics once we're safely in there.

The entire week has been focused on the house move - in between working jolly hard of course.  This week saw me discover the unexplored joys of Ormskirk and Burnley though with work taking up most of the day their joys still remain largely unexplored if I'm honest.  Steve came with me to Ormskirk and headed off to spend the day photographing barnacled bums on Crosby beach.  If you're not familiar with Crosby beach then don't worry about him getting arrested, the bums all belong to an Anthony Gormley collection of statues in the harbour.

Please forgive me if this isn't down to my usual standard, I've tried very hard to keep these lively and up beat but right now I'm so distracted by the idea of moving into our new home tomorrow that I'm finding it hard to concentrate.  The lack of concentration is in no way down to the large glass of Malbec I just consumed - for purely medicinal purposes you understand.  To help keep me distracted in the morning we're planning to go down to watch the Arnside Bore, which is like the Severn Bore only somewhat smaller.  There's a huge spring tide tomorrow and sometime between 11am and 11:30am the bore is scheduled to strike - which is probably around the same time that we'll be hearing from our solicitor so trust me, I'll need a distraction, I'm not remotely easy company when I'm stressed and what better way to disctract me than by watching a wave.  At the seaside.  Doesn't sound all that special when you put it like that does it?

Kent Estuary up close.

I've really enjoyed reading back through my ramblings this year as, although it's been frustrating at times, things have been unfolding and changing on an almost weekly basis.  We came up here on 2nd Jan expecting to sell our house and buy 'Bonkers House' in Kendal and now here we are having not sold our house and buying a small place in Grange-over-Sands instead.  In between we've considered the relative merits of 'Heart House' and 'Head House' and ended up finding a much smaller place which is just about perfect and yet is something we wouldn't have considered looking at 10 weeks ago.  If 2011 has taught me anything this far it's that I need to be open minded and flexible, though if things calm down a bit after Easter I won't be upset at all.  Once we get the keys we need to make a couple of small tweaks to allow us to move Delores up and then we need to sort out the removal guys to bring all our goodies up from Fleet - which will probably happen sometime during the first week of April.  After that we've got a few weeks of unpacking  and sorting out lives out before we can begin to establish what will pass for normality in our new life.

It's been an absolute roller coaster thus far but at no point has it crossed our mind that we're not doing the right thing.  Morecambe Bay has totally won me over. Being a fan of the Cornish coast I wasn't sure if I'd take to a tame bay like this, but it's truly stunning.  At high tide there is the most enormous expanse of water and at low tide the bay is a mosaic of sandbanks, pools and channels.  It's a constantly shifting and can completely change from one minute to the next.  At the weekends we've taken off to the hills and lakes and discovered that there is so much to explore that it's going to take us quite some time to get bored with it all, though there are definitely some places we'll be avoiding in the height of the tourist season.  I still can't believe that we're living somewhere people come to on holiday and dream of living - just goes to show you can make anything happen if you try hard enough.  Or are bloody minded enough.

I promise I'll let you know how things go tomorrow, but bear with me as we'll be leaving behind the free WiFi of the cafe and it may take a little while to sort out broadband etc. at the house.  Steve is in charge of sorting that out and all I can hear at the moment is him cursing at how slow things are up here, I'm fairly certain that if he'd done this research prior to us making the offer he'd have used it as a bargaining chip.  Anyway, time for me to go and burn off some energy making dinner and tormenting the cat and maybe getting an early night.  It's going to be a long day tomorrow and heaven knows I need my beauty sleep!