Planning, eh? We put in a pre-planning application some time ago along the lines of 'we want to replace the existing cottage with an oak-framed 3 bedroomed cottage style house'.
The planner phoned up and said no. No discussion, no talking it through, just no. Ah.
So we're not having a new cottage. Which is fine, really it is, we like old cottages. Just as well, really.
We've had a visit from our lovely architect, Emyr, we've seen plans, we've done a few tweaks inside and we're practically ready to submit our Second Planning Idea. We've even got ourselves a planning consultant, which apparently helps...
And we're getting organised. We've arranged a phone. Well, we've arranged to arrange a phone. It was diarised for set-up last Wednesday. So Guy went over on Tuesday night to stay, be there early and wait. It snowed. The heating ran out of oil (it was ordered two weeks ago and not delivered yet) and it was, apparently, COLD. He waited in. And waited. And waited. They didn't come. I phoned Utility Warehouse (let's name and shame) and they said cheerily 'it's ok the engineer didn't need access to the house he was able to do it remotely'. I asked if they wanted to explain that to my very cold husband who had sat waiting for 5 hours with snow and no heating. Apparently they didn't. I rang his mobile and explained. He went very quiet. To his credit, he didn't actually weep...
That was last Wednesday. It's now this Wednesday and we still have no phone. Apparently there's a fault. Yes, the fault is it doesn't work. We wait.
Before the oil was delivered we put up a house sign - just a temporary one so that deliveries can find us. And then we went to the Pub Evening in the village hall and found that nearly everyone in the village thinks we named it At Last A Cottage. We spent a while explaining we didn't...
The oil got delivered (the driver admired our sign - yay!) and the heating got mended (thank you Don the Plumber) so the cottage is warm and toasty again. And still small. And still orange.
