Has anyone seen my dining table?

all you can eat seafood buffet at droitwich tonight?

I wish!

You should see the spare room. There are boxes of the stuff.

Never encourage your offspring towards marine biology or anything to do with fossils.
The scuba gear arrives soon. I see I'm going to have to build an extension.

Why couldn't he have become a lawyer? Or an accountant?

Super cool!

That thing in the back has to be worth big bux. Fossils?

Little Jane also drags home half of the beach life, including
kelp and washed out stones. The worst is: sea shells smell
like hell. Since she knows that I throw everything in the trash,
she started hiding that stuff in her room - yikes!

Now try pulling the cloth off without disturbing any of the shells....try it...I dare ya...

That thing at the back weighs a ton, and is basically a group of fossilised squid, in what looks like quartz.

Here it is, in a better light. It's really quite a beautiful thing...it looks like a highly polished piece of modern marble sculpture...






...and here is one of the many Megalodon teeth that he has collected on his travels... < pssst... the tooth on the right is from a great white >

Ha! Tell me about it. The worst thing he ever bought home was a dead horseshoe crab. Stunk the place out!

Wow!!! That's fantastic.

I wanted to be a marine biologist until I was, hmm, 18 or so.

(Love the robin's-egg-blue walls too btw.)

"Arctic dawn", Soz.

The reason that he is bringing all this stuff back, is really rather exciting, I suppose.

For the past year, my wife has been working as Headteacher at a school over a hundred miles away, and we have been renting a tiny place up there, for her to use as a base during the week, as:-

a) She didn't know how long she would be there, before applying for a position back in London. She got this position after many, many interviews (unofficial "glass ceiling" for short, petite women when it comes to being in charge of a senior school, I'm afraid).

She now loves the place, and wants to stay there as boss.

and b) We really didn't want to sell up here in London and lose our "foothold" in the property market, as we would probably never afford to move back again.

Now....while all this was going on, our son was renting a place about a hundred miles in the opposite direction, and his long time girlfriend (also marine biologist) was renting another place not far from him.

We sat down recently, when they mentioned that they wanted to move in together, and discussed the situation. There we all were, living in four separate accommodations, three of which requiring rent to be paid.
As my son wanted to move back to London, we offered that they move in here and pay rent to us ( a lot less rent than their present combined rent), and I bugger off up with the missus, where we will take out a mortgage on a small place of our own up near her school.

Why put all that rent money into a landlord's pocket, and pay four separate sets of utility bills, when we can all save a bit of money AND increase the old property portfolio in the process.....AND keep our foothold in London, in the house that we all call home.

So.....the agreement is for a minimum of two years (probably end up as five....that's when my wife and I want to pack it all in) whereupon, we will sell the place up there and pocket the profit from the rise in house price.

The hunt will now begin for a little Victorian cottage or terrace that needs doing up. Watch this space...............

Gosh! That sounds so great! I love it when that kind of stuff happens, the little move that allows everything to fall into place.

Good luck with finding the new place.

Thanks Soz. It's early days and there is no real hurry, and hey, I'll be fighting for my share of the duvet 7 days a week again, which is good.

Speaking of which, I'm off to bed now......all alone........just me.........





G'night.

Hey!

Has Lady E any say in this - she finally got to get away from you, under some job pretence - and now you're following her.

Guess she'll have to start applying for jobs in the south, now!

Pffffft!

She is withering without me.


I withered a long time ago. The blue pills seem to cure it, though.

Wow, great stuff, great story! No wonder you're on a2k so much.

If I lived in England I would live at Mole's End or at
Mr. Badger's in The Wild Woods.