Here are some things you might like to know about our new house:

• We have a dish washer.
• Despite owning a small suburban house in the same terrace as us, our neighbours keep 2 ponies at the end of their garden. You can watch them from our spare bedroom.
• Even on a hot summers day, you can hear the ponies but not smell them. Ideal.
• Should you be asked to randomly stick your arm over one of our garden fences in some kind of Flash Gordon style rite of passage, choose the fence on the right hand side. If you pick any other side you risk pulling it back with three Dobermans hanging from it.
• The garden is full of butterflies at the moment.
• We have two sheds
• We live only seven houses away from a nanotech company. Mysteriously, that “high tech” company seems to be run from a bedroom.
• So… ample shed space and cutting edge nanomaterials, maybe I’ll try and knock one of these together.
• Ambitious technical plans will most likely be deferred until more pressing problems are solved. Problems like the total lack of furniture in the house.

Lots of news to report. We got back from Wales on Saturday just in time to complete our house purchase and move. Sarah and I now own a house together and I got to play at being a white van man on Tuesday. Our new house is nice, and full to the brim with packed bags and boxes.

Our fish survived our holiday and the house move, but it was touch and go for a couple of them. Next time we’ll know that trying to pour a harlequin rasbora out of a bucket makes it jump as far as it can instead of going with the flow. We had to scrabble about rescuing three of our four harlequins from behind the tank before they expired. Guppies, loaches and gouramies are all happy to get poured without attempting suicide. The fifth harlequin, who mysteriously disappeared without trace a couple of months ago, was found mummified behind the tank when we moved it away from the wall in our old home.

Pembrokeshire is as great as ever and it certainly sounds like it’s worth being away from London this week.

Lots of highlights so far, from dolphin feeding to diving (without hurting my ears)… but I’ll save the details until I have time to post pictures along with the hyperbole.

When we get back on Monday we should be completing our house purchase and moving, but keeping that procedure on the boil while we’re down here has involved a fairly constant and mostly unnecessary flow of phone calls and admin tasks. At the moment we’re in Haverfordwest library sorting out some quick home insurance, which is one of the final barriers for exchange of contracts. The short version of the story is to say our vendor’s solicitor is rubbish. Don’t tempt me by asking for the long version.

As a final footnote, I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to hear that the nefarious feed me page is automatically banned for indecency by Welsh library filter software.

After a morning of calls to mortgage brokers and solicitors I’ll be setting off to Wales for a couple of weeks. Apart from the occasional picture of a lizard, or some such nonsense, you won’t hear much from me.

If we’re lucky, we’ll have a house to live in when we get back.

In my defence, it’s better to lose arguments than avoid them and never find out what an ignorant jackass you are.

Update: Apparently I wasn’t the straw that broke the argument’s back. At Kate’s request she’s been taken off the Feed Me page - a bit of a shame really, as I was enjoying her contributions.

From Overheard in New York

Middle-Aged man: I think vampires are kind of stupid. They seem to care an awful lot about how they look and what others think. It’s like, who cares? You’re six hundred years old and on your way to hell, hello?

–5th Ave

Overheard by: Someone who thinks he has a point

I must restate my bias here: Zombies > Vampires