griffinkate @griffinkate@sunbeam.city

I just misread "sea cucumbers" as "See, cucumbers..."

Yeah, I've definitely been back in South Wales for a while.

Today I got the keys to my new house! 🏡

Guess who's just bought a house!

In case anyone needs some good news...

Apparently the first direct train service between North Wales and Liverpool in over 40 years left this morning! They reopened a Cheshire line that was closed in the 1970s. It's taken five years but they got there!

"The great delusion of Labour, both Corbyn’s and Drakeford’s, was to think you take a beast like Brexit – a fantasy of the right, the free-marketeers, and the isolationists – and harness it leftwards."

https://nation.cymru/opinion/the-brexit-party-is-a-trojan-horse-for-a-nastier-kind-of-politics/

Sometimes I do ctrl + F to search a document or a webpage for something and get no results.

Then I think, "no, I KNOW this is here somewhere!" and look for it myself.

Then I find it.

Then I repeat the ctrl + F search and it finds what I just found with my eyes.

It's like the ctrl + F action is trying to pretend there's nothing there, but gives up pretending once I've found it for myself.

Does anyone else get this? Please say it isn't just me!

Aaaaaand it turns out the house insurance cover I was about to put in place is for the wrong house because the brokers used my current address (my mum and dad's house) instead of the address of the house I'm buying.

To check the postcode of the house I'm actually buying so they could update the quote for the right house, I looked at the Land Registry form.

And realised the Land Registry have put the postcode in the wrong format. Postcodes in this part of Cardiff changed at least 15 years ago but I guess the Land Registry didn't get the memo?

I can't believe I didn't spot it sooner, but I can't say I feel like the *most* incompetent person in this situation. There's too much competition for that!

Things didn't go exactly to plan so the house sale can't complete today. There's a query with the water company that the sellers haven't sorted yet, and it looks like the Land Registry supplied the wrong transfer form.

But I might complete tomorrow. Feeling quite relaxed about it really.

While I was in my solicitor's office we went through all the paperwork so I won't have to go in again. I have solemnly promised not to be a victualler, not to emit noxious smoke and not to use my new home for immoral purposes. I'll do my best!

Today, if everything goes to plan, I complete on my house purchase. I'm spending part of the day sorting out paperwork and part of the day studying for my upcoming exams.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by how much I have going on in my life. But also so grateful, because there was a time when I just felt like I'd never build anything resembling a life for myself. Grief can be like a heavy cloud and you can't see anything beyond it. You just have to keep going in the hope that there is.

Boost if this summer you've heard your neighbour using loud garden tools and been surprised because you didn't realise they had a 20-acre garden but the noise has been going on so long that's the only explanation.

Oh, and my "maximum" peak flow is actually the higher of just two readings. Because I've only had two asthma reviews with this GP practice, and God forbid they actually get my medical records from my old GP (or my previous GP or my previous GP or...). Let's just pretend my entire medical history started less than two years ago.

They say it takes 3 months for UK doctors to get your records from the previous doctor but in my experience they never, ever get them and you just have to start from scratch every time.

Today the asthma nurse told me I need to be checking my peak flow regularly, more often if I have any breathing problems, and that I need to go to the doctor if I go below 80% of my "maximum" peak flow.

I said my peak flow meter is in a storage box but I'll find it and I don't want another one , and she said she's giving me a new one anyway.

All this help and concern is great, but before I got the label "asthma" I got nothing.

Nobody cared about my chest tightness, difficulty exercising, being forced to sleep sitting up, explosive coughing fits. I begged for an asthma test and was refused so many times.

Now that I have a diagnosis and an inhaler and I'm basically fine.

It makes me angry that nobody cared when my breathing was a huge problem *for me*, but now that I have a label, I'm on the pathway associated with that label and getting help I don't even need.

I'm reading In Cold Blood and the first non-crime-related thing to really surprise me is the casual mention of a dishwasher.

The book mentions the family's dishwasher as if it's standard to have one. In 1959.

My family were quite early adopters of dishwashers in the UK. We moved into a new-build house which had space for one, so my mum and dad bought one.

I don't know anyone who had one before the Eighties and I know lots of people who still don't have one.

Crazy that it seems to have been normal in the US in the 1950s.

Today my mum rang from my sister's house (where she was babysitting my nieces) and just said, with no preamble, "It's a boy!" and I was like "aaarggh WHAT'S a boy has my sister been expecting another baby and I somehow zoned out on the whole thing???"

(Anyway, congratulations to Meghan and Harrhy on the new royhal babhy.)

(They turned out to be the daughter and granddaughter of the neighbour who's just died.)

Two complete strangers turned up at my great-uncle Brian's house and instead of asking who they were I offered them a cup of tea and basically what if they were just very relaxed burglars what is wrong with British people why are we all like this.

I've made two phone calls to an elderly relative this week and she's heard me perfectly both times. Maybe she's started wearing her hearing aid more often. Makes me feel so happy to have a real conversation, less stressed about visiting.