Delivery

So the swimming pool arrived this morning, in its 40 foot trailer outside our house. Andy had arranged for it to arrive on Monday so he could be here, possibly. Anyway, to cut a long story short the pallets wouldn't go up our drive as it's too uneven, so the Dutch (they are nice) driver and I unloaded each pallet and carried each box up to the garage. It took 1.5 hours and lots of small talk. The neighbours watched. You probably can't believe that so I will type it again, the neighbours watched.

The pool has changed a bit since I last mentioned it. The horrors of building it on a slope were too much for us all to overcome, well no-one felt confident to take ultimate responsibililty for it sliding down the hill into the brand new sports stadium, understandably. So we now have a prefab (I know what you're thinking) one. However, the design will be that it is half submerged into the existing hole on cement with a retaining wall in front of it and then there will be a full wooden deck surround so it won't look like a prefab pool but an inground one. This means there is easy access to all the gadgetary - and there's quite a bit of that too. Also, 100 kilos of sand for the filter. Umm, sand to the Caribbean, that will make the customs officer chuckle. Talking of customs, it was someone's bright idea to loose pack the boxes (to look used!) so they were half sealed which meant that everytime they were tilted the contents, usually a long pole or vital little gizmo fell out and rolled back down our drive narrowly missing the ditch. This bit was probably fairly amusing for the neighbours. I aim to entertain. Anyway, so that's where we are at on the pool. A guy from England, Andrew, is coming out to install it for us which will ensure it is all done correctly and then it's down to pool man Andy. Andrew has just asked if his girlfriend can come too - maybe she's going to test out the poolside sun loungers....

It's the childrens' last day of school today and then they have 66 days holiday not that I'm counting or anything. Chloe is quite sad as she has made great friends in the 3.5 years she has been here and they are a lovely bunch. They have each written her a letter and photo and her teacher, Juf Goele has put them all in a book to present to her today. We will keep in touch and hopefully this will ensure her Dutch lasts a little bit longer.

So, back to the boxes now....