Already this month we've completely rearranged the loft (if you'd seen the state of it before we started you'd realise this was not a small task) - every box up there now has a contents list in excel so if I want to find something I have only to search the file instead of sending Ian up to the cold and dark with instructions like 'it's probably in a medium-sized plastic box near the hatch that you'll see also has a little toy badger in, but on the other hand it might be in a small cardboard box that looks like a dozen other boxes at the back of the loft somewhere...'. As well as the sorting out in the loft I've been going through my paperwork in the study and spare room. We have a deep filing cabinet and I've reached the back of my drawers for the first time in at least a year.
The spare room is now full of all sorts of things that I want to get rid of - old cd cases, the cds having been stored in albums to save space, books, clothes, videos and all sorts of nicknacks. When I'm able to find the study floor again from all the things I'm sorting through then I'll bring some larger items down from the loft to photograph them for freecycle.
Much of my time has been spent scanning - often simply photographs (those of the Mason, Elliott and Edwards families), but I've also been scanning important documents and various other sentimental things. In a few weeks there'll be nothing left in the house to scan, apart from several hundred slides (I started that sentence so confidently, but then remembered the boxes sitting on top of the wardrobe in the spare room - aaah well!)
Our company accounts are due in March and after finally deciding that this was not something I was ever going to be interested in understanding we hired an accountant this week. It turns out that hiring an accountant to do all the work for you requires you to do a lot of work first (even if your financial transactions have been relatively simple) - there's all sorts of information and documents that they need that only I have access to. Luckily I managed to anticipate everything our accountant could possibly want on our first meeting and we even took our passports after seeing on someone else's website that they can't do anything until they can confirm your identity.
The wedding plans haven't got as far as I would have liked (I know, I know - 'where's my invitation' you're asking), but I did choose and order a wedding dress, order the bridesmaid dress and I think we've found a photographer. We chickened out of going to a wedding fair in Torquay due to some very blustery weather last weekend (the fair was right on the seafront), but there's another one in Exeter in a couple of weeks so hopefully that will help with the suits if nothing else. By the end of the month I'm hoping to have discussed the menu with Otterton Mill and sent out the invitations. We've also decided that we'll probably be honeymooning around February of 2012 because the wet monsoon season (as opposed to the dry monsoon season - the monsoons last all year) in the Maldives will have already begun before we get married and will last until December.
This year I've been determined to remember to plant my seeds at the right time (even with our warm Devon weather we've left it too late with our peppers, aubergines, squashes and pumpkins every year so far). The chillis were planted on New Years Eve and now they've been joined by cherry tomatoes, plum tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and cape gooseberries. We have propagators on both kitchen windowsills now and they really are wonderful.
In a couple of weeks we'll be planting the pumpkin, melon and marrow seeds. I've always wanted to grow a marrow!
It's only been three weeks since New Year and yet I'm pretty sure that if I'd been working for the University it would have taken me around 8 months to do all the sorting and scanning I've done so far this year. I expect to be starting a new contract full-time in February, but in the next break between contracts we'll begin sorting Ian's parents paperwork. I have no doubt that we will both be experts on hovercraft by the time we're finished (Martin Elliott worked in hovercraft design).
