Green Monday.

Too often in history there have been incidents which refer to a Monday as being 'Black Monday'.

For us Monday 21^st has been a 'Green Monday', a day for good results, purchases and movement forward towards completing the refurbishment of the house.

Since our expedition to IKEA on Thursday we spent our time on Friday and the two Week-End days divided between research, elimination, confirmation, and household chores.

Friday was a time to reduce the selection of possible white appliances for the kitchen, make the final choice of the kitchen design, and begin the search for curtains and blinds.

Saturday morning was a trip to Sainsbury's in Lincoln for the weekly shop of groceries including the all important two jam doughnuts. This took most of the morning because of the distance to drive and the enormous size of the shop and the range of goods. Arriving back at the cottage we unloaded and put away the shopping, had an early and quick lunch, and then headed back to Lincoln. The afternoon was spent on the selection and purchase of curtains. We couldn't take too long as we had to get back to watch 'Strictly Come Dancing' and 'Merlin'. Doesn't everyone watch them?

Sunday was housework in the morning and searching on the 'World Wide Web' and agreeing the final choice of washing machine, tumble dryer, and fridge/freezer in the afternoon, and of course watching the 'Strictly Come Dancing' results show. What a shame Russell Grant was eliminated!

Monday started off well. The kitchen fitter started the refit as scheduled, the skip hire firm delivered the skip on time. Having called at the house to confirm these the rest of the day was spent in Lincoln shopping. By the end of the morning we had purchased and arranged delivery of the kitchen's larger white goods and the all important television, and managed to negotiated some additional discount. The afternoon was spent buying bedding and towels. As the last visit of the day we managed to squeeze in a visit to get the tiles for the kitchen walls.

At the end of the day we were tired and weary, with a considerably reduced bank balance and an enormously increased credit card balance. We certainly did our bit to stimulate the UK's retail economy, an early 'Green Monday'. It was a day when the green light was shown to the progress towards the metamorphosis of the house to a home. We feel we've broken the back of the shopping list of the larger items. That leaves our return trip to IKEA as the next major shop and that will be another story I'm sure.