It's bloody wet out there!

Petrol 115.9/litre

So, a few more houses being sold. Two this week as long as they go through which would sort out the figures for August at least, which is good. Talk about surviving by the skin of your teeth!

I've just spent fifteen minutes standing in a garden with the actress who used to play Miss Flood in May to December talking nonsense and getting progressively more damp through my suit jacket. She's a funny (peculiar, not ha ha), little woman. Bit needy, like looking round houses is something she does as a hobby to meet people. Bit odd.

The Olympics are now on (as of yesterday) and being streamed live online which is brilliant news when you've nothing to do so August should be good at work if only to build my Olympic knowledge up and watch Team GB pick up loads of medals (well that's the hope, although Judoka Fallon has already failed miserably this morning and didn't even make it past the repercharge). Plenty to keep me occupied, which means the blog lengths will probably go down accordingly. Still, it is quality not quantity that counts, so I've been told. Well, you'll get none of that here!

Alba seems a little less stressed than normal which is odd considering the state of affairs round here. Maybe she has just come to terms with the situation and realises that stressing isn't going to help. I'll believe that when I see it! Looks like I'll get a few more weekdays of work with Pauline on holiday for a couple of weeks. Which will be nice come the end of the month.

Looks like Alba will be taking on a couple more houses this week, which is good because at the moment we have less houses on than we had at the beginning of the month, and that's unheard of in this climate.

Don't think I've mentioned it in earlier blogs (I doubt it because it only happened on Tuesday last), but Alistair Darling has succeeded in chucking another spanner in the works by talking about changes to the way Stamp Duty 'might' be handled. Basically no-one knows what the hell he's on about. But what we do know is that it's confused a lot of our potential buyers who now think if they wait until September they might the Stamp Duty reduced or nullified altogether which as far as I can work out is a load of tosh. Anyway, as I say, it's not helping very much (hmmmm, understatement I think). Some more about it here & here.