It’s been a couple of months, so time for a bit of an update!

Mum came up to stay for a week at the end of April / start of May. She was last up with Chloe back in November, and I’d not seen her since before Christmas, so it was nice to get a visit. She arrived on Monday lunchtime, and it was quite a quite a chilled week really. The next day she went to visit a friend in Rochdale, so I dropped her off first thing at East Didsbury so she could get the tram up there.

Then on the Wednesday, we walked into Stockport along the River Mersey, and had a bit of a look around the town, and then I showed mum the new Stockport Interchange and Viaduct Park which they’ve built on top of it. By this point, it’d only been open for just over a month, so all felt quite new, but I think it’s really transformed the area and the park itself is a nice relaxing area to hang out in. I guess we could have walked back home afterwards, but since we were already at the interchange, a bus seemed the better option!

Next day I decided to take mum to MediaCity to visit the Imperial War Museum. It didn’t get off to the best of starts – I drove us to the tram station in East Didsbury, but the carpark was full so I had to find a nearby road to park on instead. However, as I pulled up to park, I clipped the pavement with my front left tyre, and it was with enough force to burst it! So we had to wait a while for a mobile tyre-replacement fitter to come along and replace the tyre, before eventually getting the tram to Salford Quays.

We arrived at the Imperial War Museum – it opened pretty much the same time as I bought my house in Greater Manchester, but this was the first time I’d actually been to visit it!

There’s loads of really interesting stuff in there, including a jet fighter, a tank, various other vehicles and displays, plus they have a presentation called the ‘Big Picture Show’,  which projects film and images across the walls of the main exhibition space, using footage that was used in the Peter Jackson documentary ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’. It was really well done, although I will say that the sound wasn’t that great since it was quite difficult to hear what the voices were saying very clearly.

We went out for food that evening (for probably my favourite meal – a carvery!), and then before mum went home on Friday afternoon, she came with me to look at some sofas, because I was wanting to get one soon for my almost completed living room!

On that subject, things have progressed quite a bit with sorting out my downstairs rooms recently. I’d been looking at getting alcove shelves built in the living room for ages, to store all my Blu-rays and DVDs, but had struggled to find someone to do it. Not too long ago I got a joiner to come over so he could give me a quote for the work, but then he didn’t respond to my follow up messages, so in the end I decided to watch some YouTube videos and do it myself!

It wasn’t too hard really – I guess the main thing is that it just took me quite a bit of time! There’s a lot of measuring, cutting, drilling and sanding (oh, and painting!), and with my heart stuff I can get tired quite quickly, so I really paced myself so it actually took me about 6 weeks to get them done (not working on them continuously obviously!) But I’m really happy with how they’ve turned out!

And I found myself a sofa that I liked at DFS, and it was on that didn’t need you to wait a few months to receive it, so that arrived on Friday, and it makes a real difference to the room. It’s actually a comfortable usable space now!

And the week before that, I took delivery of a piano! I’d always planned on getting one at some point, but had never fully made my mind up on what to get! Well, I’d kind of settled on the one I wanted, but was waiting until I could get a good deal on it, so had to wait until they were about to announce a new model meaning that the old stock would get reduced in price!