I’ve neglected this site for far too long.
2020 saw a number of challenges in my life and now that we’re finally through most of it, time to update the site.
I will be posting a number of posts in the coming days/weeks to kinda catch up.
I’ve done many cooks to show off, including now 4 burger competitions between 2 friends of mine.
I’ve moved house, twice. More on that in a min.
I’ve given away one of my drums, the other is still in my garden and is waiting for a neighbour to collect.
I bought a weber kettle.
I bought a bigger smoker.
I have an outdoor cooking area…of sorts.
I finally cooked the suckling pig.
So, life update and then I’ll start posting things soon.
In January 2020, after much discussion, I got a promotion at my work. All fantastic.
And then COVID.
I worked for a fairly large company, one of the biggest in the UK for what it did, but on a random day in August, out of the blue, the company was closing with immediate effect, no more money from us and go to the government for my redundancy money.
I work for the entertainment industry, specifically live events. No events meant no work and the company just couldn’t keep going.
With no job my wife and I hit everything we could to suspend payments, take holidays on our mortgage etc but I knew that we couldn’t last unless I had another job within weeks that paid the same or more (and that was highly unlikely given the time) then we had to sell the house.
So, a plan was hatched, we would sell our house, move in with my wife’s parents for a short while and they would sell their house and buy a bigger house together.
My word did that not go to plan. Started the process to sell our house in September 2020. Being shared ownership there were hoops to jump through. We told the Housing association we had to be out by end of Feb 2021 as that was all we could afford. The house sale didn’t go through until 7th May 2021. That was £5K of extra cash we had to somehow find to pay out to cover the expense during the time. We did move out at the start of March into my in-laws.
They stated their sale process in the May as well and we found a buyer fairly quickly. They wanted a quick sale and we told them we had been told that sale process takes anywhere between 3 & 6 months right now, that we were going to be in a chain and had no control on the timings.
We found a new house to move to, finally got a bid accepted and everything started rolling.
At the 3 month date, the buyers for my in-laws pulled out saying it was taking too long and pulled out.
Our estate agent worked wonders and within a week we’d had 9 viewings and several offers. Some were discounted straight away as too low. Most that were in the right range we did accept but each pulled out within a day. The last offer we had was above asking price, by some way. We didn’t think it was real, the estate agent didn’t think it was real but turns out it was real and the cogs started all over again.
We stipulated that we wanted to move before the end of the year. Everyone seemed happy. The new buyers did make a few requests to delay the sale (all were rejected). Some delays occur naturally any way but there was a delay that no one was expecting.
The person at the front of the chain, the day before everything pointed to exchange taking place, was murdered. It was a shock to all of us and meant nothing could proceed as the next-in-line had to find a new house to buy.
It’s very odd to have something so big affect you when you don’t know the person. Impossible to describe the feeling.
By some miracle a new buyer is found who is ready to sell, paperwork flies through and a date is finally set. 10th December 2021. 16 months after putting my house up for sale.
We moved, we have space, we have a nice garden.
We have some problems to resolve, new light fixtures, new fuse board, new boiler, new conservatory roof, new garage doors…still need new windows and doors, want solar panels.
I bought myself 2 new toys, a PS5 and a new smoker, one that could take more than my drums and was easier to use. I bought a Masterbuilt, Gravity series 1050. A Gravity Fed, Charcoal Smoker. I find it a great product, I know others have had issues but it’s doing me proud.
We also bought a large, metal and heavy gazebo for the garden for me to set up and area and cook under. I did indeed cook gammon on Christmas Eve 2022.
I had my 40th birthday in 2021. No good for socialising so I had a 40+1 party in 2022 and cooked the suckling pig. It didn’t go quite to plan but was still good food. Will do a specific post about it
The latest creation to come off the smoker was not cooked by me. It was a burger but like nothing you’ve seen before. Again I’ll do a specific post.
If you’ve seen my insta feed, you’ve seen all the pictures I’m going to post but soon you’ll get the stories behind them.