Six dishwasherfuls later...

That has all gone well.  As I said yesterday, the new dining room is a complete success and it ties the house together - rather than it being a purposeless room at the end of the house, it now is a lovely room which suits its use very well.  In fact, everyone spent the morning in there (except me, I was in the kitchen) and didn't want to leave.  The children spent their time in the sitting (ex-dining) room and upstairs in their 'den'.

I seem to have prepared a lot of food.  After last night's meal, I cooked sausages, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and a lot of toast for breakfast today, and then cooked pot-roast shoulder of lamb Provençal with pommes boulangère, carrots and courgettes for lunch.  I was nearly undone with the potatoes.  Stupidly, I forgot that tinfoil seems to completely exclude all heat in the Aga and left it on top of the dish, with the result that it barely warmed up after half an hour.  The dish was too big for the microwave, so I hastily split the quantity in two and gave each a ten-minute blast, then a couple of minutes under the grill and lunch was only ten minutes late (this so goes against the grain, I tend to produce a meal at the minute I say I will).  We had eaten all the eggs, so I was slightly stuck for a pudding until it occurred to me that I had all the ingredients for trifle (yes, bought sponge, you got a problem, darlings?) and that was quick and easy.

To fill the ten minute delay, I hastily got out champagne from the fridge and I don't think anyone minded...

After lunch, the family looked at some of the things I've fetched out that had belonged to my mother.  Several items have either been borne away happily or else left with us for safekeeping, to be fetched at another time.  Other things will be sold or given away.  So a start has been made, at any rate.