Goodness me, we're putting in an offer on a house. Not one that we expect to be accepted - this is more to see if the seller of something that's obviously overpriced is willing to knock it down to something more realistic and to meet in the middle somewhere - but it's a pretty big step nonetheless. I won't show around photos or anything until there's something more certain, but we're pretty set on getting somewhere in or near a community of semi-detached houses mysteriously named The Village.

We've been talking to a man at the FHA about loans as well, and he seemed most agreeable but I was very put off when he emailed us after the phone call and it was all written in Comic Sans.

I think we need to go and have an evening playing Super Bomberman or something to try to pretend that we're not really at this stage of responsibility.