Power, house and school... or the lack thereof

Apparently we have a week of major power cuts scheduled. Rumours vary as to the precise start and finish dates and precisely how few hours of power we'll have each day, but it sounds like it might start on thursday this week and allow us power between 11pm and 8am, maybe, or maybe only till 6am... or maybe none at all. One of the major power plants in Tanzania is being checked/overhauled or something so these cuts are for the whole country. I'm apprehensive interested to see how this affects things like shopping, getting petrol etc. (Hmm, perhaps I should stock up on non-perishables and canadles tomorrow??) We're busy eating everything out of the freezer at the moment, so samosas for dinner tonight with ice-cream for pudding. Kids aren't complaining....but they might when they can't watch DVDs because the computer battery has run out.

Anyway, if you don't hear much from us for a while it is because we are surviving a week long country-wide black-out.

Also, while I'm moaning, our landlord has just decided ( a week before our next 6 months of rent was due) to up the rent by almost 30%. Yes, we do have a big house, but the new amount would be way way more than almost any other house we know in the area. So it looks like we might be looking for a new house to rent....by the end of the month. Mr B's going to try to call and negotiate as our landlord appears to despise me and not listen to anything I say (might just be a gender thing) and has returned all my texts with biting remarks and no compromise.

And Kitty's school is only going to go up to age 6 from August, so I'm also in the process of trying to find her a place at a different school, again. Including pre-school it will be her 4th school by the age of 6.5. And then work out whether to keep the Mancub where he is (and where he is very happy and I like it very much but requiring two separate drop-offs and pick-ups and  where term dates might be very different) or move him as well.

Some continuity and stability would be really nice...please?