A house!

And just like that, we're back to March. We had secured our buyers, insofar as one can 'secure' people, filled in enough paperwork to account for a small wood at least,  and arranged for gas and electric safety checks, which we knew would be required by the buyers' solicitor.

Now, all we had to do was find ourselves a house and hey presto! after many hours of searching, we found one, for which we duly submitted an offer and after surprisingly little arm wrestling, a mutually acceptable offer was agreed upon and we proceeded to shell out a wad of the folding stuff for our  survey, officially known as a RICS level two homebuyer's report.

On the positive side, although it's pretty expensive, the homebuyer's report is also pretty extensive and in these modern days of email, sees the light of day quite quickly.

That's the positive aspect and it was certainly very clear, should we ever have doubted it, that it is an essential requirement for anyone serious about buying a property. There is a more expensive alternative available which is usually recommended for old houses, but the one we were interested in was only built in the eighties (No, that's not old!) so we went for the level two.

Well, I can't argue that it was indeed money well spent, but not in a good way. 

Unfortunately, the surveyor had found several problems with the property, some of which seemed to be as a result of DIY done by the wrong people with the wrong materials and which would be expensive, time consuming and inconvenient to put right. 

As we had promised ourselves that we did not want a house which needed work, beyond the usual cosmetic and decorating jobs, this was not going to work for us.

I rang the estate agent and explained.

"Oh yes, of course, I quite understand," was the response, followed by "Do you think you could send us a copy of your report so that we can see what we're dealing with?"

The answer to that, I'm afraid, was a resounding no, unless they were willing to reimburse us for the approximately £500 we had spent on it. 

And no, I didn't actually say that. I did email a few of the summary points to give an idea of the problem and didn't even get an acknowledgement.

From trawling through the internet, it seems that once a problematic report has been produced, the sellers/estate agents are obliged to come clean about it, if asked. So maybe that's something to be aware of when house hunting.

However, although we had avoided a pothole in the house hunting road, we were now back to searching again and hoping that our buyers were willing to be patient.

Chaos and Confusion

Today, I am going to segue to this morning. 

Last week we spoke to our solicitor, H, on the phone about the progression of things and the upshot of the conversation was that he would like us to come in and sign the contract for the house we are buying.

Tomorrow? No not tomorrow, and as we were about to begin the four day Platinum Jubilee, it would have to be Tuesday 7th and could we please come at 11am.

He said this very clearly and Keith and I both heard it and committed it to memory and, in my case, to my diary.

I mention this because at 10.55, there we were standing in front of the receptionist in the front office. The only problem was, said receptionist had a puzzled look on her face and was telling us that, not only was there no record in the office diary of our appointment but there was also no H. Ten minutes later, his conveyancing assistant appeared, having failed to get any answer from H and having no idea where he could be. However, she said she would look at our file and talk us through the contract, so that at least would be done. 

My main worry was getting a moving date agreed so that we could ensure that our removal firm was free. They had already taken some of Keith's stuff into temporary storage, so we were pretty well committed to them.

"Unfortunately," D began, :Your vendor is saying that mid June (which I thought had been more or less agreed) is far too early. He's looking more at the end of July or early August."

I explained that this was a bit of a volte face, as he had been quite happy to accommodate us before. He was going to rent for a while and put his furniture into storage.

"Well," said D, "maybe you could speak to his estate agent and find out what is going on. I'm not allowed to do that, you see."

With that, she began showing the contract to us before she realised that I was ringing the estate agent straight away. She sat back with a not very impressed look on her face. 

There followed a series of phone calls from me to the estate agent and our removal firm. By now, our solicitor, H had mysteriously appeared and poured himself into his chair muttering something about insomnia and oversleeping.

D disappeared and H continued to take us through the documents, punctuated at intervals by the phone calls. At one point, I was in mid-call when I looked up to see Keith creeping round H's desk, examining it inch by inch.

"That was a bit surreal," I remarked after the phone call. It turned out that Keith thought the desk was one that he had made when he had his desk-making factory.

"You've had quite a varied career path, haven't you?" H commented.

The upshot of the phone calls was that it seems as if the end of June is looking possible and even likely.

Fingers and toes crossed ...

A big decision

It all started with this ...

We did try before, back in 2007 or 2008, but, although the house was up for sale for several weeks, we had not a single viewer.

Fast forward to February 2022, and we tried again. This time the sign blew off within a couple of days, thanks for the storms we were having at that time, but that didn't matter because we had a committed buyer at the end of the first day's viewing. We were certainly not the only sellers who had that experience either. It seemed as if the housing market had gone berserk post Covid, which worked to our advantage as sellers, but of course, made buying a little more complicated.

We are not quite at the end of this journey yet and we have had some hiccups along the way and I would certainly agree that moving house is one of the more stressful experiences of life, particularly when you have one person in the household who has the equivalent of a small factory in 'stuff' to move and who requires a garage or other form of workshop-type building in which to house it. 

Travelling light and minimalism are totally alien concepts to Keith, as I think we have established in the past.

So, our next issue was to find a house to buy in the north east, somewhere in Claire's region, which meant a few trips up there, but also, judicious use of our 'secret weapon', aka Claire, who went beyond the call of duty and volunteered to book herself in for initial viewings to several of the properties we were interested in. Each time she did this, the house owners very kindly allowed her to fire up FaceTime on her phone and we were able to see what she was seeing and ask questions if we needed to. 

Whatever did we do without modern technology?

I can confirm that Keith, Claire and I spent many hours every day trawling through houses on the internet and many texts and emails were flying between us with links to said houses. Many 'animated discussions' were had, usually around Claire's local knowledge and dismissal of certain local areas. Many viewings were undertaken, by Claire and by us and many houses were crossed off the list for various reasons but eventually, one was found which seemed to tick the boxes...

Tempus Fugit

Yes, I know, it's been a very long time since I last posted on here - so long in fact, that Blogger and Google seem to have spent the time conspiring between themselves on how to throw everything in the air and change it all and I think I have probably lost anyone who followed me many moons ago. 

I can't really explain why I stopped putting fingers to keyboard but no doubt from early 2020, the advent of the pandemic certainly didn't help. One thing it did help to clarify for us though, was that it might be a good idea to move a little closer to family. Claire's Charlie, born in September 2019 (remember?) is now two and a half and we have only seen him face to face a handful of times, although good old FaceTime has been a godsend and at least he does know who we are. 

And then there was the shed (sorry, workshop) which Keith was fast growing out of and he thought it might be nice to have a garage to use instead, so back in February, we started house hunting in the north east (England, that is) fairly near to Claire, Neil and Charlie. At this point, it has just occurred to me that Keith, being Welsh, may, under this current government, be considered to be foreign, so we may have to sneak him in as an illegal alien, but we are prepared to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anyway, fast forward to now and we are surrounded by boxes and chaos as I write, so there is much more to tell and more posts will come in the next few days. 

Bet you can't wait ...  

Bus passes

One of the good things about being sixty plus is that you are entitled to a bus pass, which means that, within Wales, your bus journeys are free of charge and that even applies if you venture over the border into 'that there England', as long as your journey begins and ends in Wales.

I had a bus pass and I used it but then, a couple of years ago, our local buses vanished. From having a bus running almost past our house every half hour, we suddenly, with no warning, found ourselves without buses, busless, sans buses, which was a bit of a blow, but which was replicated in several other areas of Wrexham county. Unfortunately, this part of the country relies on private bus companies, which bid for contracts and receive little or no financial support, which means that they focus on the more lucrative routes and ditch the others. There are other routes within walking distance, but then a couple of weeks ago, I discovered that, following the example of the buses, my bus pass had also disappeared. Where it's gone, I have no idea, but as it happens, all Welsh bus passes are to be replaced with new style ones by the end of the year and everyone was urged to apply online on the Transport for Wales website, which promptly crashed and remained crashed for over a week. 

It did occur to some people to wonder what provision would be made for those who are not computer savvy, do not own a computer and do not use the internet, and bearing in mind that the concessionary bus passes are mainly used by the elderly, this was a valid concern.

'Well, that's tough' seemed to be the answer to that one and it was only after representations from Age Concern and other organisations, that it was  grudgingly agreed that paper application forms would be made available, with the warning that it would take a while for this to happen and much longer for them to be processed compared to online applications. 

I would describe myself as a 'computer anorak' and proud of it, but it saddens me to see an organisation like Transport for Wales assuming, without, it seems, any consultation, that everyone, young or old, has easy access to the internet and can be required to make their applications through this means only.

A new arrival

This time last week, we were relaxing after a journey from Gretna to Gateshead and back. Confused? You will be ...

In August, we decided that a bit of a break was in order and that as I had never been to Scotland and Keith had only made extremely brief forays into Glasgow and Edinburgh, we would find a cottage for a week so that we could take da dawg as well. The cottage we finally settled on was a couple of miles from Gretna Green, in a little place called Rigg which, as it happens, had once been the home of Keith's grandfather and father; but that's another story.

Earlier in the year, Younger Daughter had become pregnant and her baby was due in mid October. However, on the morning of our first day at the cottage, I got a panicked phone call from Claire saying that she thought her waters had broken and she and her fiancé, Neil were hot footing it to the local hospital. After many long hours of is she? isn't she? how soon? etc, it was decided that she would be able to give birth normally and things were allowed to take their course. As it happened, she managed to accomplish it with nothing more than Entinox, the infamous 'gas and air' but only because the doctor couldn't get the epidural set up in time and after five attempts, it was then too late for Pethidine to have any useful effect. 

So at just 12.36am last Sunday, Charlie Hugh made his entrance into the world, four weeks early but weighing a very healthy 6lb 3oz and that's why we were rushing over to see him.

It seems that a decision has not been made as to whether his photo can appear on social media, so I am playing safe for now and just showing you this one of Charlie's first outing yesterday with proud Mum and asking you to imagine, for now, the pram containing the most beautiful baby in the world.

Well, I would say that, wouldn't I?

Monday was such a great day!

You know how sometimes you get up ready to face whatever the day brings, and  a couple of hours into it, you're wishing you had stayed in bed - and then it just gradually gets worse? 

Well, this was our chain of events yesterday:

1. Front door lock breaks.

2. Front door is so strong and secure that it takes the whole morning for Keith to dismantle the locking system and fix it so that it does at least close.
3. A search on the internet for a suitable replacement because of course, our lock system is a different measurement to more modern doors.
4. It will be delivered tomorrow (if we're lucky).

5. Keith's van wouldn't start as the battery was flat.
6. Keith opened back doors of said van and the left hand one fell off due to corroded rivets.
7. Giles was invited to come and help repair said door.
8. Keith's riveter was a) too small
                                   b) broke.
9. This necessitated a trip to Screw Fix to buy another one.
10. Tonight I shall be sleeping across the front door, musket at the ready in case of intruders.
11. I may have made the last one up .... 

Update:

Door lock now repaired, thanks to Keith's hard work.

Van door also repaired.

A system was devised to keep us safe in our beds last night, but if I told you about it, I'd probably have to kill you. However, at least I was able to sleep in bed.