SOLD! And now the real fun begins...

Just a quickie to say we've sold! Hoorah! But at £10k less than we hoped - boo! However, they're ready to go, bird in hand etc so yay! But we've no mortgage yet, so hiss! The owners of the house we want to buy haven't sold so they've accepted our offer - phew! But they haven't found a place to live dagnabbit! On the other hand, they've got their eye on a property with no chain - huzzah! So our fingers and toes are crossed that they get it and we get a mortgage all at once.

Will we be moved by the end of July or will we still be here in September? Please feel free to start a pool.

On the water front (ho, ho), we now have a £50 credit on our account with Anglian Water AND our monthly bill has dropped by £10! That's two lunches, a fish supper for two with a smokey and curry sauce, two paperbacks (or one discounted hardback), or two thirds of a pair of shoes for Plate. Hmmm. How will we spend our newfound riches?

Good tidings arrive with the glorious sunshine

My apologies for the slackness in keeping up this blog - but there is great news,  good news,  not so good news and some random observations coming up, so I hope you keep the faith, dear reader!

The great news: we have no leak and we are due a little money back from Anglian Water! Yay! Turns out one the ladies I spoke to had misheard me when I gave my readings and thought we were haemorrhaging. Once we cleared it up, it seems we were perfectly average in our water usage1.

The good news: I am well, Plate is well and FBB is well. We are all WELL. No one is sniffling, coughing, throwing up, bellyaching, or hunched over a toilet. Just in time for FBB's Disco Picnic!2 Fingers crossed that we all remain in rudest health for a wee while. 

The not so good news: we have a solid offer, albeit a lowish one. It's not what we had hoped, but we think it's the best we're going to get in the time that we have. Wish us luck that we now get a mortgage to buy.

The randomness:

• Plate is learning new words at an astonishing rate! When she's hungry, she now says, "Mum-mum3?" and makes the sign for food. Other words: hi, hat, cat, daddy, teddy, hot, cold, ssh! Ironically, her first word was, "Bye!"
• Finished 1Q84 by Murakami at last. Very surreal but very good. Apart from one brief moment that jarred -- one of the characters swore using the words, "Darn it!". If the original swearing had no English equivalent, I certainly would have preferred that it had been left in Japanese. As it was, it was quite strange. Then again, maybe it was intentional. It would've been in keeping with the social class of the character swearing.
• It reached 35 degrees Celsius  today. In England! FBB forgot to put sunscreen on and has driver's tan. It's currently a shocking pink, looks a lot like first degree burns. Ugh. Lots of after sun lotion with soothing aloe vera was slathered on.
• Finished Timeless by Gail Carriger very shortly after - an excellent series. I am looking forward to reading it again! Have now started The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Beautifully designed books are a pleasure and this is a delight in black and white. Electronic books just don't cut it for me. A physical book has weight (think about how one a tome, a notebook, a paperback feels in your hand), texture (hard / soft covers, coarse / smooth, heavy / light, embossed, die-cut), smell (ink, paper, age, wood), sound (the soft snick as you turn a page or loud crackle!), beauty (cover art, layout, the choice of type) - it's a multi-sensory experience that is part of the joy of reading. To me, the whole package can be sensual delight. Plus, you just need a light to enjoy. No other source of power required. So, join a library today and discover the world of books!

On that note, I bid you bonne nuit.

1 Or wastage as the case might be. The average Anglian Water household apparently uses 1 cubic metre a week per adult. That's 1000 litres of water, which is about 143 litres a day. Looking at the stats from www.waterfootprint.org, we're not too bad compared to the US or Australia.

2 He will be 40 years old. True story: his mum had serious doubts that he would live to see 21. Here's a hint: by the time he was 20, he had had several injuries through, uh, misadventure, including a broken arm and a fractured clavicle and crashed a car or three. Someone once observed of his tales, "You've been to some f****d up parties, man."

3 I grew up with that word and, I hang my head in shame at this, no, I don't know what language it is. If you know, please enlighten!

Still unsold, leaks & eruptions

So the house has been on the market now for three weeks. We've had a few interested parties but sadly, no serious buyers. A rather intense disagreement is raging1 between FBB and I about whether we should drop the price or not. He has won. Mainly because I am taking the Taoist way2.

We also received a ridiculously high water bill and we are taking steps. I must say Anglian Water customer service staff are very, very well trained. Empathetic, very helpful and informative. No trace of condescension3 and a lot of sympathy. Also Leakbusters (http://leakbusters.rtrk.co.uk) - they were exceedingly helpful! Will we find a leak or will it be something else?

On the child-rearing front, Plate gave us a fright on Saturday. We were on our way home in the car from shopping when both us heard the unmistakable sound of child choking and vomiting. Daddy did a swift pull over and I hopped in the back to make sure she was ok. She'd thrown up chips4 and milk and unsurprisingly, was crying quite pitifully. Not really sure what led to that - but we think a combination of too many chips and too many dips5. We watched her the rest of the day, but nothing else happened, then at around midnight, in her sleep, she did it again! All over me this time. We think she was remembering / dreaming about her day and re-lived it.

Today, I watched her deliberately stick her fingers down her throat, enough to make choking noises. Didn't quite throw up as I managed to get her to stop. It made me wonder if that was what she was doing in the car. I know she does things she's not supposed to when she wants my attention, such as touching things she shouldn't like opening the bin and taking things out. Hmmm.

Well, whatever it was, it hasn't resurfaced. Unfortunately, mummy got massive gut trouble shortly after. It was pretty epic but less so than the last bout - I only threw up once this time. I wish I knew what was going on with me. It seems I only have a two to three weeks of good health, then I'm ill again. Do I need a full medical checkup? And would it reveal anything useful?

Watching CSI: New York tonight, I was fascinated by the computer screens that threw up all the interesting little details - like "Let's run your list and my list together and see who pops up" - I wonder how long it takes the graphics department to do all those screens for each episode? It must be good fun coming up with new and interesting ways to display the latest non-existent crime solving software!

1 If you can call an argument in level voices raging.
2 Redundant I know. Also, I can't be arsed to fight about it.
3 Condensation! Boom boom
4 We had bumped into some friends at the market, and they very kindly offered her their chips. She kindly declined for about five minutes, then scoffed the lot. Greedy child.
5 I had her slung in the front when we were at the supermarket, and I "dipped" her backwards a few times. It makes her giggle madly!

Panic! At the Disco

Damned mortage lenders. And estate agents.

So, the weekend was interesting.

On Saturday, there I was just finishing breakfast with Plate at around 10am - bits of cereal, fruit and milk EVERYWHERE - when the phone rings. The conversation went a little like this:

'Hi this is Z, just to say that I've gone back to the Ns to say that their offer1 has been rejected and I shall be chasing them on Monday'

'Great! Thanks!'

'And that you have a confirmed booking for your Open House today - a Mr & Mrs A.'

'I'm sorry, did you say Open House?'

'Yes, your Open House today from 11.30 to 1.30.'

'Oh, right... When did that happen?

And the flabbergastedness continued in that vein for about 10 minutes. She didn't realise no one had told us and we didn't realise it had all been advertised and gone ahead. The panic button was well and truly pushed. Very hard and repeatedly! I texted FBB2 frantically and ran around like a blue arsed fly trying to get things tidied away and clean. For pity's sake! Keeping house is NOT one of strong points. We are the living embodiments of Mr & Mrs Slob! I mean, the floor is mostly there to hold our stuff!

Anyway, I did what I could and when FBB got home, we tidied ourselves up and got ready to receive our guests. Fortunately, SEA turned up - I think I would have been even more miffed if he hadn't - so I chewed him out a bit. And like the truly nice, professional person he was, he apologised profusely for the non-communication and I could not help but forgive him3.

After all that, we had a total of one viewing. But in our case, quality is better than quantity. Yet another investment buyer - so no chain etc. They were an elderly couple who were looking to move to the area from Wales for numerous reasons.  The great news was that they liked the house as it is: 2-beds with the enormous bedroom. They realised that they would not be able to find another like it4. Fingers crossed that they make us a decent offer.

Now then - mortgage lenders. I think our mortgage advisor was a bit premature in submitting our application so we got two declines. Luckily, our current mortgage lender has good customer service people. We shall see.

Maybe we'll win the lottery. Maybe that tree in our garden will fruit £50 notes5.

1 A measly £125k! We are not THAT desperate!
2 He goes to tai chi every Saturday morning.
3 My very good friend HM says this of me at least once a month - 'You're too soft!'
4 There is another. But the lady who owns it is unlikely to sell any time soon. She is about 96 though.
5 We'll have trouble using notes bigger than that down the shop.

We wait. Tick follows tock follows tick.

I absolutely hate waiting.

It's been three days since the Vanilla People1 came and saw the house. According to the impressive Z2, she was excited about what she could do with our house and would like a second view. However, they wanted some time to think before making an offer. So now, we have a second viewing tomorrow night and we are once more ticked with nervousness.

Argh!

In other news, FBB and I had a lovely day despite the wetness of the weather. We talked the ears off our mortgage advisor and had a civilised lunch4 without any of it hitting the floor. Meanwhile, Plate was having a great time at Grandma and Granddad's!

Dinner was a little fraught - Plate was not herself5 and FBB's gorgeous spinach roulade sadly did not get the full attention it deserved.

I am going to now watch NCIS on Demand Five and repair a gaping hole in my trousers to work off the nervousness.

Tomorrow I shall be data bashing until I get spreadsheet blindness. Wish me luck.

1 As christened by my very talented friend, V: Mother, Wife, Lawyer and soon to be famous Writer. I would like to say now, that I will be shamelessly telling anyone who would listen that I knew her when she was but a pinafore clad innocent back in the day, scribbling short stories in the school yearbook.
2 To those of you who haven't been following3, this is the Sales Negotiator from Willie H Brown.
3 And why not? 
4 Omu rice Holmes style - ie, stir-fried with garlic and spring onions with a dash of soya sauce and a sprinkling of Cheddar. Sadly, no chicken! I had only ever seen it on restaurant menus, and then I saw it made in this wonderful film called Tampopo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-GFimGcYJw
5 I was going to use the word manja which I had always thought to mean attention-seeking / grumpy / demanding behaviour ascribed to very young children. A quick Google set me right. Whoops. Ha!

Will they make us an offer?

We had our first viewing tonight!

They were investment buyers and seemed quite excited by our house - they spent over half an hour here!

Willie H Brown sent a sales negotiator, Z, to show them round. I must confess, I was a bit sceptical1 about this, but I thought, since I am paying for an agent, I should let them do their job. Also, I thought prospects were more likely to be more open about how they felt about a property if the owners weren't following them around. I'm glad I did. Z was a mere slip of a girl but I thought she was very professional. She turned up early, did a thorough walk through, asked lots of questions and had a show plan. She definitely knew what she was about.

When they arrived, Z took charge immediately and steered them round the house expertly. FBB, Plate and I stayed out of her way in the front room. We don't know what their reaction was to the kitchen but they stayed upstairs for ages in the bedrooms and looked around the front room again. They were a white, middle-class2, middle-aged couple -- I don't know about him, but she definitely had plans, I could see it in her face.

After they left, Z gave us a brief brief: it went very well, they talked freely about what they wanted to do with the house, convert the ginormous room into two rooms, turning the house into a three-bed, turn the utility room into a dining room etc. It sounded very promising. She would give them a ring tomorrow.

So, it seems that FBB could be right and that the house will sell fast. I am not so optimistic. We shall see.

I've made an "appointment" of sorts to catch up with SEA3 about whether we should have an open house. It's a fair amount of work for us (we are slobs - the thought of getting the house shiny is making my left eyelid twitch) and ideally, we should move the Dead Cars (twitch, twitch, twitch!).

But that's stress inducing thought for another time.

I feel a bit sad that our house is likely to go to people who are going to gut it and rebuild it and sell it on. But I take comfort in knowing that, ultimately, a family will live, and love, and make happy memories in the house that we have lived, loved and been happy in for so long.

1 The second house we saw in our journey was shown by the agent. She was not good at all. The first boo-boo was letting us in first, then shutting the door after us, and leaving us in the dark while she fumbled for the lights. She seemed not to know the property and when we asked how long the owners had lived there, she didn't know and didn't even know if it was one or more owners, or whether they were a man or woman. It was  terribly disappointing. We left after less than 10 minutes.


2 Macs, muted colours, nondescript but well-made clothes, sensible shoes, quiet voices, and well-spoken. Of course, I could be completely wrong, since I don't fully understand the class thing. Meh. Ignore the bit about them being "middle-class". I can only misuse the phrase.


3 Super Estate Agent, Steve.