Ian Robinson

Well, just to keep you up to date, our house sale is progressing and we put in an offer for the bungalow, which was accepted. So we are off and running. I am not sure if quickly is the word because so much of it is outside our control.

In case you do not know, there are three groups of interested parties: Us, our buyers and the people we are buying from (let’s call them our sellers). Each of us will have an Estate agent, a Solicitor and a Surveyor. We are actually in a better position than most because our sellers have a house in Spain already and they are selling this house as their pension. As far as I know, none of us will have a mortgage.

So what is the rate determining step? The dreaded Solicitors of course. We do not yet have a letter of intent from our solicitor, which I take to mean that he hasen’t actually started anything yet. Groan.

One big worry is the health of the male seller. Apparently the property is owned by the female partner. As this Blog is actually in the public domain, I had better not name names. In fact I will not name any persons or companies just in case. But anyway, he is not well and my biggest worry is that he will be unable to move to Spain and they will therefore not sell. In that case, we could be in Big trouble and have a real dilemma; do we sell and be left homeless, with the hope of buying somewhere soon? That is a Head vs Heart job.

So Ann and I are going through the initial stages of our clear-out. There is obvious rubbish, which has gone already: for instance, old curtains and track which are worthless to anybody but us. There is a grey area of stuff which may be useful to our purchasers, such as bits of carpet and laminate flooring, which we will leave in he loft. There is stuff which may be useful to somebody and can go to the Charity Shop.There is the stuff which we really should try and sell.

Then there is the stuff which we need to take with us and that we will have to put somewhere: such as paper files, which need to be sorted out. I am going to do this on Monday. The things like scrapbooks are going to be really tricky, but the old bank statements and the like will have to be burnt or shredded. My Dad can have a bonfire on Nov 5th and we can have some soup and chips and some pathetic catherine wheels, like in the old days. Photo opportunity I think.

This is the little bungalow that we viewed in Rhoose on Saturday. It is in a very nice position. It looks like the sellers bought a small 2 bed bungalow and spent a lot of money doing it up to sell it. The trouble with it is that it is VERY small inside and really could do with a loft conversion. However, by the time we have shelled out all of our savings on buying the place, we could not afford this.

These are the alternatives.

1. Buy a bungalow in Barry a few miles away in a not-so-nice area.

2. Buy an older house in Rhoose but in not so nice a position.

3. Buy a new house, have plenty of room but have no garden.

4. Buy this one and chuck away lots of our stuff.

Answers please on a postcard to the usual address.

You know some days things just seem to go right and other days the opposite. Well Monday was one of those good days. Ann went to the hospital for an endoscopy and as expecting an awful time; but it was not so bad and they found nothing amiss. We had our first viewing of the house and they liked it and made an offer, which we accepted. I bought a recovery hybrid wood/iron after pondering for 2 months, took it down the golf range and smacked every shot straight down the middle. ( I can’t help thinking that a lottery ticket would have been a better choice.)

So for the last few days we have been trying to find houses in Rhoose to view this weekend. After an initial choice, Dad P advised me not to down-size but to get the best I could afford. Good advice, but I don’t want to get another mortgage so I will be using most of our savings.

Tomorrow, our potential buyers are viewing again before returning to France, where they have a house to sell. So it could all colapse tomorrow. But that’s how it goes sometimes, all we can do is to clean the house and hope for the best. C’est la vie (that is your actual French).

I have not written up for a while. I have abandoned by article “Did Jesus of Nazareth suffer from Polar Disorder” on the grounds that if the Christian Right doesn’t get me, and the Pope Excommunicate me (not that he has actually Communicated me yet) then Karen probably would disown me. So I have resorted to less contraversial topics and will just tell anybody who is interested, that we have had a pretty good weekend.
It never ceases to amaze me what people keep. I am between the “throwaway generation” and the “Womble” generation. I think I am therefore fairly balanced in what I keep and what I chuck (although others may disagree). I call those that grew up during and after the war, the Womble generation; because times were so austere you just NEVER threw ANYTHING away. If you had no use for it you could either feed it to the chickens or turn it into part of a Spitfire. Failing that, you took all the parts off it because there was a g470U6 valve or a 2BA bolt which you couldn’t buy for love nor money. When my Mum and Dad moved to South Wales from Chipping Norton they put a load of old junk in the garage. It has not seen the light of day for four years until my sister, Gail hired the skip, which we filled on Saturday morning. That said, we no sooner put things into the skip than Dad took them out again, insisting that they “might come in useful”. Gail kept asking him when he was going for his paper, so that she could bury the things that she really wanted to chuck so he couldn’t find them. When he went, there was feverish activity turning over the top rubbish and hiding that stuff underneath. Havng said that, there were actually some very useful things in boxes which were buried underneath all the junk in the garage. As well as that, Dad now has some space to put his tools and nuts, screws washers and bolts. We also chucked away some disgusting carpet and underlay, about which I have no intension of elucidating.
On Saturday evening I tried making some mini pies using a gadget given me by Grandad P. It is a sort of sandwich maker, and you put pastry and a filling in this thing and then put it on the gas. Needless to say I made an absolutely disgusting smelly burnt mess and this Diablo gadget will go the way of all the other cooking gadgets (Oxfam shop). Incidently, the Daily Mail had an arcticle about the top ten useless gadgets which people use once and then take down the charity shop. Any guesses for no. 1? No prizes, it’s the Lean Mean Grilling Machine. Even hugely reduced it is a complete waste of money. Why didn’t I ever buy one then?
On Sunday morning I played golf at 10.00 am. I usually play at some unearthly hour but I was offered a later game and just made it back in time for Ann to get to her riding. The weather was really nice for a change and the company was spendid and my partner and I won a matchplay event; Excellent! Good conditions; good golf; good company. That is what it is all about. I got back in plenty of time for Ann to get to riding and she enjoyed her ride: her horse, Toby, was responsive and she came back happy and smiling. Horay.
I will finish now because it will be time for Jane Eyre. I like a romantic story with a happy ending.
Somebody is coming to see the house tomorrow so we have been busy between skips and golf and horseriding making the place spick and span. Watch this space.