Ian Robinson

For any budding psychotic, sorry-psychiatrist students out there who like to explain dreams try mine of today. I was in a room with two gentlemen with suits. One says ” I would like to explain the origin of the Phillipines”. He then proceded to pour himself a large glass of whiskey and then upturned the glass over his head. He then went to the open window and shouted “Petrel” at the top of his voice. He and we then calmly left the office and joined a number of guests at a dinner table.

The reason I say Petrel and not Petrol is that the dinner menu included an item “seabird specialities” which included Petrel.

Fans of Monty Python will exclaim “ha ha, you are obsessed with silly men who speak with posh voices and like unusual ice lollies”. Oh dear, I thought I was past that many years ago.

The other dream I had, probably concurrently, was that I had visited an up-market hairdresser and when I looked in the mirror I noted that my hair had been dyed red. (My wife is a redhead). I noticed also that it had been pulled back into a bun and ponytail and had some paper and two flowers in the bun. I asked my wife to remove the flowers as I was just about to visit my father across a river (??) and did not wish to appear foolish. I must explain that although I am by no means bald there is no way that my remaining hair would make a jaffa cake, what’s more a bun. Thank goodness the alarm went off and saved me further embarrasement.

Two years ago my wife bought me a little book about dreams, but none of my recurrent ones were anything like those listed. Perhaps it is down to my having a bad back at the moment and eating too much Blaenavon cheese (which, incidently, is rather delicious).

I really think people ought to think more carefully before they choose the cheapest car insurance.
Rules of life
1. You get what you pay for.
2. You get nothing for being loyal.
3. A good brand name is no guarantee of a good product (well not any more).
4. If you can’t speak to a real person in the UK about problems then what the hell do you think you are going to do if you want to make a claim.
5. See 1.
If you have got onto this page from a search engine, chances are that you are considering insuring your car through Asda. Well try this out: fill out your form and go back after 24 hrs and try to correct it; phone any of the numbers and say that you have to change your details; phone and say that you want to make a claim.
No, don’t thank me, just put it down to experience.
But, see rule 2. Whoever you were with last year, just get another quote from a REPUTABLE insurance co. like Lloys Bank or Churchill, then phone up your insurance co. and say sorry but you have had a better quote, and then guess what they will say..
Good luck

Well, we have been at our new house now for a whole year. I did write that I would include a picture of the house (bungalow) so here it is.

Well hello fans. For followers of my blog I can only apologise that I have not up-dated for so long. This is for two reasons.

1. We have moved to our new house and have been too busy.

2. We have had to change everything concerning our internet as we are no longer with NTL and have had to change ISP and, yes another AND we have had to go Wireless with a router so had to wait for our Guru to visit from Southampton.

For those thinking of moving, these are our top ten pains-in-the-bum concerning moves. Not in order of importance particularly, just as I think of them.
No. 1 and top of the pops is….Boxes..

How many cardboard boxes does it take to fill a bungalow, completely, so there is hardly room to turn around? We must have had 60 of various shapes and sizes. Why did we take so much and THEN throw some away afterwards. See below.

2. Estate Agents. Communication…don’t talk to me about communication. I must say that they sold our house and for this we are eternally grateful, but charging VAT is taking the P**** ! They seemed to be afraid of us talking to our buyers in case we put them off, and therefore there were a few misunderstandings.

3. Solicitors. I have to say straight off that our Solicitor, Stuart Bechares of MLN was excellent, once we got him going. But the aim of a Solicitor seems to be to get you to change your mind about the house. What did we have: Rising Damp from the surveyor (absolute rubbish, most respectable surveyors say there is no such thing), the local church may charge is Megabucks if their walls fall down (cost us £120 that one) and, oh yes, Radon (Radon is a decay product of Radium which collect in cellars, if we had one I might lose a little sleep), and an electricity cable running under the house which turned out to be running up the road with a spur to the house.

4. RCD trip switches. Our electricity tripped off about five times a day until we traced it to the fridge. We have had the fridge for ten years with hardly any problems. Our friendly electricity man charged us £125 (plus VAT of course) to tell us that our system was v. good but we needed a new board (£700) because we did not have an independent earth point (even though the system is earthed to water and gas pipes). Also it cost us a new fridge.

5. Redirected Mail

I have always hated Junk Mail, but how the hell you tell them you have moved is a megamystery. I have sent about 20 e-mails to cutomerservice@junkomail.com and I bet to no effect. And it is not even Holiday Brochure time yet.

6. Banks (see 5, they are even worse than Junk Mail companies to contact). If you have got too much hair and can’t afford a haircut, try contacting Alliance and Leicester. After we had finally got them to change the address, thet sent a confirmation letter to our old address (well, for  security so not too bad) but then had the temerity to print on the back of the envelope “are your details correct? let us know if anything changes”. We have extended our Royal Mail redirection for another 3 months.

7. What to change, what not to change? Well you want to have a new house, not another version of the old one. But you got used to that bloody ugly cling film dispenser and the knife holder and the pictures and the coat stand and …..NO NO NO! This is a new house.

8. Should have been no. 2 really. What the Hell did we pack THAT for. So we unpack the last box and realise that despite taking 10 trips down to the waste disposal site, we still have about 5 trips to go.

9. Losing things. Now I think that our packing was pretty organised (Ann did most of it), but despite this we still managed to lose a whole lot of stuff which is now in a different place. I always kept those discs in the second drawer down, but we haven’t got a second drawer down any more, so where on eart did I put them? I bought some lovely postcards in Seville of Spanish posters from the 1930 EXPO exhibition. Last Saturday we gave up looking for them and bought some postcards of beach-huts in small frames to go on the wall. Well guess what I found this evening when looking for my Argos card? I wouldn’t mind but it was in the second drawer down of my nest of drawers in the bedroom.

10 The junk the old owners leave. So OK I did the same. They thought it may have come in useful but that is another two trips down the dump. (I wonder if our buyers have got rid of that concrete statue we left yet?

So here we are, and it feels like Home already. A month in but we are so looking forward to summer. We have met a couple of the neighbours and they seem just like us. There are no white vans parked outside and we can leave the garage door open wthout checking every 5 mins.

Next blog, I will attach some photos, including one of the snow.

Even the dog is stressed. If you ever doubted that dogs could read emotions, doubt no more. We have had to take Cassie to the vets as she is having digestion problems due to stress.

But the latest news is that our solicitor has exchanged contracts with the other two parties. So we are a step further to moving on January fifth. That is the end of the News.

I am now looking forward to Christmas. Ann has already packed everything into boxes. It is a good thing that Christmas day is all arranged.

It is going to mean some big changes for us all. I will start to feel sad soon as I reflect on all the happy times we have spent here. Karen and Graham were raised here and these were our best days. When we moved here, the house was a DUMP, but now I can honestly say that our purchasers have got a Bargain. I hope that they will be as happy is we were.

Today has been a Good Day.

We have now signed contracts for the selling of our house and the buying of our new one. We have not exchanged contracts or fixed a moving date. The purchase in Rhoose seems reasonably straightforward apart from a shed-load of troubles brought up by our solicitor and surveyor, including:

Have we got rising damp in the new house? Well many experts believe there is no such thing. Not a stopper, but a worry.

Have we got an electricity cable running under the property? After studing the drawings closely, appearently not.

Are we going to be charged for some church wall? Almost certainly not, but don’t ask or you won’t be able to insure.

Are we going to be poisoned by Radon? Well if we had a cellar and I went down every day for a fag, then I may worry.

As far as our house sale was concerned, we were about to exchange contracts when a surveyor rang for an appointment to view on Friday! Well that it a bit late in anybody’s book. We were very worried. Then on Saturday the buyers phoned (via Estate Agents) and asked if we would keep their mail between the time that they left France and when they move in on the 15th. Well that’s news to us because although we wouldn’t mind ASAP, it is not an agreed date with our vendors. So we are now going back to our solicitors with a green light, when on Thursday it was distinctly Amber. It had better be green because we have emptied the loft and sold the computer desk and chair, and dumpted about half a ton of rubbish. We had more plugs in the loft than Dixons; most have now gone but if you want any aerial cable, just give us a ring.

I am tuning in now to read an article entitled “Your Guide to a Stress Free Move” from an article by an Estate Agent, don’t worry just give us loads of dosh and we will worry for you. My advice would be:

1. Burn down your house and claim the insurance.

2. Sell the land to a developer.

3. Find a fully furnished house for rent and buy it.

4. Retire.

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).