09:00 Another post-COVID milestone - our weekly delivery of groceries arrives from Budgens, the convenience store in the village, and for the first time for 2 years, Lois and I don't swab the items down with disinfectant.
Budgens convenience store (on the left)
Today, after the delivery guy drops the groceries off in our front porch, we just pick the things up and put them away in the larder, the fridge and the freezer, just like that! And it feels so weird to be able to do that: my god! A true taste of freedom after all this time, that's for sure.
12:00 We drive the 25 miles or so from Prestbury to Malvern, to spend a few hours there house-hunting, for the 3rd time this week. And it's starting to take its toll on us physically and emotionally, no doubt about that.
At least the weather's a bit better today, and the sun is shining part of the time. We eat a packed lunch in the car, which we've parked on the edge of the common, and we sit and watch hikers and dog-walkers wandering about - it's certainly great countryside round here, that's for sure.
we park our car on the edge of the common and
watch the hikers and dog-walkers wandering about
Today we see another house we like, and I call the estate agent on my mobile phone - just like a young person might do - and I tell him my offer, which is a bit above the asking price.
Later we see her telling one of her weird stories to her married female lover, Vivica, as they lie in bed in the morning, in Vivica's palatial mansion:
But the clock's ticking towards 10 o'clock now, and it's time for Lois and me to be in bed. As we switch off the TV, Vivica has just told Tove she's going to spend some time in Paris - she can't bear to be away from Paris for too long, apparently. But she invites Tove to join her there, so that'll be nice! But we'll see the rest of the film another time.
we see a bungalow we like, and put an offer in on it
What's frustrating is that you can make what you think is a pretty generous offer, above the asking price, but there's absolutely no reaction from the other end of the line. What I want to hear is something like "Ooh fantastic - I'll tell the seller right away. He/she will be pleased!
15:00 Will we ever be able to buy a house here? Well, if our current efforts fail, we've always got the option of buying a brand-new house for sale at a fixed price, and a couple of days ago we made an appointment to see a brand-new house on the brand-new Malvern Vale estate, because we were promised there would be a house available to view.
16:00 We arrive home, feeling pretty tired and battered again. Oh dear!!!!
We only see the first 30 minutes or so of this biopic about Tove Jansson, but I have to say we're surprised by the number of sex scenes - my god! Perhaps it'll all calm down later on in the film, but we'll have to leave that for another night.
For some obscure, probably legal, reason they never show any reaction - if you make an offer on a house, it's like a sealed-bid auction, so you're completely in the dark as to whether you've made an offer that will be attractive to the seller or not.
Lois and I have now put in offers on 2 houses in Malvern, but with absolutely no feedback. What madness !!!!!
14:00 We take a break by stopping in at what's fast becoming our favourite Malvern pub, the nearby "Three Horseshoes", to have a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake. This is our third visit to the pub, and we're beginning to feel like "regulars", which is nice!
So it was disappointing today to find that we couldn't in fact see any of the houses in a finished state - the builders were telling us lies. All we could see was a house with just the bare white walls of the rooms and a lot of workmen's tools stashed here and there around the house. How are you expected to make a decision to buy a house for hundreds of thousands of pounds based on evidence like that?
It's sheer madness !!!!!
we want to see round a brand-new house, but all we get
is views like the above one - bare walls and lots of workmen's
tools lying around. What madness !!!!!
It'll be interesting to see next week whether we get any reaction from the sellers of the two properties we have made offers for. Because suddenly we realise why we aren't necessarily such good propositions as buyers, as we thought we were.
We have perhaps mistakenly thought that buyers would be delighted to sell to us, because our house is already sold, subject to contract. However, the estate-agent we rang today from our car to put in an offer asked us how far on we were with the paperwork, legal aspects etc of the sale of our house. The answer to this is, that it has hardly progressed at all, because we have been waiting to find a house we wanted to buy.
Aha !!!!! So that's what we're doing wrong!!! Sellers are obviously looking for buyers who have completed the sale of their house, and are perhaps living in rented accommodation.
Damn !!!!!
Well, we'll see what happens next week. If this theory is correct, we may have to buy a brand-new house after all. Oh dear !!!!!!
21:00 Before we go to bed we decide to see the first half-hour or so of a biopic about the life of Tove Jansson, the Swedish-speaking Finnish author of the so-called "Moomin" books and cartoon strips, the Moomin being Tove's creation of a blob-like and shy, imaginary animal.
Tove was a shy, introverted personality but totally unconventional and with a great sense of fun, so what's not to like haha!
Here are some typical Moomin extracts, expressing also some of Tove's own shyness and introversion , but also her sense of fun, which is nice.
Lois loved to pick up and read these books during quiet times when she worked as a librarian at a children's library in Oxford, back in the 1960's, when she was still young and single, a few years before we met.
In 2013 we paid a nostalgic visit to that children's library - and we went inside and talked to the current librarians there, which was nice.
flashback to 2013: Lois in front of the Bury Knowle Children's Library
in Oxford, where she used to work when she was young and single
Tove's first love was being an artist rather than an author of stories, but she also had a political streak, drawing cartoons that made fun of both Hitler and Stalin, so her heart was in the right place. Finland in the 1930's was caught between these two major totalitarian powers, and of course the Finns are still threatened by Putin today, so not much change there.
She depicted Hitler as a crying baby in nappies, being fed slices of cake by British Prime Minister Chamberlain and other European appeasers, in an effort to calm him down - the slices of cake being Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland etc.
Hitler depicted as a baby on the cover of the Finnish
satirical magazine Garm
Tove's father was a sculptor, who was constantly putting Tove down, and who was all his life dismissive of his daughter's work.
It was Tove's well-to-do lovers that saw her genius, and encouraged her to develop her skills as a story-teller and cartoonist: firstly a married man, the progressive Swedish MP, Atos Wirtanen, and then the married female theatrical director, Vivica Bandler.
Tonight we see Tove getting to know Atos better as they undress together: in a sauna. Well, where else, if you're in Finland haha!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!! [Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!
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