Busy busy busy today, because we've got to get ready to go and do some more pet-sitting for our daughter Alison and her husband Ed, because Ali and Ed and their3 children are going to be away on the Isle of Wight for a few days.
Apart from all that work, we also drive to Malvern again today to reserve a brand-new house, which we're hoping to be able to move into this autumn. Timeframes will be a total nightmare, trying to synchronise the sale of our current house in Cheltenham, despite not knowing when the new house will be ready.
What a madness it all is!!!!
13:30 We drive off to Malvern and arrive 15 minutes early at the builders' marketing suite in Malvern. We kill a bit of time taking photos.
we arrive at the builders' marketing suite, in a state
of excitement at fever pitch - yikes !!!!
we kill some time trying to memorise the site plan: and we give
each other a "pop quiz" on some of the details
14:30 We go into the office and a nice lady called Fiona takes us through the plans for the site etc. It's an all-new experience for Lois and me to be "ordering" a new house, and being able to choose things - design of tiles, type of flooring and dozens of other choices.
The first house we bought was built around 1850, and our 2nd and 3rd houses were both built in the 1930's. We didn't think we were the "new house" sort of people, that's for sure.
After we sign the forms and pay over the deposit, we come outside again and take a souvenir selfie against the background of the Malvern Hills, which is nice.
I think we've just reserved a brand new house -
who would have thought it, eh - two old fuddy-duddies like us. My god!
The rest of the day is a bit of a blur, to be frank.
Up until this week we had two options, each with its pluses and minuses. The "1950's house" had lots of defects, but we could have arranged a moving date, and moved most of our furniture and belongings directly from this house to that one. They had plenty of storage space so we wouldn't have had to throw too much stuff away. So the move would have been fairly painless, but the pain would have begun after we moved in - all the work to put everything right, and with the current shortage of skilled labour, it might have dragged on and on for months.
With this "brand new house", all the pain will be before we move in, because we'll probably have to put our furniture etc in storage, and rent somewhere temporarily till the house is ready for us. But after that, we'll be able to relax hopefully.
20:00 We spend the evening watching a bit of TV, but our minds are distracted and diffused, our thoughts are many miles away [phrase copyright: Paul Simon].
"Don't panic" - that must be our watchword.
Yikes !!!!!! [I thought you said you weren't going to panic! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment