Yes, Friends, when buying a new home, possibly the biggest single investment you'll ever make in your lifetime, you may not realise, but it's clearly a mistake to choose a house nobody will ever want to buy off you if you ever need to move out. Just saying!!!!
And if to prove the truth of that statement, one local house-hunting couple has been saved, in the nick of time, from buying a real "turkey", according to this morning's edition of the local Onion News for East Hampshire!
me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois - a recent picture
And we can't resist highlighting the article to our 50-year-old daughter and her similarly aged husband Edward this afternoon, when they call round for a cup of tea and a biscuit after a hard afternoon clearing the leaves on the lawn behind their crumbling Victorian mansion, just 5 miles away from us, in Headley, Hampshire.
our 50-year-old daughter Alison, pictured here today
in our front-room with her contemporary husband Edward
And the reason for all that chuckling, I hear you cry?
Well, Ali and Ed are currently having extensive renovations done to their own home, and we're not sure they've thought of the banister angle: one that you can really "zoom" down: a bit of a "rookie error", considering they've got 3 teenage kids - madness, isn't it !!!!!
(left) the picture Ali and Edward took this afternoon of their crumbling Victorian mansion,
now under extensive renovation: and (right) the view from above - what madness, isn't it!!!
flashback to April: Ali and Edward's crumbling mansion, seen here in
happier times, before it was gutted for a total "make-over" (!)
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Ali and Edward's neighbours are saying, "Rather than gutting your own house and having it completely remodelled over a period of 12 months or so, why didn't you just sell up and buy another house, thereby saving yourselves all the potential disruption?". To which they reply - that they like the underlying "concept" of their house, and also where it is: location location location. And they're especially fond of its 7.5 acre grounds with its Hampshire woodland, and its Hampshire wildlife, its deer and its foxes etc etc. So fair enough, Lois and I say !!!!
What a business, though! And you can probably see why Lois and I want to give this courageous couple a bit of TLC today with a welcome cup of tea plus a "hobnob" biscuit or two.
Not only are Ali and Edward suffering the trauma of their "gutted" home, but they're also beginning to feel the approach of "empty nest syndrome": Josie (19) has just started a maths degree course at Durham this autumn; Rosalind (17) will be starting university next year, probably either at UCL London or maybe at Bath; and Isaac (15) is planning to take his A-Levels in China - yikes!!!!
flashback to April: (left to right) Rosalind, Isaac, Josie, Edward, Alison, Lois and me,
at the family's temporary rental home in Churt, Surrey, where they're living during
the renovation of their crumbling Victorian mansion in Headley, Hampshire
Rosalind will occasionally be able to pop home for the weekend fairly easily, particularly if it's from nearby London, but we can't see Isaac doing the same thing from China - call us overly "doomsayers" if you like, but we're just trying to look at it from a practical viewpoint haha!!!
Isaac's potentially arduous trip home from China for the weekend: (left)
the easy bit - the 11 hour flight into Heathrow, and (right) the hard part:
getting from Heathrow to Headley, Hampshire, and dodging all the roadworks
on the M25, M3, A31 and A331 - that's the nightmare bit, obviously haha (!)
It's almost 30 years since Lois and I were going through the same process, as regards "empty nest syndrome". In 1996, Alison, then 21, was studying for an Italian and History degree at Cardiff and had already met her future husband Edward. And our other daughter, Sarah, had just settled in at Birmingham University, preparing to start a 4-year maths degree course.
flashback to September 1996: (left) our elder daughter Alison (21), pictured here at
Cardiff University with future husband Edward, and (right) Lois with our younger
daughter Sarah (19), having just "settled her in" in her first-year accommodation
at Birmingham University, where she was embarking on a 4-year maths degree course
And in September 1996, to mark this new "empty nest" chapter of our lives, Lois and I, who had ourselves recently turned 50, decided to take a short holiday in Normandy, to think things over and plan our new lives as a couple living on our own in a larger than average 3-bed semi in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire; we were also starting on the last 10 years of our working lives, and we wanted to get our heads round our new situation.
flashback to September 1996, us, our "jobs" as parents seemingly over (!):
(left) me in the back garden of our hotel in Normandy where we had
gone for a short break, to re-focus our lives, and (right) Lois on a nearby beach
And it seems like only yesterday. How time flies !!!!
17:00 Ali and Edward go home, and Lois and I are left to our own devices and some typical "old codger" style TV viewing, which is nice!
[I'd never have guessed! - Ed]
Tonight the "boys", comedians Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse, who are both veterans of "presentation giving", both in their former, working lives and now during their retirement, are discussing some of the typical and perhaps over-used clichés, used by speakers on training courses and the like, like "the elephant in the room".
And here Bob asks Paul for his views on the well-worn phrase:
Bob, however, has arguably had an even more unusual anecdote to report, which he wastes no time in regaling his old mate Paul with (!).
Nice try, Paul, but by this stage, nothing will stop Bob from pursuing his anecdote (!).
And it just goes to prove that, however long your life, there are always opportunities to learn something new, if you just keep an open mind haha!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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