Possible last post in a while
Well the movers are here in almost exactly 12 hours to get us out of Cheshunt and into London. Hoorah. Then we don't get broadband until the 21st. So I may not be as frequent with my updates over the next few days.
The house is more or less packed, amazingly. I spent today doing such things as taking the huge corner Ikea desk apart and getting all of the odds and ends into boxes. The TV remains to be disassembled, and a couple pictures are still hanging, but other than that, we're pretty much set. And to think, this time last week, I was still fretting about when we were going to get a contract. Things change, quickly.
So I'm off for a few days - unless I get bored of unpacking and prowl around for an internet cafe. Wish us luck, and I promise I'll post pictures just as soon as I can.
Finally
We. Have. Exchanged.
Lotto or Contract?
I've just bought a lotto ticket. Although I would rather exchange on the house today, I've decided that my chances of winning the lotto are at least as high.
Edit: Clearly our luck with the lotto is as bad as our luck with this stupid contract. We only matched one number.
The saga continues
Me: Can I ask you a question?
James: Does it have to do with the house?
Me: Yes.
James: You can ask me one question.
Me: So, when are we supposed to exchange?
James: Precisely the twelfth of never.
Me: Ha ha. Really, when are we supposed to exchange?
James: When hell freezes over.
Me: No, really....
James: Sometime early next week.
This space intentionally left blank...
...to save you all from the yawning chasm of my depression.
Will this never end?
The Lis' solicitor is now out of town, without having told any of us that he was on holiday this week. No wonder he started returning everyone's calls and acting like he gave a shit at the end of last week. He told us we should be good to exchange on Tuesday... of course he knew it wasn't going to be his responsibility by then. The guy who's taking over for him regarding this transaction is in a nieghbouring city. So the contract that Mr. Li dropped off this morning now has to wing its way to Barnet before we can exchange.
I am ill with rage.
Of course we can't expect anything useful out of our solicitor because he just got back from holiday. Catriona, who was looking after our side of this sale while he was gone, is no longer helping us and Alan doesn't know what's going on.
So we're vulnerable, and surrounded by the utterly useless. And if we exchange before the end of the day (yeah right) it'll be a miracle and even then we won't be able to get the keys to the apartment until tomorrow. Getting the movers on Thursday will be a bit of a stretch, and on Friday or over the weekend it's out of the question. So it's looking like the movers won't be coming until the beginning of next week. Yet another week has slipped by.
I'm so tired of this.
Bleurgh
Erin is gone. :(
I have a horrible cold. :(
It looks like we might be completing exchanging on Tuesday. :)
More house headaches
So we were told yesterday that the Lis were going to make an appointment with their solicitor to sign the contract, so that when the local searches came in, it would be ready to exchange.
Today, we're told that their solicitor has posted it to them for them to sign and then post back. On a Friday they do this. On a bank holiday weekend. James informs me that it's common practice for solicitors' offices to be closed on the Tuesday after a bank holiday Monday.
So now we're looking at next Wednesday at the earliest.
GRRRRR.
Long-winded update
There are two reasons I've been bad about blogging over the last couple days.
- I've been having a fantastic time with Erin
- The house thing has been so frustrating it's had me in tears
Erin has been fabulous. Together, we've pretty much packed the ground floor of the house. There are boxes everywhere, but somehow, the place is tidier now than it was when she got here. She's just that good.
Monday, we spent the day in town, to keep Erin away from bed so she wouldn't get jetlagged. The main task of the day was procuring anniversary presentage for James. This was accomplished at Selfridge's. We celebrated a task well done by buying (matching) coats at H&M.
Tuesday was my second anniversary! Wow! After a full day of packing, we met James in town and took Erin out to Simpsons in the Strand, a very famous, very British restaurant, and dined on champagne and yummy British fare - Erin & James had roast beef, I had skate. There, James and I exchanged gifts. He needed a new wallet, so I bought him one of those, and also I got him a Dolce and Gabana tie. James completely overdid it and bought me not one, but two Mont Blanc pens. One for my purse (a rollerball), and one amazing fountain pen with an ink well. WOW. They're crazy cool.
Wednesday was a packing day. Pretty much all day. We did drop in at our local pub for lunch (really amazing olive-crusted salmon) and had dinner at the Indian place. This is going to be pretty normal until we move, because we've now packed all but paper plates. When we finished dinner, we went out and bought Monty Python's Meaning of Life, as I've not seen it and James and Erin kept going on about the Mr. Creosote sketch. Which was absolutely disgusting. I knew about the exploding part but not all the barfing. It was pretty funny.
Yesterday, we went into town. Sushi for lunch, then we walked from Liverpool Street to the Tower of London, went on a beefeater tour, had cream tea, wandered around some other bits of the place, and were then herded out as it was closing time. Then, we walked to the Globe, where we saw Romeo and Juliet. The play was fantastic, well played. Of course, for me, it's never quite as good after Mercutio dies. We walked back to Liverpool Street station, then - over the Millennium Bridge, past St. Paul's. The river is so beautiful at night with all of the lights of the buildings up and down it. I don't know if I've ever quite seen it like it was last night, but it was really amazing.
Yesterday was unfortunately not perfect. I lost my keys at some point, which was very frustrating. On Wednesday night, I let myself into the house with them, I had driven home, so I know I had them. Then they went missing. We searched the house Thursday morning. Couldn't find them anywhere and ultimately took a taxi to the station instead of driving. The taxi driver suggested that someone had stolen them out of the door and they were waiting for us to leave so they could rob us and steal our car. Bastard.
I did find them this morning. Stuck in the handle of a box. It's not a wonder we hadn't been able to find, them, really, but we should've concentrated more on the area in which we found my purse than making a mad hunt around the house.
More than anything, yesterday was marred by house stuff. It is now a week after we said we wanted to exchange. A week after we made it very clear that we needed to exchange. We've paid a week's worth of rent to our new landlord, even though we haven't signed the contract yet, just to keep the flat. We were aiming for exchange today. Basically, our buyers, the Lis, are fairly ignorant about the process, and English is not their first language. Their solicitor is screwing them around, and so, transitively, screwing us all around. We were waiting on the Lis mortgage offer and the local searches. The latter were supposed to be applied for weeks ago, but obviously weren't applied for until last week. Which is intensely frustrating because we made no secret of our deadline. So now we're just waiting for the local searches and there's nothing anyone can do to make it go any faster. Further to this, the Lis' solicitor is blowing everyone off and not returning phonecalls and generally being a total prick. The revised date, I found out yesterday, is sometime next week. I was so angry I cried.
But then I Erin bought me a stuffed raven at the Tower, whose sole purpose is to peck out the Lis' solicitor's eyes. I feel better now.
When will it end?
Will this house ever be sold? I begin to wonder.
My Rage is the stuff of which legends are made. It burns and writhes and fills me up with its ugly black cacophony. It would be one thing if the buyers were being difficult and kicking up a fuss about the house, but it's not. It's all of the people who are facilitating the deal: the solicitors, the estate agents, the mortgage company. Even the letting agents are messing things up. And everyone's gone on holiday. We've dealt with three solicitors now, two people at the estate agency, and three people at the letting agency - and that's just on our side.
All of this, predictably, is food for Rage. My Rage is a tapeworm: it's just growing and growing inside of me, feeding off of all of this. I worry that it will do the Alien thing and just burst out, spraying everyone with blood as it spits and seethes and annihilates everything in its path.
