Hev and I have been very aware that we've told the world hardly anything about our house move. All last year I observed radio silence on my blog and on social media, because we didn't want to jinx it all.
Then of course, at my birthday party in October, we couldn't contain ourselves and not only told everyone about the new house that, by then, we thought we'd effectively bought and would be moving into before Christmas. We even showed everyone the video, for the video 'foosiast. This, of course, jinxed it. And, after another two months of half-information, mis-information, and frustration, our first buyer fell through. Two days before Christmas.
Our new buyer, Polly, who had been waiting in the wings, or on the estate agents' radar, whichever metaphor works better, came along the very next day and, in time for Christmas, we'd accepted another offer and were effectively sold again. Of course the whole house-moving game - which, need I remind you, we've not done since we moved to Clevedon in 1990, though we did get a bit of practice by selling Mum's house in 2019 - kept us in a state of constant alert and total tension right up to the eleventh hour.
In fact we were in a state of tension until the 13th or 14th hour. Having only got the confirmation that we were about to exchange contracts a few days before it happened, and needing to complete and move only days after that because we were about to crash into the deadline on which our mortgage offer would run out (it was due to expire on Sat March 5th, and the extension could have delayed us for weeks) we lined up to move in Thursday March 3rd. The frantic run up to this included me having to go into a bank in Birmingham, during an extended lunchtime from the school I was working at, to transfer over 60 grand on Weds 2nd, which we only discovered the day before is something you can't do online or over the phone.
Then, at midday on Thurs 3rd, it was all done. Sort of. That is to say, our buyer had been given the keys. But we were still waiting to get the keys for our place.
I got into a bit of trouble for sharing the above photo on Facebook. This was Hev and Tadpole, with me just out of shot, sat in our empty ex-home, waiting for the phone call that would tell us we could pick up the keys for our new place. It's a technicality that happens, whereby someone has to tell someone else that funds have cleared, blah blah blah. It meant that, for two hours, we were technically homeless, squatting (literally) in our old place, until our new place was ready. Of course I shouldn't have shared this photo, which was immediately seen by Hev's mum & Annette, and dozens of others, none of whom we'd told we were moving yet!
Then we moved. And for two weeks now we've been slowly unpacking three floors worth of cardboard boxes and starting to settle into the new place. Which, by the way, we love. It's hard to imagine that we packed so much stuff into a two-bedroom flat, because we're finding it already filling up our new three-storey house. At time of writing we have a TV aerial connected in the lounge at last (that took 2 weeks) but we still don't have broadband.
In a saga reminiscent of Flanders & Swann's The Gasman Cometh, twas on a Monday morning (7th March) that the BT man was meant to call. But, after a day of waiting in, no-one showed up to fit our system. So, greatly frustrated, I arranged another installation visit, and they couldn't make it until Friday the 18th. Friday the 18th came, and so did Rhodri the very nice installation guy. Who promptly spotted that the telegraph pole outside our house had changed since the one pictured on Google Streetview (it was replaced in June of last year) and thus would need a hoist to get up to it. He didn't have a hoist, and when he rang up to get one, there wasn't going to be one available that day. So, at time, of writing, I'm waiting to phone BT up again having been told yesterday, after half an hour on the phone, mostly on hold, that we'll get an "expedited appointment". Whatever that is. My betting is we still won't have broadband by the end of the coming week.
And that's as interesting as that subject gets.
While we wait to get the roof fixed, to stop the water coming in, ahead of getting the ceilings fixed, and while we wait to get a new boiler and central heating, around which time we're also getting the top floor rewired, and getting a new kitchen measured up, we have at least made some progress in making Tadpole feel at home. Here you see him getting used to his new garden.
Because we feared him running home to Clevedon, which would have been quite an achievement from Chepstow, we had to keep him in for the first few days. That meant that a devoutly outdoors cat who, you'll remember, wasn't even our cat to begin with, and who adopted us, had to stay inside and poo in a litter tray. Amazingly he took to the litter tray instantly, without any instruction. How do they know? They just sniff and realise that's a toilet.
The harder part was weaning him off it and out into the garden. I guess he just enjoyed the convenience of an en suite. Whatever, we seem to have succeeded and he's now eating downstairs (rather than up by the lounge where we'd fed him for the first week) and pooing outside. Next problem is, how do we stop him pooing right in the middle of the lawn? Phee-yeuw!
Hev has been marvellous in her work on the house so far. Being a 250 year old house, whose previous owner died a year ago, and much of which had been unoccupied for a few years, there has been a lot of cleaning to do. Many bottles of mould & mildew remover and bleach later, and lots and lots of hoovering, Hev (and I to a lesser extent) has got the place feeling warm and liveable. We're able to use drawers and shelves that haven't been used in a long time, with all that entails. I don't have a studio yet, but am happily hot-desking in the lounge, though I've got no constructive work done in a fortnight, and that book will be on hold a bit longer. (That said, I have written five prologues for my Situation Murder book, about which more here).
Ok, you've been updated, dear diary, though I feel there's a lot more to say about the year running up to the move, and also why we're not that sad about leaving the old flat. Oh there are tales to tell there.
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