The house move is still ongoing. We will move one day, but progress is very slow.
Today, I heard noises from outside and assumed it was our next-door neighbour. He is a big DIY fan and his father(-in-law?) is a builder so they’re doing all the ‘improvements’ themselves. There’s a makeshift path between the bottom of the garden and the patio. There are two ‘temporary’ structures in the garden. The original 1950s garage has been dismantled and a new one built, although I’m not sure it’s finished yet. And they have permission to build an extension at the back, next to ours, and for a loft extension.
You’re probably wondering, why didn’t they just buy a much bigger house in the first place? We wonder that too.
So when I heard the sound of work being done today, it was a fair assumption that they were up to something again. But no. When I looked through the window later on, I could see the house next to ours at the bottom of the garden. The house is around the corner, and until today, it was concealed behinh what’s left of an old wooden fence and well established ivy and other plants. That’s all gone, and we just hope they’re going to put a fairly decent new fence up across the bottom of our garden. But, yes, how strange that they never came and told us what they were planning to do.
We put up a new fence a couple of years ago, on our other neighbours’ side. It was erected on the line of the old, dilapidated fence, that was put there by the occupants three or four ago. As soon as the For Sale sign went up, the neighbour sent his wife round to tell Liesel that that fence should be put in its correct place, on the boundary line, about 4, yes, 4, inches over. I can understand them not wanting to have trouble with whoever buys our house in the future, but they were happy a couple of years ago with the fence in the wrong place. The fence as now been moved.
Our searches are being conducted on the flat we’re buying, but we haven’t had the response yet. We believe searches are being conducted on our house, but it’s quite frustrating how difficult it is to get information from the agents. We think our buyer has her mortgage sorted, but we don’t know for certain.
All this waiting and hanging around and waiting for a progress report creates a lot of anxiety. And until we have a definite moving date, we can’t start booking up our planes, trains, automobiles and accommodations for our gap year travels.
And of course, our old house is still throwing some half-hearted spanners in the works. When we were away for the weekend, my toothbrush started to act up. It’s battery operated and runs for a good two-minute clean. Well, it kept stopping spontaneously while I was using it. And then, later on, it kept starting up spontaneously. Thankfully, it stopped starting through most of the night but in the morning, again, it started stopping again. I suspect it started up several times on the drive home, although we couldn’t hear it, as it was fully discharged when we got home.
The laptop likes to do long, long, long Windows updates every time we use it, but when it sticks on 92% and tells you not to turn it off, that is a cause for concern. But, it’s going again now, thank goodness.
The car’s left headlight has ‘blown’ again, the third time in three or four months. I suspect an electrical fault so we’ll have to take it to a mechanic with the right sort of equipment and have it checked.
My iPhone’s battery is rubbish. I rarely see a charged figure between 60% and 20%. I’m not sure I like iPhones anyway, too many things I don’t like about the way Apple, iTunes all work. But I’m not sure an Android phone would solve or avoid some of those problems. But I will need a new smartphone very soon. I can’t blame the house for that, I suppose, but it’s just another thing that at least need some consideration.
I still can’t get used to looking into our garden, seeing a house at the bottom, now with the addition of a 4×4 vehicle parked on their drive.
Mick and Liesel's Antics 