Creeping forward

Stress, they say, is inevitable when you are selling your house. I am beginning to see that this is an understatement.

As we get nearer to some sort of conclusion we also, paradoxically, seem to get further away. Perhaps the proximity of completion is so tantalising that the rush to the money is frustrating to the nth degree when there is the slightest delay. A new date for completion has been suggested and within hours changed. Everything is waiting to be finalized; all sorts of people are waiting for the ‘go’ signal to be given; boxes are waiting to be filled; forms waiting to be signed; flights booked and final checks (and cheques) completed.

And the call hasn’t come.

The final invigorating injection of adrenaline which comes with the prospect of the single ticket to Spain getting closer is being denied me! The contracts were supposed to have been exchanged today, but the mortgage company obviously wasn’t able to guarantee the money which is needed a day earlier because of the change in the completion date. I am assured by my solicitor that this delay is nothing to worry about, but I come from a tradition of reading swathes of the corpus of English Literature, and solicitors get (arguably) the worst write up of any group of professionals in the pages of novels and short stories. But, to quote someone or other, I defy augury. I believe in solicitors’ integrity and I know that there is a reasonable excuse of her not phoning me and that tomorrow everything will be sorted out and the timetable for departure will be finally settled.

Enough already!

Now that things appear to be moving towards their monetary conclusion, my attitude towards the house has changed.

I remember when I moved from my flat to this house that the acceptance of a new way of living was immediate. I was no longer a flat dweller; I was suddenly a fully fledged member of three bedroom semi suburbia. Now, in my mind, I have left this house and am living somewhere else in another country. The practical obstacles to this belief (i.e. I am still in my house in Wales) are mere irritations: I want the reality now!

The final packing is taking place and the problems of moving out and away, rather than out and in, are beginning to show themselves. All the little things that you merely transfer to the new house, perhaps putting them in the car, in my case are generally not worth packing. Take, for instance, cleaning materials; tea towels; rubbish bins; bottles of wine; brushes and pots; fridge magnets and all the little things that make a house into a home. What am I going to do with them all?

I suppose that I should resist the temptation to pack everything and sort it all out when I get to Catalonia. I have gone through the ordeal of sorting and putting in storage and there should be very little to pack now. Anyone who thinks that has wilfully chosen to ignore my magpie tendencies to amass. Just that, ‘amass.’

In theory we have one week to get ready to get everything ready and out. This is a sobering thought.

By tomorrow I will be more jocose and serene.

Or not.