house move – Mkingdon's Blog

Getting Seckled

14/03/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move, Walt Disney World

A week can feel like a lifetime on occasion, and over the last week, it does feel that a lot has happened and a lot has been done. From the chaos of last Friday, every day has seen significant improvement and it has certainly been eventful.

We suffered an 8-hour power cut last Monday. It affected the whole surrounding area and we sat in the cold for a long time cursing the power that didn’t be stopping us from getting stuff done. We’ve also learnt a lot too. One of the main lessons was that as pleased as we were to discover that the previous resident has invested in top-notch kitchen gear, those fancy Neff induction hobs are no good to you unless you have the correct pans. We did not, and after a lot of frustration and swearing, Tom discovered via his brother, who also moved into a house with one of these, that we needed to invest in a new set of pans. Had we known before moving in, that would of course have put an end to the deal of buying the house in the first place!

It is true to say that the previous resident liked a gadget. It has been a week of figuring out remote controls (including one that does the kitchen lights…I kid you not) and swearing about why everything needs to be so complicated, but we’re getting there now.

I have constructed my office and despite it being the smallest room in the house it contains all the essentials for work, a 55″ TV, my PlayStation and an exercise bike so that I have somewhere to hang my clothes. it is also of course festooned with Disney knick-knacks and photos. I have, in the words of Louis Walsh, made it my own.

We have taken endless deliveries, both of big-ticket items like a new washer and dryer and new ridiculously large TV for the lounge as well as a cabinet thing to sit it on alongside multiple Amazon deliveries of bits and bobs we have discovered we now need.

We’ve already painted one room that was inexplicably orange and Emily is halfway through painting hers too. We only have about half a dozen boxes to unpack now, and all of this of course has been peppered with tip runs to discard the cardboard mountains we have created.

I went back to work on Wednesday. That long commute down the landing to my new office was glorious, but work was busy and stressful but needs must as the mortgage won’t pay itself.

On Wednesday we were due to have Sky installed. We’ve been waiting for a long time to ditch Virgin and this move was our chance. Well, frying pans and fire seem to be all the rage. Our install was booked weeks ago, for Wednesday between 1pm and 5pm. The chap rolled up at 4.20pm and told us he had only just been given the job, and he finishes at 5.30pm and he had a maternity appointment with his wife that evening. Having enjoyed his life story, I explained that we’d booked this weeks ago and we needed the install doing. He called his boss, who told him to survey the job to see how long it might take. It may amaze you to discover that he estimated it would take just long enough that he didn’t have time to do it.

I was not happy and told him as much. He assured me a new appointment would be arranged for the next few days. Long story short, the next installation slot isn’t available until the 21st of March and I am currently in a robust conversation with Sky’s complaints department. Alas, they are the only horse in town for us if we want TV up here so I cannot, as I wanted to, tell them to show their dish somewhere unpleasant. I yearn for companies who are competent. Sigh.

The dogs have settled in very well. They love the field at the back of the house and the fact that they now get to have the run of the place as the layout means we have no way to keep them downstairs at night. We have awoken during the night to Oli’s arse on multiple occasions.

All in all, we’re loving it. The idea that we were buying a house where nothing would need doing has been rubbished of course. In the ten minutes you wander around a place before deciding to buy it you are never going to spot that bit of dodgy guttering or a conservatory window that needs some attention, but nonetheless, it’s what we wanted and more.

I said I would share some photos. I’m being a bit lazy by just pinching some that Louise posted to Facebook earlier in the week, but here is one I took when I was out with the dogs earlier. By the way, the weather has been shocking since we moved in. We’ve had gales, hail and sideways rain non-stop. I was not aware that we had moved to a whole new climate. You can feel how cold it was on the field in this photo.

You can just see the top of our conservatory behind the goalposts. We are hunkered down into the hill.

We’re still missing some curtains here and there and our new couch has been delayed to the end of March but you get the idea. So enough not so humble bragging. With things settling down with the house and no longer having the constant looming cloud of the move on my mind, thoughts are turning to the holiday of course.

As it stands the dates in the government’s plans don’t change things soon enough for us but it all comes down to when the parks remove the need for masks for us. There is no way Freddie will or can wear one all day, so until that is lifted we are a bit scuppered.

Whilst thinking about alternative dates, and the time is fast approaching when I will make a change, I am hanging fire a little as the vaccines are being rolled out at an increasing pace, especially in the US so there is a small part of me that thinks/hopes this summer may see travel permitted and masks no longer needed in the parks. Then I catch myself and tell me not to be so stupid. I think I have been spectacularly wrong with every prediction so far! WDW are risk-averse and have already said that policy will remain for all of 2021 so I expect that to be the case.

Some day, we will return to WDW. Some day.

Before I leave you to your Sundays, let me wish a Happy Mother’s Day to my Mum and to all those who do “Mum” stuff. Let’s hope this is the last such day where we can’t all be together and do normal stuff.

Till the next time……

Take Me Down To Cardboard City….

07/03/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move

What am I doing here? I haven’t got time for this? People will often say “I have a million things to do” and currently, in my case, that seems literally correct.

The good news is that we did move house on Friday. How I have longed to type those words and have that horror behind us. For more months than I wish to count I have dreaded the day of moving. In fact, way, way back when we were deciding whether to extend or move, I was seriously contemplating months and months of building work just to avoid the experience of packing up and moving to a new place.

Seems silly? Well, you weren’t in my shoes on Friday when those fears were realised. It was not a pleasant day.

I’m not going to go into the multiple horrors in detail. To help my PTSD I need to move on and concentrate on the new beginnings and all that but I will give you some edited highlights.

I don’t know if I told you but we actually had two solicitors, one for the sale and one for the purchase. This was because our first one was relatively newly qualified and when she realised the complexity of our purchase, (due to it being old and with some rights of way issues) she passed that file over to a more experienced colleague. Throughout, that more experienced colleague has been a bit shit.

This held true right to the end. After a fairly easy morning, with the removal men making relatively short work of all the items I had stressed about moving for six months, we got the call before lunch that our sale had completed. We were now homeless for a bit and our selling solicitor had passed everything onto our buying solicitor to do her stuff.

So we actually sat down for a bit, had some lunch and waited for the next call to say we could go and get the keys. As the clock rolled around to 12pm, I was bored with waiting and I set off for the estate agents where the keys would be. This was a good half an hour away so I thought it better to be poised outside for when things happened.

So I arrived and waited. This went on for some time. I called my estate agents, and the seller’s and neither had heard anything. I was trying not to bother my solicitor as they would clearly be busy on a Friday throwing money around for everyone moving house. Ten minutes later and I could wait no longer.

Amazingly I got through and she genuinely seemed surprised to hear from me. I asked for an update. She told me she had sent the money “a while ago” but had not received confirmation from the seller’s solicitor that they had arrived. I explained that my household contents were in a van, I was outside an estate agents in Accrington and our buyer was en-route to my ex-house. These should not be things that need to be explained to a conveyancing solicitor.

“Perhaps you could give them a call?” I suggested, cheerily.

She did and two minutes later I was out of the car, sprinting (Dad jogging) to the estate agents. We had the keys. It was going on for 3pm but we had them.

Sigh.

The rest of the day could have gone better. Our removal men buggered us about by diverting off to another job as we had waited so long for the keys, and that meant we were still emptying our old house late into the afternoon with its new occupants smiling politely and telling me it wasn’t a problem that our fridge and several other items were sat in their new house as they were trying to move in.

Anyway, by about 6.30pm, we waved off the removal van and stared at our new house full of cardboard boxes. A take away happened and then an early night as I was broken both physically and mentally.

Things looked better the next morning. The house didn’t of course as we hadn’t unpacked anything but I took the dogs out on our field (ooohh, get me) and just took a minute to realise we were in, it was done and the worst was over.

I could go on, but honesty I have so much to do. Every room you walk into has a thousand tasks that need sorting, mainly in the shape of a box, so I will leave you to your Sundays.

I need to thank my Mum and Dad for looking after the dogs for the day when we moved. I don’t know what we would have done without their help on the day. The same goes for Rebecca, Tom and Emily’s boyfriend Mikey who have all helped in numerous ways and we are incredibly grateful.

In my immediate future are around 412 tip runs to rid the house of the cardboard mountain we have acquired, and today I am going to try and sort out my office/man cave as I have a desk, chair and other stuff coming early next week.

Overall though, right now it feels like we’ve gone away somewhere nice for the weekend, and it hasn’t quite sunk in that we live here yet, but I suppose that’s a good sign that we’ve done the right thing, despite all the tasks and teething troubles we are currently facing. That’s all natural I suppose when you start to learn to live in a new place after 8 years in another.

More news and photos probably next week when we are a bit more settled.

Till the next time…..

Don’t Stop Moving

28/02/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move, Walt Disney World

After all these months of pain, stress, worry, frustration, heartburn and tedious moaning on my blog, we were fnally scheduled to move last Friday…………….and it didn’t fecking happen.

Yep, we have seldom suffered a week so stressful, frustrating and infuriating. All of the issues sat with our buyer’s buyer, which made things harder as we were always just getting Chinese whispers via our estate agent. The story seemed to change with every update, and we went several days with seemingly no communication at all coming from what appears to be the shittest legal conveyancing firm on the planet. For most of the week, it was said that the delay/lack of confirmation was all down to the lender and whether they could release the funds in time. Now, looking back, I would struggle to articulate all that happened and the circumstances which led to us still being sat in our old house.

As we approached the middle of the week we still didn’t know whether we were moving on Friday. We assumed not, but nobody could get, so it appeared, a definitive answer from the buyer at the bottom of our chain.

At some point in the week, I forget when exactly, our estate agent rang with the first proper update. It turned out that when the 26th of February was proposed and everyone said they were ready, the first time buyer at the bottom declared that they were without confirming that with either their estate agent or solicitor who, maybe, could have told them that they were not ready. So naïve buyers, with bobbins estate agents and solicitors, made for a perfect storm of incompetence and ultimately a disappointment.

If anyone still cares, it took until Wednesday for them to share what the actual issue was. Let me regale you with the inane triviality of what has delayed four house moves.

The house being sold by our buyer apparently had a clause in the lease that said that the ground rent can be renegotiated every 25 years for the first 100 years. It’s a relatively new house so that could happen four times in total. The lender wanted an indemnity policy from the seller, (our buyer) to cover the “risk” that the ground rent could be raised by such an amount that the buyer would then not be able to afford to repay their mortgage. As unlikely a scenario as that may be, why was this not addressed in all the weeks and months that we have all been sat waiting for legal folks to do legal things? When it was raised, it was resolved in less than 24 hours. How we laughed.

So with that done, on Thursday, I think, we had a call from our solicitor telling us that our buyer’s solicitor had contacted her to say everything was now in place. That double proactivity astounded me. Even now just a few days later I can’t really make sense of the sequence of events if I am honest. Life is so busy at the minute my arse and elbow are unacquainted, but at some point, on Thursday or Friday, all parts of the chain agreed that the 5th of March was the new date. It takes 5 days for lenders to send money apparently so that was the soonest safest date to choose. It’s funny how I can send money immediately to anyone just using my iPhone but there you go.

It has been one of the most unpleasant and stressful weeks we have ever known. That will sound over dramatic and even now looking back on it, I wonder how we felt like that, but buried deep in the eye of the storm, it felt like the world was ending.

Still, at least that delayed broadband order I moaned about last week won’t matter as by the time we get in that should all be working. Also, months ago we ordered a new sofa for the lounge thinking that we’d be in the new house for ages before it was ready on the 8th of March. So this new date timed perfectly to have that delivered just a couple of days after we moved in. That was of course until we had a call from the furniture place on Friday, a few hours after getting our new date, saying that our new sofa was delayed till the end of March, because of Brexit. If you follow me on Twitter you may have got a hint that I have some reservations about the sunlit uplands of Brexit, so this piece of news delighted me more than Farage’s glee at another dinghy being sighted off the English coast.

We have lots of luck, but most of it is bad.

With my head spinning from all of the above, plus a really busy/stressful time at work for both Louise and me, somehow, I managed to squeeze in a couple of thoughts about our holiday. It’s a big deal to me at all times so this won’t be too shocking. I think it was last week that the incompetent haystack in Number 10 made some announcements about lifting restrictions that would be data-driven not date driven. He then followed that sentence by announcing a load of dates that everyone has now taken as gospel.

Somewhere in that mess of information was a date of June 21st when “everything goes back to normal” and all restrictions are lifted. This is great of course, were it to happen. However, even if the UK alone could determine that international travel would start again then, that is sadly a little late for us, with our June 14th departure date. Add to that, Disney saying that masks will be needed for all of 2021 and that is the death knell for our trip I think. Masks would be tough for us all in the June heat, but Freddie at three years old, would not understand why he needed one and the battle to have him wear one would very likely be a major issue on the whole trip.

So I’m doing nothing just yet, mainly as flight prices aren’t available for the dates in 2022 I might want, but I have resigned myself to having to pick up and move the whole thing again, or if that proves too hard just cancel and book again when the time is right. Of course, there could be some miracle where the US keeps doing vaccines at 2.5m a day (yep, that was yesterday’s figure) and things get so much better that Disney decides they can lift mask-wearing…..and we may be able to go later in summer/autumn, but I have very low to no hopes of that happening if I am honest.

Let us hope that our house move finally happening, spring starting to be visible on the horizon and the continued success of the vaccination programme all signal a change in our lives and fortunes and a return to some form of normality so that I can once again spend every penny of our disposable income on holidays.

If nothing else it may make your Sundays a little more bearable. Having been through this whole moving thing the obvious and only advice I can offer is, don’t.

Till the next time……

I Fought The Law…

21/02/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move

A long time ago, in a sixth form college far, far away (it’s not, it is actually visible from our bedroom window, but I wanted to shoehorn the Star Wars thing in) a young man briefly toyed with the idea of going to University to study law. A series of unexpected events, involving a week’s work experience in a bank, ending with a job offer and A levels then being abandoned for the lure of £70 a week to fund his ambitions to be a pop star saw that stellar legal career thwarted before it began.

If only I had known the very low bar (pun intended) that seems to be required to practice law, particularly conveyancing (apologies to my conveyancing solicitor reader) I surely could have breezed through life without stress or pressure.

Why am I tarring all such professionals with the same brush? Well, here we sit mere hours now from the day on which we should move house and we STILL don’t know for sure that it is happening. Our buyer’s buyer at the foot of our mercifully short chain is as yet not able to commit to that date. Why you ask? Well, yes I asked the same question. It would appear that when the 26th was suggested and accepted by all parties, the solicitor acting for our buyer’s buyer “forgot” to contact their lender to confirm the date on which their funds would be needed.

This only came to light when I proactively contacted all estate agents and solicitors in the chain that I had details for, checking that everyone was still OK for the 26th. A day or so later this brought forward an email from my solicitor, telling me the news that the start of our chain could not yet commit.

As they are a first-time buyer using a complicated mortgage where relatives donate their savings or some such thing, the release of funds is a complex affair that requires multiple days of complex cyphers and puzzles, a bit like the Da Vince Code but without Tom Hanks, and despite us discovering this cock-up on Tuesday of last week we have still not had confirmation that all will be well for this coming Friday.

We have been assured that Barclays, the lender in question, is expected to confirm the release of funds can be undertaken in time for the 26th on Monday, but still, this has left us with yet another weekend of uncertainty and stress, which makes a nice change.

So despite all the attempts to derail this move, all we can do is continue to pack and pack and pack endlessly, without it seems, any real progress to be seen.

Then, to top off my week, on Friday, our removal man rang me to ask if it was OK if he got to us around lunchtime on Friday as he has had another enquiry for a move on Thursday that he may need to finish off on Friday morning. I shall just let you know that he is turning up at our house at 8.30am on Friday as booked and planned. Sigh…..

I suppose it is months of nonsense like this that leads to me struggling to believe that we will ever live in this house. The thought of moving into the new place was once a source of a modicum of excitement and anticipation and day by day it just becomes a source of worry, stress and angst.

Oh, and….

Knowing that broadband is essential for us workers from home, I ordered it with plenty of time to have it work on the day we move in. A few days later, they contacted me via email with a query about the existing lines in the house. I contacted the seller and answered that on the same day. Having then seen four days go by and my order status not change, I called them. Indeed, nothing had been progressed and now, we won’t have broadband for about four days after we move in. I deliberately chose PlusNet as I spotted the previous owner used them and this should make the transition nice and easy, especially with the house being a bit out in the country. It seems I can do no right. I am raging about this, but apparently, nothing can be done and I sit impotently seething about that as well.

The ordering of new broadband and a TV package for the new place had allowed me last week to finally tell Virgin Media where to stick their temperamental broadband and TV package, uncompetitive prices and even worse customer service where you are not allowed to talk to a human.

Fittingly, it took me five, yes five hours to get to talk to a person and cancel the service. It isn’t actually available at our new house so it saved them the trouble of trying to persuade me to take them with us. I did point out that spending five hours on hold, getting cut off a couple of times and generally suffering this crap for the last few years was not the best way to encourage customer retention. I have to post their kit back to them when we’ve moved. I may do a huge dump in the box.

In an attempt to insert some crumb of house move positivity into this diatribe, Rebecca and Tom picked up their keys on Tuesday. They have already made great progress on the work that needs doing before they can move in but it is great to see them finally over the line. It has gone some way to dispelling the myth that house moves no longer happen and people just stay in a constant state of purgatory until everyone in the chain dies. Decorating has already happened, windows and doors are due to be fitted in the coming days and hopefully within a week or so they will be in and starting to get settled.

So next week I have three days off work because we might be moving house and there are things to do. Then again, we might not, but clearly, I just have to accept this as part of the game. If we are lucky and people fancy doing something to make it happen, the next blog you read will be from our new house. I won’t have broadband of course, so it’ll be some brief badly formatted thing done on my phone. I think I have said this most weeks since the summer (yes, this all started in the summer) but moving house should not be this difficult. The results are in….

Moving House 1 – Overweight Northern Blogger 0

Till the next time…..

It’s A Date!

14/02/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move

Thankfully for you dear reader, I will need to be brief this week as I have things to do.

I owe you an update on our move of course after all the moaning of the last few weeks and months. The week started in a maelstrom of frustration and stress and I was almost immediately onto my solicitor in yet another attempt to get things moving, literally.

I can’t remember the play by play breakdown of how things happened, but a few robust conversations were had followed by me pestering anybody even close to your chain. The two remaining queries that were awaited by our solicitor, remained as just that as we careered into Wednesday, and my conversations in those few days were along the lines of, WTF is it that is so hard about these two things that we sit here, six weeks after they were first raised, still waiting.

My solicitor could not understand that either. At one point I even got her on the phone, and despite my shock at that turn of events, I did manage to make that call useful by understanding a little more about what she was waiting for. My questioning was along the lines of….

“You and my seller’s solicitor do this all day everyday. Why are these two things proving beyond you?”

She assured me they were standard queries with what she called standard remedies and it just needed the other side to do something.

With that knowledge and a new level of frustration in hand, I went to our seller’s estate agent again, and began a conversation with the seller, urging him to kick his legal folks up the arse. It all came down to a missing page of the deeds (the house was originally built in the 1700’s so this was not a shock) and the seller needed to provide one more indemnity policy to protect us from whatever might be on that one page.

As a final testament to solicitor inertia and with all due respect to any conveyancing solicitor’s reading this (I know there may be at least one, hi Rhian!) I got a message back from the seller, via their estate agent along the lines of…

“I have seen a new policy from my solicitor. They haven’t told me what it is for or why it is needed, but I have accepted the costs and signed it for the sake of our collective sanity”.

How can I know what the policy was for and he not? It is his house!!

So with my opinion of solicitors damaged a little more, I told myself that I would give my solicitor till about 4.30 that day before calling her to see if she had received this final piece of the jigsaw. At around 4.10 an unknown number rang me on the mobile. The fact that we are six months into this move and my solicitor’s number is unknown to me, says all that needs to be said about the service we have received I think.

She was calling me to let me know that she now had all she needed and we would now be able to aim for a moving date of the 26th of February. This was a date already suggested to us by our very unimpressed buyer a few days earlier in a vain attempt to hurry us along. We needed no hurrying, just a competent legal team.

So there followed several minutes of relief, joy, and delight that we had saved our chain and preserved the chances of us ever moving into this bloody house. Shortly afterwards, the sheer scale of the work still required to get us ready to do so dawned and the stress returned.

It at least allowed me to move onto a load of tasks that I had been gagging to get done. The essentials such as broadband and a TV package needed ordering. The former being absolutely crucial with Emily and I working from home. So those were done along with quite a lot of address changing and informing utility companies of our move. With a following wind, we may actually have broadband in place by the time we get there.

So the long journey to a moving date is seemingly complete. Let’s hope we do not suffer in the same way as Rebecca and Tom, who had their moving date missed again on Friday, due to, you’ll never guess, their solicitor forgetting to do something! They are now lined up for next Wednesday.

I now need to leave you to survey the catastrophic state of our house and find some more things to put into boxes. This will be interspersed with me staring at large pieces of furniture and stressing about how on earth it will get transported to the new place. It’s how we roll these days.

Till the next time……

Conveying Stress

07/02/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move, Walt Disney World

I am undertaking some rest and recuperation this weekend. For the past few weeks, every weekend has been a whirl of packing and sorting stuff out, but I have decided, no, have been forced, to not do that this week, as to be frank, I’m bloody knackered.

No doubt that is a build-up of month’s of angst and stress but last week especially was a busy one. My own job was particularly hectic, but I was also trying my hand at some DIY conveyancing.

Here is a representation of last week, with me being portrayed by somebody with hair and a normal BMI.

As our solicitor, and as I discovered, our seller’s too, seemed disinclined to have a go at the stuff they are qualified in and paid well for, things were taken into my own hands. I can’t recount the full set of events, but it started with a strongly worded email to all concerned parties on Monday (nobody answers their phone or calls back) and it ended with myself and the seller, via their estate agent, directly discussing what was outstanding and the best way forward.

In a nutshell, there are about six outstanding queries on our purchase, mostly relating to the quirky and often changed nature of the house and all its conversions and extensions over the years. The solicitors involved were playing a never-ending game of email tennis, which when I finally wrestled a copy of the email chain from my solicitor, seemed to contain lots of referring each other to other emails dated blah, blah, blah and not a great deal of effort to actually get any of the issues addressed.

So I took it upon myself to reach out to the seller and ask him to try to get his solicitor to do something….anything…..much as I was trying to do with mine. Via their estate agent, an email exchange happened, and rightly or wrongly I shared with him the outstanding issues and asked if he could help get this sale done so he can pocket all of our money.

To his credit, he quickly agreed to cover any outstanding bits of paperwork that could not be provided with an indemnity policy, much as we have done to our buyer for works done to our house that we have no paperwork for and gave his solicitor a kick up the arse. Last I heard late on Thursday was that he had approved the draft policy provided to him and told them to get on with it. I am led to believe that this is now with our solicitor but of course, any form of proactive update from them is clearly not in the package I am paying for, and I shall have to wait until my third email chaser next week to get a half-formed update. There was no point in trying to get any such update on Friday as she has long since made it clear that Fridays are a day when she has more important stuff to do.

So I do not know if this covers all outstanding queries but it will sort the majority. The coming few days may see my solicitor do something other than ignoring my calls and emails.

I think the stress and frustration of all that hit me on Saturday morning when my body untensed after such a busy week, both in the job for which I get paid and the one I am doing despite paying someone else to do, so I woke feeling like rubbish. I declared the weekend a write off and that I wouldn’t be doing anything of any note.

Indeed, the day’s only achievements were eating three-quarters of a pack of Rich Tea and having two poos. A red-letter day indeed. The evening, as nearly all of them are now, was spent binge-watching something. Our current set of things on the go are –

Servant (on Apple TV)

The entire Marvel film back catalogue on Disney + (to be fair we only started that journey last week by watching Captain America, so I don’t know how committed we are to that).

Wandavision

Celebrity Game Face

The latter is our newest form of vegetation and is a new discovery tucked away on the channel E. We seldom watch this channel as it normally features too many Kardashians or reality shows about WWE wrestlers that we don’t know. However, we stumbled upon Kevin Hart’s Celebrity Game Face. It’s silly, pointless and at times hilarious and just what you need when you’ve been trying to move house for six months and still don’t have a clue when it might happen. Give it a go if you want to turn your brain off and have a chuckle.

Of course, Rebecca and Tom’s move did not happen last week as they were promised. Their seller had the nerve to find himself in hospital, which rendered him unable to sign things and so their date has been put back to next Friday. It’s almost as if moving house is an absolute horror show that you should never, ever do.

Someone commented last week that I didn’t even mention our holiday. It’s a sign of how full my mind is of houses, solicitor inertia and other such bollocks and I know the entire UK Disney community uses this blog as some sort of bell-wether or canary in the coal mine for their entire planning strategy, so here’s my current take.

My current forecast of the chances of us being in WDW in June is slim to none. I can’t back that up with any firm stats or evidence and as such I have been invited to take up a position in cabinet, but it’s just a feeling. Now, I know that my overall mood right now is one of stress and frustration, so I may not be in the best place to make that judgement, but it just feels too soon….again.

Being so tired and emotional I also feel that even if borders are open, the thought of wearing masks, especially for Freddie, also appears to be dragging me down a bit. Not that we will ever be back to the normal we thought we had pre-Covid, but I think it will be Summer 2022 before things like social distancing and masks have a chance of being removed by the risk-averse Disney parks.

As I said, I’m tired and emotional. For that reason, I am properly missing our holidays right now. The juxtaposition of seeing my trio of vloggers in the WDW parks whilst we have to stay in our houses wrapped in cling film isn’t helping.

Who knows. By the spring, international travel may be allowed with a vaccine or a negative test and we may be able to make the best of the experience despite the masks and at least get some sun, good food and a change of scenery in mid-June. If we can’t, then I guess the next obvious set of dates would be our usual very late August time of year, but I have to say, sacking it all off and waiting for 2022 is also a very real consideration. There are only so many times you can book one holiday.

So there you go. A post where you can almost see my tiredness and stress hanging off every word. Luckily, everything that is contributing to that will continue at a pace for a while so buckle yourselves in for the next few weeks. How frequently I will update you on the poo count is, at this stage, unknown.

Till the next time……

Louise Bought Me Expensive Hose

31/01/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move

Hey, guess what? We STILL don’t know when we are moving house. Incredible isn’t it? With how quickly everything else has gone with the process so far it was nailed on that we’d be all sorted this week. Right?

Instead, it took all week, yes five working days, for a set of questions to go from our solicitors to the seller’s, get answered and get sent back. That doesn’t include our solicitor actually checking that they are happy with the answers. Oh no, that has been scheduled for next week, and if they do need further clarification, no doubt that will be another week down the swanny.

To say we are sick of the whole shit show is an understatement. We are trapped in this limbo of being half packed, but unable to do a massive list of tasks that can’t be done until we know when we will actually move.

In better news, after all sorts of shenanigans, stress and swearing, Rebecca and Tom are now scheduled to complete on their purchase on Tuesday. That is a relief and one worry off all our minds. At least they will be sorted and can crack on with the work and decorating it needs before they can move in.

Whoever finds a way to simplify, modernise and speed up the conveyancing process in the UK deserves to be a billionaire. It is literally unbelievable how unfit for purpose the whole thing is. As an example, despite the fact that legally, everything could still fall apart and we may not end up buying the house, we have had to take out buildings insurance on it, as the mortgage company insist on seeing that before they will release the money. So, if the worst happens, we will be the proud owner of an insurance policy on a house we don’t own, for a year.

I think much of my own stress is based on two things –

I am building up the day of the actual move into a horror show that will probably never materialise. For some reason, I think the amount of stuff we have and how big and awkward a lot of our furniture is will be an insurmountable problem for removal folks who do this every day.
I look around at the house and cannot imagine a time when it is totally packed up. The sheer scale of the job terrifies me and we can’t go full steam ahead until we have a date as we need a lot of the stuff for day to day living.

No matter the scale of carnage at the new place, when we are in with all our stuff and we wave off the removal van, I will breathe the largest sigh of relief known to man.

To give you some appreciation of the scale of disruption in the house right now, this is just one corner of our dining room.

To add insult to injury, last week also saw Louise’s car in for a service. It was only marginally cheaper than the house purchase. It has to return for a 2 day stay at the garage next week to complete all the work required. To save time, they have a kidney harvesting facility on-site now, so it’s a one-stop-shop.

Having had a bit of a week, yesterday I undertook some hard labour and carried a lot of boxes down from Emily’s bedroom. She is up in the loft so that was two flights of stairs per box. I then emptied the spare room, Rebecca’s old room, of 90% of the boxes in there too. This is why the dining room looks like it does. By mid-afternoon, after also clearing out and either binning or packing up some of the kitchen, I got a little tired and emotional. I think if any of you had tackled your “under the sink” cupboard, you too may have found that to be the straw that broke your back.

Louise went out to buy a new hosepipe. No, really, it makes perfect sense. It’s January, and we move in a few weeks so this was clearly at the top of our shopping list for understandable reasons.

Wanting to leave our house in the best state for the new occupants Louise decided she needed to jet wash the back yard. Personally, I thought the dark green shade of the flags went well with the overall aesthetic of the back of the house, but no, jet washing was to happen.

Of course, at the back end of the summer, our hose pipe had broken. So Louise came home with a new one yesterday. She asked if I would set it up and connect it to the jet wash. Sure thing. This will just take a couple of minutes, then I can have a sit-down and relax for a bit.

I’ve seen simpler instructions for rocket flight. It was ridiculous and my tired, patience deficient brain just would not onboard the 72 step process to get some water through a pipe. Louise had seemingly bought the most expensive hose in the place, which is not a phrase I can get onboard with unless it is for a special birthday treat.

Things were not helped by Louise suggesting she asked our neighbour or my Dad to do it as they were “better at this sort of thing”. Words were exchanged, at volume. Louise wandered off to get my Dad and in that time, I did manage to figure out at least the first few steps. My Dad arrived and fairly quickly water flowed into the jet wash and I retired indoors to evaluate my life choices.

Had you told me, back in the summer, when this whole house move thing started that my breaking point would be figuring out why a hosepipe had a spring that needed fitting somewhere in it, I may not have believed you. Further breaking points lie ahead I am sure. When I was younger, whatever ailment afflicted me, my Mum would say it was because I was tired. I have self-diagnosed the same thing for me at this time.

So another day lies ahead filled with takings thing out of places and putting them into boxes. Meanwhile, our solicitor might, if the mood takes her, at some time next week, brush the cobwebs off our file and casually glance at what the next steps may be so that we are in for Christmas.

The next time I move house, it will be me in the box being carried out of the house!

Till the next time…….

Positivity Payback

24/01/202124/01/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move, mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Like some sort of legendary mythical siren, calling sailors onto the rocks, my positivity packed post last week seems to have summoned the combined forces of negativity and doom onto our shores.

I apologise and promise to just piss and moan every week from here on in.

I don’t know if it is more a symptom of where my head is, but this week, I have just sensed a collective groan and downturn in the mental health of the entire country. I’ve seen social media posts from friends expressing despair, downheartedness and downright depression. I don’t know specifically what it is, but the mood seems to have slumped.

Yes, we are rolling out the first jab at an impressive speed, but I think there have been a good few signals that this isn’t a silver bullet that will deliver us relief as soon as we would like. The government briefings have continued to be a mess of blaming everyone else and moving the goalposts and it has led, I think, to a dreary realisation that as much as there may light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel is very, very, very, very long.

My younger foolish self, all that time ago last week, was fairly upbeat about the prospect of international travel by the late spring or summer. Whether I am just drinking the kool-aid and reacting to the downbeat and cautionary messaging from those in charge to make us all realise this is far from over, but now, being much older and wiser, a full seven days later, I am much less optimistic and I have to say I am now in the mind that we will need to rearrange again.

I am very open to being wrong. Six months is a long time I suppose.

My vlog watching has not diminished. For someone with a very low tolerance for vloggers, or should I say most vloggers, we have settled on a trio of folks, The Trackers of course, who seem to be approaching Bill Gates levels of earnings from their efforts, and good luck to them, Prince Charming Dev and Paging Mr Morrow. Between the three of them, they do just about produce enough content to occupy the short windows of time I need them to fill as I do my twenty minutes on the bike or during that wasteland of TV around the time we eat our evening meal. Of course, they sometimes all chase the same content as events happen and parks do new things, but overall they are deserving of my eyeballs.

What I would say, is in recent weeks, since the end of the Christmas celebrations at the parks, they have all been enjoying how quiet the parks are. Riding Flight Of Passage with no wait, getting onto Rise Of The Resistance on a whim and generally just walking onto everything. I understand that this makes the experience on the day a nice one, but I am a little concerned about this. I know the parks are quiet at this time of year, but in light of where we are, and looking at the amount of time still to go before the parks can enjoy “normality”, they need to survive. If this quietness continues I worry for more layoffs, closures and other bad things.

The parks need to be there for us all when we can return. I am in no doubt that once we can, there will be the mother of all bounce backs, but I fear for them in short term. It’s probably unfounded as these companies no doubt have more of a clue of how to structure their finances than, and I know it may shock you, some random bloke from Bolton, but I often find that I don’t have enough to worry about, so I take this on as well.

Speaking of stuff to worry about, I do admit that this house move nonsense is getting to me. I think it’s getting to us all. I include Rebecca and Tom in that, as their move last Friday did not happen due to seller idiocy and solicitor delays, with a hint of Covid related issues. They are battling with all of those to try and get their deal over the line and get the keys.

We waited all last week for an update from our solicitor only to find that when we got it, they just confirmed that things were exactly where they were the last time we had an update. It is beyond frustrating. We are unable to plan anything needed for the move whilst at the same time living in a house that is now 45% bubble wrap and cardboard. We await another promised update early next week after of course, I have had to chase them half a dozen times to remind them to give it to us.

Louise is dealing with it all by going and sitting outside our new house. It exists between where we now live and where she works so she often pops by to make sure it is still standing.

After her snow ridden day at work yesterday she called on her way home to see how bad it was to get to when the white stuff hits. It was just about OK.

I have to point out that as large and impressive as that looks, it isn’t all ours. The old farm it is within also houses a couple of other properties inside those gates. However, we are lucky to be moving to somewhere like this. I’ll be honest, it has only been possible as nowadays the mortgage application form has a new section where employees of the NHS can declare the amount of claps they have received and they now count towards your income. Which is nice.

So on we go, into another week, just like the last. I think a lot of folks who bother to read this guff do so because of a shared love of holidays. For many, if you are anything like me, these trips act as both incentives and relief for the day to day slog of going to work. Without them, like now, it feels like there is no wind in the sails. There is literally no choice other than to hunker down, battle through and persist. In a few years time we will, I’m sure, look back on this period as we sip a cocktail on the lanai at Bahama Breeze or tuck into a Kitchen Sink at Beaches & Cream and laugh/weep.

There I go being positive again. I apologise for the inevitable payback that will bring.

Till the next time…….

If The Stress Doesn’t Give Me A Heart Attack, This Doughnut Will.

10/01/2021 by mkingdon, posted in house move, mkingdon, Walt Disney World

For those with the ability to remember all the way back to last Sunday and the much smaller subset of folks who care enough about the moan-fest that was last week’s blog, I should give an update. Mary, Louise’s Mum did get her second vaccine jab on Tuesday. That’s good news of course and hopefully by around now her body is much better equipped to keep her safe from the virus.

In less better news I am still no wiser as to what the actual policy is for vaccinations. Are folks going to get the second one three weeks later or is it twelve? I have no qualifications to dispute either approach but whatever has been decided for heaven’s sake communicate it clearly. My Dad had his letter about his vaccine late in the week so it would be nice for him to know what to expect. But, let’s focus on the positive, that folks are getting some protection at least. Looking at the figures, we desperately need it.

In a world ravaged by a pandemic and where one of the globe’s superpowers repelled a coup attempt last week, you might think that the trivial matters troubling me may have been put into some sort of perspective. You might think that if you have never read this blog before, but of course you’d be wrong. I am troubled by world events. However, my own little world is a busy one and my mind is a whirling mess of all the stuff that is going on.

The putting of our house into boxes has begun. I feel better now a start has been made, but at points during that process, I have stepped back and forlornly looked around at the sheer scale of the task and felt as powerless to affect things as I do with global events. All we can do is plough on and hope that at some point we actually do get to move. After all this time it feels like the day will never come. There has been a little bit of significant progress as we now have the contracts to sign for the sale of our house and we will be doing the signing of those over some form of a video call with the solicitor during the week to come.

There are a million other things to do. They are all little things, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but nonetheless, they play on my mind. From the sorting of broadband for the new place to telling every company I give money to that we have moved, the more I think about it, the more things I come up with that need doing and it can feel overwhelming. If only I were one of those people that couldn’t eat when stressed. Alas, I am the opposite and if this carries on much longer the removal men may well be carrying me out of the house with the aid of a winch and pully system.

This is where the grown up, buried deep within me tells me it will all be OK, things will get sorted and it will all be worth it in the end. Good pep talk, now back to the stress headaches and lack of sleep.

In other house news, you may remember me mentioning weeks ago that Rebecca and Tom were house hunting? Well their purchase is progressing about as quickly as ours. Despite them being first time buyers moving into an empty property, they too are sat waiting for legal folks to collect various bits of paper before they can get in. What is the betting that we get the same moving in date. It’s one of those odd quirks of fate that I can see coming.

So, I could do with a holiday. To be honest, I’d settle for the knowledge that I was going to get one as planned. On that note, I still don’t have my refund from Virgin. After a full week of trying to extract some sense from their automated text system, I think I did get an actual human to respond, who just said they have referred it to a supervisor who will chase the refunds team and they can give no timescales. Well, I don’t know about you but that makes me feel loved and all warm and fuzzy inside. I am desperately trying not to take out my stress and frustration at other stuff out on someone just doing their job.

Let’s end with something not related to a global pandemic, the breakdown of democracy or my own petty little stresses about everyday life, shall we? Remember the old days when I would blog about holiday plans and food. Let’s take a small step back in that direction. This last week or so saw two new places open in Disney Springs. Gideons and Everglazed. The former is a cookie place and the latter, doughnuts. Those two acts in themselves have made the world a slightly better place. I have watched a vlog or two about Gideons and it looks great. The shop is wonderfully themed and the cookies look amazing. I did see that it had to temporarily close again but I am ignoring that for the time being in this hunt for normality.

One thing that really caught my eye was from Everglazed. Long time readers will know of my fascination and love for the Doughnut Burger at Teak, so something about that sweet and savoury mix pleases me greatly and along those lines I saw this…The Grilled Cheeeeeese

A grilled cheese sandwich on a doughnut seems all kinds of right to me. The article reviewing all the menu items, from which I pinched the image above can be read here. There’s nothing like a little bit of food porn to brighten your Sunday.

Let’s quit whilst we are ahead on that slightly positive note and reconvene next Sunday to see if I have had a stress-induced stroke.

Till the next time……

C*ntry House

15/11/2020 by mkingdon, posted in house move, Walt Disney World

As the great poet and philosopher George Formby said, it turned out nice again. In what is and has been par for the course in Mkingdon land since our time on earth began, drama, crisis and faff are the currency in which we trade and somehow, inexplicably, often things turn out OK. There are many times they don’t of course, but let’s not go there.

I ended last week’s post with a minor fib. Forgive me. For those of you who can’t remember, didn’t read it, or really don’t care, let me remind you that I dropped a subtle hint of some upcoming kerfuffle with the purchase of our new house.

The seller, some five weeks after accepting our offer, still had not found anywhere to move to. This was causing our buyer and their buyer some concern and they were applying a lot of pressure to us to come up with some progress towards a moving date. Our seller also refused to even contemplate moving into rented accommodation to preserve the chain.

I get it. They were downsizing and finding it hard to find something that didn’t feel like a shoebox compared to their home of the last few decades, but it did not solve our issues and protect us from losing our buyer. We had looked at renting, but everything was a six-month minimum term and our menagerie of pets would have restricted our options to a field or a shipping container.

After several chats with our estate agent last week, their advice was to give our seller a deadline and start to keep an eye on what else was on the market as a Plan B, just in case. Unbeknownst to them (and Louise) I already had said plan B in my locker in the shape of a house I saw come onto the market just after we had our offer accepted on the original house. I had put it to the back of my mind, happy with our choice but as this situation developed I have to admit to looking at it, wondering if it were still available and half wishing the purchase might fall through so we could consider it.

So last Saturday morning I planted that seed in Louise’s mind. By 3pm, we were inside it (the house, not Louise’s mind) having a look around and by about 3.05 we were both exchanging knowing looks, certain that this had to be ours.

So taking our usual measured and considered approach, as we drove home from the viewing we phoned and made our offer. The vendor wanted time to think and would let us know on Monday. So you see dear reader, I knew all this last week but did not want to tempt fate or jump any guns by sharing it with you all.

The thing that sealed the deal for us was that the vendor had no onward chain. He has already bought a new house and is close to completing on that, so any issues with them finding somewhere to go were solved.

Monday came and as we had not heard by 11am I of course chased them up. What is it with people? Just do it. There followed a fairly intense day of negotiations and faff, resulting in an accepted offer at around 4.50pm, leaving me precious little time to inform estate agents and other interested folks.

We did feel bad about pulling out of the previous purchase, but, from their reaction, it feels like we did them a favour. They have “other stuff” going on in their lives, since agreeing to sell, and apologised for the lack of progress, wished us well and said they would take theirs off the market and come back to it next year. So we didn’t feel so bad after that.

What then followed was a week of very heavy admin, amending mortgage applications and informing solicitors to get everything moved over to the new house. Most of that is now done and so we now just wait for the survey, conveyancing and all the other stuff to happen before we can move. The estimated timeline seems to be January at the earliest.

Louise and I are both happier with the new place if I am honest. It is slightly further away from our current location, more rural, which is nice, bigger, better and just more suitable for our needs by quite some distance. Crucially, unlike the other house, Louise cannot think of any major works that it requires, so that’s just peachy.

It’s an old converted farmhouse and has retained a fair bit of land with it. It is a type and standard of house that we did not expect to ever be able to get, but for (almost) the same price as the other one, it seems we can, due to it being outside of our current location which carries a high premium due to the local schools. We care not one jot about schools at this point in our lives so that extra ten to fifteen minutes to get back to see our parents is worth every mile.

I do shudder at the thought of how braggy and crass all this is, and it makes me very uncomfortable (hence the title of this post) but you get all sorts shared here, the good and the bad, so I can only apologise.

So with another apology for the hideous nature of all this, here are some photos.

I’m looking forward to being a bit more out in the sticks and the dogs will love the extra outdoor space. So by feeling more genuinely excited about this new property than the previous one, I take from that it is meant to be and it, as I said at the beginning, turned out nice again.

Enough vomit inducing not so humble bragging. Let’s move on to vaccines and holidays.

The news of a vaccine coming within weeks was welcome of course. Many will have concerns about having it which is fair enough, but hopefully, it is a major step towards some form of normality. Looking at the rollout schedule, Louise will be eligible early doors I think as a health care worker, with the rest of our family then being fairly close to the end of the queue, so I don’t think this will rescue our March holiday if I am honest. Whether, once the most vulnerable are done, travel is opened up, I, of course, have no clue, but my thinking right now is that we’ll be more likely to be able to go in the late summer, when there’s a fair chance that most folks will have had the chance to have the vaccine and we may be able to move away from masks in the parks and social distancing.

Knowing Disney and their understandably risk averse nature, those two things may take longer still, but hearing about their recently announced losses, I would imagine they are very keen to get back to full capacity and no restrictions too.

However all that shakes out, it does seem that in the next six months or so, the worst of this may be behind us and that is at least some hope to cling to. The only trouble is, the longer we wait to go on holiday, the more airline seats I will have to book to cope with my work from home, lockdown inactivity ever-expanding girth which is accelerating at an alarming rate. How much are those ECVs to get around the parks? This whole thing has confirmed my thinking that it has only been WDW holidays and the fact that I had to leave the house to go to the office that has stopped me from eating myself to death.

I did ten minutes of gentle exercise yesterday and almost had to go to A & E. The long journey back to my legendary athletic build may be a long one, but as we get back to being able to look forward to stuff it may keep me honest and on it, which since March I have absolutely not been.

Till the next time……

Un-Presidented Joy

08/11/2020 by mkingdon, posted in house move, Walt Disney World

I’m Craig Williams, in Bolton and THIS is CNN.

What a surreal week it has been. Not that I have missed a moment of work to do so, but I have watched CNN for about five days straight. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. It has been its own parallel universe of interactive maps and incredulity at how long it takes to count votes. If nothing else, my geographical knowledge of America has increased by about 3000%.

Before this week I have dipped into CNN from time to time. If I screw up my eyes really tight and eat something that tastes of cinnamon, I can almost imagine I am in Florida whilst doing so. This week though felt like a week of holding my breath. This won’t be a political rant but, it was nice to exhale yesterday when the result was confirmed. I know little about Biden and have no idea if he will be a great President or not. In my view, it doesn’t matter who replaced Trump, just that somebody did. The rest can be worked on.

Getting back to the recent core focus of this blog, and whether we will be able to go on holiday at some point on the future, will this change make that any more or less likely? I have no clue. I’m an increasingly overweight alleged middle manager in a northern backwater and my insight into global pandemics is not something I would include on my CV.

I was really encouraged to see one of the first things Biden announced was his intention to at least have a go at sorting things out. He was taking briefings on the virus even whilst waiting for the results and has now said he is going to set up a task force to tackle it. The pleasing change is that it will be led by actual experts and scientists. That’s got to beat trying to ignore it, right?

Whether that will mean the timeframe for the US opening up to overseas tourists will be closer or further away is anyone’s guess. If they make a significant difference quickly then it may open up the borders, or if they know they have to play it safe and keep things closed for longer then it may not. Either way, I still suspect our March 1st departure is unlikely right now and we may have to go through the pain and expense of rearranging one more time.

I’m strangely sanguine about it and will just be happy for the adults to have a go at sorting it. If only the UK would take the same approach. The latest update there is that the £12bn test and trace system is currently managing to contact about 60% of people exposed to the virus. You can’t go to the pub, cinema or see your elderly parents but your kid is sat with 30 others in a small unventilated room with no mask. I for one cannot understand why we sit in the foreboding shadow of a second wave.

This very strange “Que sera sera” attitude towards a WDW trip is very unlike me and I suppose the intense focus on the house move is probably responsible for giving me something else to fret and obsess about. Perhaps once that is sorted I will be back to rocking in a corner listening to the Epcot Futureworld loop music.

As there is literally no better use of your ears (other than listening to O Canada) then I will point you at this. It is just ten hours of Epcot loop music, but you can always just start it again when it finishes.

Should we have to move the trip again, then I suspect we would move it to late summer, to pretty much a year after we should have been there. That’s a kick in the guts, but for my sanity’s sake let’s hope things are normal enough to do fun things again. Heaven knows how heavy the crowds are going to be whenever that happens. I’m not saying we won’t be there, enjoying the fact that we can jostle shoulder to shoulder with other folks to get a decent view of the fireworks, but I do think the park reservation system will stay for a while to cope with something other than the limited capacity due to a pandemic. With the prospect of the parks hitting full capacity for some time once restrictions are no longer needed, that would make sense. It’s far from ideal of course, but right now, that’s a step forward.

House wise, there is a sniff of some kerfuffle on the horizon as our seller still hasn’t found anywhere to go and is refusing to contemplate going into rented accommodation to save the chain. It’s been a month since they accepted our offer and we and the rest of the chain below us are all some way down the road now in terms of conveyancing and surveys etc so we are starting to apply some pressure (nicely) as there is a risk that buyers below us in the chain may get tired of waiting and look elsewhere, seeing the whole thing crash down. We have some options and tactics to pursue as next week begins so stay tuned for a bit more stress and hassle.

For those of you who know how well I deal with uncertainty, it will not be a surprise to you that the house and holiday situation are causing me stress, heartburn and a lack of sleep. To once again highlight the cruel injustice of the world, where some people see higher stress levels as a route to weight loss, it would appear my body needs triple its normal calorie intake to cope. This may not end well.

Till the next time……

Three, Is The Magic Number

01/11/2020 by mkingdon, posted in house move

I know this place is normally a constant source of joy, happiness, positivity and delight, but even I, the master of all those things am struggling not to stare down the barrel of winter’s gun and think, well, it’s all a bit shit isn’t it.

I could pap on about how dreadful infection and death rates are going to be over the winter and how the government until yesterday were using their “cross their fingers and hope it goes away” strategy to save us all, and what dreadful effects the new lockdown might have on the economy. As much as I am critical of the handling of this pandemic I do recognise the challenge of balancing the economy with the nation’s health. Add to all that the fact that nobody is seeing their Aunt Mabel this Christmas, which depending on your Aunt Mabel, might be a positive, I don’t know. Instead, well, frankly anything instead of that would probably be better received.

Well, let’s see, this week, some more Cast Members were laid off….nope, can’t do that……

How about America’s infection rates setting new records this week and hospitals there starting to become overwhelmed again so holidays seem a forlorn hope….nope…..not that either….

Erm, ah, of course, there is a beacon of joy and reason to be happy this week in the shape and form of my favourite little friend Freddie. He turns three tomorrow. Yep, three. Rebecca and Tom have taken him away for the weekend, having checked all of the relevant COVID rules etc, to Peppa Pig Land for a special Halloween celebration of his big day. I’m so pleased they got to celebrate with him before we go back into lockdown.

Here he is on Friday morning, ready for his Halloween party at nursery.

Because I am not doing negative things in this post I am not allowed to tell you how absolutely gutted we are that we weren’t able to take him to WDW last August and probably still won’t be able to in March, to blow his little mind with all the awesome stuff we could do. That will come I guess, so I won’t moan about that.

Hopefully, he is having a great time and we will see him tomorrow night for his birthday and the giving of presents. He is such a welcome and constant beam of light and happiness in our lives and for that, I am properly grateful.

Since I last mentioned him here he has mastered the potty thing, had about half a dozen different obsessions (currently it is Halloween, robots and dinosaurs, the latter being a constant for a while) and every time we see him, things are just that little bit better.

House wise, no news is being classed as good news right now. We await the survey on our new house to be done, which will hopefully get the mortgage approved and then we can start chasing solicitors to get stuff done asap. Hopefully, the latest lockdown won’t hamper progress too much. Whilst the process isn’t great, both in terms of the paperwork side of things and the horrors of decluttering which we are in the midst of, we are looking forward to the change, a new house and with it, a little more room, comfort and good things, which right now, are the gold nuggets we are all digging for.

During said painful decluttering, in our cellar, which was a museum to our past life, I came across a USB memory stick. Before ruthlessly throwing it out as I am doing with 90% of the stuff down there, I risked plugging it into the laptop to see what was on it. At some point in the past, I seem to have shoved a load of old analogue photographs onto it, including most of them from our 1980 “first-ever” Florida holiday. You’ve seen a good few so I’ll leave those for another time. Instead, let me leave you this week with some absolute belters from the bowels of Williams family history.

If you can’t work it out, my Mum is in the green dress, with a family friend who we went away with and two Spanish waiters. This is summer 1976, on a holiday in Spain before we figured out that WDW was better. That is some suntan is it not?

From the same holiday here is my Dad with my brother and me. It blows my mind that I am about twelve years older now than my Dad was in this picture. Emily always says he looks like a mafia boss in these pictures.

And as I pointed out to Rebecca earlier this week, this last one shows where Freddie gets his good looks from. This is me and my brother with some frankly, quite poor gifts from Santa, I’m guessing in about 1974. My brother has some extraordinary pants on.

If nothing else, these history lessons show that time marches on very quickly and these shitty depressing times will too. At some point in the future, we will look back on them with a mixture of disdain, despair and manic laughter. I will probably yearn for the ability to work from home full-time, whilst booking all those extra WDW holidays to make up for the ones we missed.

Oh, and in the spirit of positivity, we’ve had a change here at the Mkingdon blog and spruced up the look a bit. I hope you like it.

Till the next time….

A Prick Of The Conscience

25/10/2020 by mkingdon, posted in house move, Walt Disney World

Moving house, or attempting to, seems to elevate your waking state to a constant mild hum of stress, with occasional peaks. Mostly, I am just sick of people being in my house, be that for valuations, energy certificate surveys, viewings or as we had last week our buyer’s survey. Those with dogs will know the pain of corralling them away from visitors so they do not love them to death and potentially scare folks who don’t do well with dogs. It’s just all a bit of a faff.

From the second the surveyor left our house and we began the wait to hear the results, we did, of course, think that would return all sorts of negative stuff that would either reduce our sell price or completely scupper the sale. Our glass was on its side, rather than in any form of fullness, half or otherwise. We felt a little battered and bruised by the rough and tumble of the short process to date.

Last week I also spent a silly amount of time on the phone to the bank formally applying for our terrifying new mortgage. The chap from the bank now knows more about us and our spending habits than our immediate family. Again, we now await the decision of that jury. Waiting and stress. It’s just a lovely combination.

I don’t know when we might move. I guess there’s an outside chance of it being before Christmas should winds be blowing in the right direction and no hitches be encountered. Our estate agent has warned that the stamp duty exemption has created a spike in activity and solicitors are and will be busy so things may take a little longer than normal. For a process that is not known for its swiftness, this may mean we will have one last Christmas in our current house.

Of course, should the survey show our house was held together with sellotape and spit and was worth about £7.50, then the whole thing would be irrelevant and we’d be back to square one, just minus all the money we’ve now spent on surveys and other move-related things. Did I mention elevated stress levels?

Anyway, on Friday morning we received a phone call to confirm that our buyer’s mortgage offer had been issued, meaning that the survey was all good. This was good news of course and now meant that the harsh reality of moving was very likely a thing we’d have to actually go through with. Between now and then we will have to undertake one of THE biggest declutters the world has ever seen. Yesterday I began the enormous task of clearing out our cellar. Imagine a place where for eight years you have put stuff you don’t really need but don’t want to throw out. Well, now that has caught up with us and I’ll be rectifying it at length.

What I really need is some form of holiday or break to look forward to. Luckily I have such a thing booked for next March. How I am looking forward to that definitely going ahead.

I have to say that I have pretty much-made peace with the fact that this will not be happening. I would love to be convinced otherwise, but I cannot see anything that will significantly change between now and then. I do of course hope that very shortly the US gets a President who is not incompetent, deceitful and seemingly intent on killing his own citizens. If the US gets something like a plan in place that’s got to help, but it doesn’t fix our issues or open up the airways from the UK to the US.

Should we not be able to travel by March, I’m not sure what we will do. I suppose it will depend on the cancellation policies of the companies involved. I suppose we would rearrange to a later date again, mainly as I really fear for the future of many of these travel companies and want to spend some money with them to keep them viable for when this is all over, but the temptation to cancel the whole thing and come back to it when some form of normality is available is growing.

Florida seems to be doing OK if the published figures are accurate. I say OK, in the context of the number of deaths every day is stable as is the number of new cases. The theme parks seem safe, mainly as they are doing a good job of mask enforcement and social distancing. Maybe there’s a clue there for the rest of the world? Crowds are growing it seems, with Universal yesterday reporting that the parks hit capacity by mid-morning. Nobody really knows what capacity limits the parks are operating at, but with so little open in most parks, queues are long.

As that, of course, doesn’t look too enticing, some part of me thinks it would be better not to go in those circumstances, but another part of me would just like to be there.

The wild card in this game of holiday roulette is a vaccine but within the timeframes, we are working in, that seems unlikely. Would I have it? Yes. I suspect other countries might insist on incoming visitors having proof that they have done so, and for that and many other reasons, I would gladly endure the prick. However, I will not endure any prick who comes at me with anti-vax bollocks, and similarly that the COVID virus and resultant death toll is a hoax. Facebook is awash with “medical experts” spewing up this shite and if it’s not too much a contradiction, I wish a pox upon their collective houses.

I try not to let that make me too angry as it isn’t productive. These days, as you will know from my Twitter activity, there is much to bring despair and anger to daily life and the world is not in good shape. I keep that political stuff out of my blogs as nobody comes here for that. However, this week I am going to make an exception without apology. The decision to not provide food for kids who might need it over the school holidays was an abhorrent disgrace and I just needed to get that off my chest. How anyone can make peace with that is an absolute mystery to me. Sure, some parents are a bit shit, and maybe a few fit the Daily Mail stereotype of pissing their meagre funds away on iPhones, cigarettes and Sky, but even if that were true of the parents of every hungry child, how on earth is that the fault of the children? Honestly, if you can imagine any child in your life being truly hungry and without food and be able to imagine not doing whatever it takes to feed them, then please read another blog. Sigh…..

Let’s get back to more normal topics. For now, the whole house move thing is proving to be stressful, but in a way, a welcome distraction from fretting about the holiday every minute of every day. Even I have a limit as to how many things I can stress about at once.

As that house move shifts into the realms of reality, we are now confronting the “problems” of where all our stuff will go in the new place. This brings to light the lunacy of buying a house. It is odd, is it not, that the biggest purchase you are ever likely to make is decided upon within the few minutes you wander around a house. Now, as we have to think practically about what we will have and do in each room, I realise that I can’t actually remember most of the rooms in any detail. I say that as if I will have any input into those decisions. Of course, Louise will be doing that.

Let’s pull this meandering rant to a close with a collective wish for that vaccine. Ideally, all the medical experts from the Facebook comments section will be recruited into the teams trying to come up with a vaccine so that their undoubted expertise can speed things up.

Till the next time…..

Back In The Chain, Gang!

18/10/2020 by mkingdon, posted in house move

It’s funny how, when you look back on “horrible times” after they are all sorted, you then can’t really imagine or appreciate why you were such a worrywart/dick about the whole thing. Human nature I suppose.

Having sat and stressed all last weekend about our property predicament, Monday came……and then went without any progress from the potential buyer of our buyer’s house. He was still fannying about speaking to his mortgage advisor, Childline, The Samaritans and anyone else he could speak with to inject further delay before actually doing something crazy like making an offer on a property he wanted to buy.

On Sunday afternoon, I had contacted our estate agent to express my lack of confidence in this chap ever actually doing something and said that we should get our property back on the internet. We’d been holding off doing that as this chap was “really close” to making an offer and sorting the whole thing out. Having given him a week, it was time to do something. Louise might tell you that this was her idea, but don’t let her fool you.

So by tea time on Sunday, we were advertised again and we were feeling suitably annoyed that every house we went to view had 412 offers on it within seven minutes of being on the market and here we were still looking for a buyer who had a buyer, who had a buyer etc etc.

By early afternoon on Monday, we had a call to book a viewing in. So we did for that evening. I admit I had little to no hope of a new viewer being the saviour we needed but absolutely didn’t mind spending hours preparing the house again.

So, we tidied up, again, and got the house into a state that suggested nobody actually lived in it to make someone think they wanted to. Louise was working a late shift so Emily took the dogs out whilst I showed the couple round the house.

I made all the same small talk I had made on the other viewings, and did my best to sell them probably the most expensive thing they had ever bought in their lives to date. They made all the usual noises about it being lovely and off they went. My spirits were not soaring with hope and expectation. We were, I thought, still relying on “delay man” to rescue our chain.

Earlier that day, we had been told that our buyer’s buyer (delay man) had a final call with his mortgage chap at 10am on Tuesday after which he would know whether he could offer or not. Sigh.

Tuesday began and at 9.30ish my phone rang and as by now I know our estate agent’s number by heart, I knew it was them. Expecting another tale of delay and dither I answered with zero expectations.

They were calling with feedback from the viewing the day before. Apparently, the couple liked it. The tone of voice being used suggested an incoming but. However, the call took a mighty fine turn when they told me they wanted to make an offer and it turns out it was exactly the same offer we had accepted from the last ones to do a similar thing.

Joy, deep and long-lasting, flowed and it was only surpassed by a huge sigh of relief. I tried to call Louise, many times. I messaged her, many more times. She did not reply. This was not unusual as when she is at work she can often have her hands in places that do not facilitate them handling a phone. However, this went on all day and the news that she had waited over a week for could not be delivered because, as I would discover when she got home, she had left her mobile in our bedroom!

Even when she returned home, I was then on endless work calls, and it was only an hour later that I was finally able to tell her the good news and a large dark cloud lifted from over us. For now (I do recognise, these are early days in this process) we had a buyer, a chain and no reason to think we would lose the house we were hoping to buy.

As much as I overshare all sorts of crap all over the internet and have for years (Louise still berates me for the Vagisil episode from a trip report a million years ago), I’m not going to post a link to the property we hope to buy here. It may, of course, all fall to pieces as the UK property market seems to exist as a deck of cards that the slightest tremor can destroy but it feels a bit crass to be doing stuff that could be a bit “braggy” when no doubt many folks are struggling at the moment.

We have been incredibly fortunate that the pandemic has not impacted us financially and we have been able to carry on with our long-held plans to upgrade the house a bit. I will though, share a couple of photos so you get an idea of what it’s like.

I guess now we can now claim to be truly middle class as we will have an Orangary!

And that, as I believe they say, is where the magic will happen!

Again, let me attempt to keep the evil forces of bad luck away by stating that we have a long way to go until we know for sure that we’ll be living there, but compared to this time last week, we feel better about it.

Typically the house we are hopefully getting does not fit the exact criteria that we set out as essential when we started this process. It shows that house buying is more of an emotional thing than a logical one. Firstly it is over budget and secondly, it doesn’t have a few of the things that we thought would be deal-breakers.

Ultimately it felt right and struck us as a really lovely family house that would serve us well for the next stage of our lives that will hopefully be filled with grandkids and rats (Emily has expanded her rat family again this week!). It is also within the geographic boundaries that we wanted to be in so that we can still be close enough to our parents to help them out and borrow DIY tools from my Dad.

If nothing else, the endless stress and occasional joy of this process have distracted us from the endless shitshow of the pandemic. My “are we going on holiday in March meter” is at rock bottom. I just do not see what will change by March that will see holiday travel being allowed again. That then leads into a spiral of doom, as that scenario may well be terminal for airlines and theme parks. So, with that in mind, I hope you can forigve the indulgent smugness of talking about spending some cash on a house.

Till the next time…….

Unchained Malady

11/10/2020 by mkingdon, posted in house move

In the context of “first world problems” and “others have it far worse”, last week was an absolutely unmitigated shit show of epic proportions.

Before anyone gets worried that anything serious has happened. Not really. It’s all house related, and as this has been the entire focus of my last week, it is, therefore, the most important topic on the planet. My self-awareness is only matched by my self-pity.

I am reluctant to retell events here as it will only enhance my PTSD, but I suppose as this stuff isn’t over, then I can drop the P from that. As we ended last weekend, and at this point, I am struggling to piece together all the events in some sort of accurate order, I think I was telling you about some offers we had made on some houses.

So these offers we made. On one property we had already offered significantly over asking last Saturday afternoon to “get it off the market”. I’ve watched a few Location, Location, Locations over the years. That failed completely of course and the vendor, being the most avaricious vendor on the planet, went to “best and final”. This irked me and this probably reflected in my less than enthusiastic best and final, which was almost “shove it up your arse”. We were not successful in that process.

That house was always plan B to honest so nil desperandum, we just needed to know if our other over asking price offer might be accepted. Monday dragged on endlessly without news, so I called the agent around lunchtime. What do you mean I may be impatient? I was told that they had spoken to the vendors and they felt it “likely” that they would accept our offer, but the lady needed to talk to her husband about it.

It’s hard to express our frustration at this point. We made the offer at 9.45 on Saturday morning. Had they been locked in separate rooms ever since?

So we went back to waiting. About an hour later my phone rang and it was an estate agent. Not the one I was waiting to hear from, but instead, ours.

They delivered the bombshell that our buyer had lost their buyer. The feeling of a thousand rugs being pulled from under us was mixed with a kick in the goolies. This was not good.

As we came to terms with that and spoke with our agent about what we could do to resolve the situation, my phone rang again, and in an expected ironic twist, our offer had been accepted on THE house Louise had fallen in love with and the one we both agreed was the first choice. Sigh.

So the race was on to reconstruct our chain. We had more viewings booked pretty much immediately, including a second viewing yesterday from someone who saw it on the one previous day we did viewings. We are waiting for feedback and maybe an offer from that second viewing (the estate agents are of course closed today), but all week, we have been more invested in the sale of someone else’s house than you could ever imagine.

Our buyer has had lots of viewings. As they are selling via the same agent as us, and they clearly want to sort out us and them, they have been updating us on their progress. They have had many viewings and one potential buyer has been tantalisingly close to making an offer since Wednesday. Every day, we ring our agent, hopeful and expectant that this nightmare of limbo and risk of losing our house might be over. Every day, there is one more delay and reason that the offer, whilst still expected, has not been made.

Apparently, there are historic issues with the property, that have now been rectified, but the potential buyer understandably wanted all the documentation for that and to do their own checks. How very selfish of them. That is now complete and they just now need to check their mortgage company are happy with that before making an offer. Sigh.

The time window to resurrect our chain is short before we lose the house on which our offer has been accepted. It’s a form of torture. In the very short time we have been involved in this moving house thing, everything that could go wrong has, aside from getting our offer accepted of course. To think this is just the beginning of the process, and we are stumbling over this first hurdle multiple times, horrifies me.

As I have tried to recount the events of last week, I’m not even sure what happened on which day anymore and I have without doubt, and mercifully for you, left out a lot of agonising, moaning, self-pity and swearing.

Still, as often happens, the universe in its infinite wisdom balances things out. Whilst it clearly takes away on the moving house thing, yesterday, to make sure my week really couldn’t get any worse it also gave back. I thought I would weigh myself. Lockdown has not been filled with exercise and healthy eating so the damage will be significant. Bracing myself for the worst, I pulled the scales out, blew the dust from them, like Indiana Jones would from some relic not seen for a thousand years, and stood on them.

Knowing that my tolerance for disaster has been fully expended for one week, the God of self preservation stepped in and the scales told me that I weighted Lo. My weight hasn’t been “Lo”…….well, ever, so that was good news right? The battery running out at that moment was clearly a guiding hand from some higher being, preventing me from spiralling into some nose dive depression. Now, all I have to decide is whether I buy another battery and confront reality or just keep getting bigger T Shirts from the denial store. One battle at a time right?

So next week promises to go one of two ways. Tomorrow, our buyer gets a new offer and our chain is repaired and we can all put this nonsense behind us. Alternatively, that could turn to dust and we lose our house and you have to fear for next week’s post. For all sakes, cross your fingers.

Till the next time……

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