Full Circle

Every Man’s Home is Their Castle.
That has a lovely ring to it doesn’t it, but what problems arise when one is trying to leave one’s Castle and downsize to little more than a shed!
First things to go are excess belongings, including furniture. CHECK.
Done that through car boot sales, road signage and the charity van comes next week.
Next thing is to run down supplies and the freezer. CHECK.
Food bill some £122 less than May 2013, freezer almost empty and ‘for sale’ notice going up in shops next week.
Packing up. CHECK.
Boxes everywhere, can’t find a thing!

Hubby and I are good.
Hubby and I can move fast.
But with the best will in the world we cannot move house with just 5 days notice.

We have very little in the way of anything, but we do have a few items of furniture (like a bed!) that will require being taken into storage.
We also have 2 cars, again storage arrangements will have to be made for one.
Utility companies in the UK require a minimum notice of 10 days, some 15 for a house move.

The above are things we have to arrange, so a little bit of time is needed, as a matter of courtesy really.
Our buyers were also Sellers, so they too will have had to organize these things, and would have known in advance the date their sale was due to complete.
Also, seeing as we are already receiving mail for them and notices of our utility changeovers, they have had their ducks in a row for some time.
Sadly, no-one bothered to tell us of their completion date or  answer our requests for a time frame so that we could at least get our ducks in the water!
They are now threatening to withdraw from the purchase of our property because we are unable to comply with their demand to move in on Friday. Their argument is that they are now ‘homeless’ and are having to pay for their furniture to be in storage (at twice the amount we have managed to negotiate with a local company by the way, once we could give them a date) . They do however own a large touring caravan.

We are hoping that after the weekend everyone will have calmed down enough to be more practical and realistic. After all, we still want to sell, and it will take more than two weeks for them to find a new property and start from scratch on a purchase, not to mention of course the solicitor’s fees that have already been run up.

Surprisingly, we are not too bothered at not having anywhere to go (we need a holiday anyway) so that is not an issue, especially as we have several options available to us.
Besides, this happened seven years ago (read any of the Camping Chronicles posts) , so it has really gone Full Circle.
At least we still have the tent!

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