I like the way your pants fit,
And how you stand and how you sit.
Whatever seeds that you’re sowing,
I like the way this is going.

It’s been a long time coming, but today we finally exchange contracts and agreed to buy a house in a South London suburb. I’ve got onto the insurance policy to take out coverage for the future Sleeper Towers, and that’s sorted. Completion date? Three weeks’ time. In a spectacular display of karma, the idiot at the top of the chain who’s held things back for so long has been ejected – their buyers are going to rent instead, leaving everything in place. I’ll not go into the stress that was involved in getting our mortgage extended thanks to that particular fool again, but at least it’s out of the way now.

Cue the next couple of weeks – a mad ring around of removal companies, sorting out white goods, packing, throwing out stuff we don’t want / need any more.

The ordeal is nearly over? Hell, no. It’s only just begun.

I was so scared, I was lonely.
I got mixed up, Now I’m only…
Evil, evil number two.

We remain in mortgage limbo. After the bank said no to extending the current mortgage, they said “maybe” to another deal (on a slightly lower interest rate!). We’re waiting for them to make their minds up about it now, but I don’t really expect any problems.

No, the problems this week have arisen from other things. On Monday, we got home from work to find the front door smashed in. It’s utterly bizarre what goes through your head in these situations – my first thought was that the landlord must have done it – he has no keys, and must have needed access in an emergency. Or that J had lost her keys and had needed to break the door in. She’d got home first, about twenty minutes before me. The police were on their way, and I called the landlord to let him know what had happened. He wasn’t far behind the police, and after he’d had a few words with them, left again to get something to secure the door with.

It seems that when the door was originally installed, the space for the locks was badly cut, leaving a weakness. One that meant the door splintered, leaving the frame completely intact and the locks falling to the floor. The intruders, equipped with gloves, came in, started rifling through a desk, and then must have heard something that caused them to flee. All that was missing was a single piece of jewellery.

The damage has been done though – we now have a new door, but neither of us has slept well this last week, and every time I come home I have my heart in my mouth wondering if they’ve come back, dreading the sight of the door in pieces once again, wondering if they’ll be coming back with a shopping list of things to steal.

I thought this was a nice neighbourhood, and I’ve very much enjoyed living here, up to now. Now the move can’t come soon enough.

And it’s all your fault
I screen my phone calls
No matter who calls
I gotta screen my phone calls

The man from Santander, he say no. After chasing the solicitor this morning I got a phone call from the mortgage broker in the afternoon. The deadline can’t be extended unfortunately – the mortgage deal in question was closed for applications on June 1st,  so we’re a bit stuck. Current thinking is that we’ll see what other deals they have available as they already have a good idea about the house and our ability to repay.

If that doesn’t work then we’ll have to find some other company. Yay more survey fees, solicitors’ fees, etcetera. More waiting. Ho-hum. Hopefully some time soon we’ll have an idea of what’s going on. Until then, at least beer exists…

And one day his girl got up
And left and slammed the door
And his fine walls came falling down

But don’t be blue he built a fairground there
For you and I to ride -
Together we belong, you and I.

I’ll admit I’ve had some occasions in the homebuying process when I’ve wondered exacty what the solicitor’s doing for her cash. But then yesterday afternoon after getting no luck in trying to get me to buckle under and agree to shoulder the risk, the seller’s estate agent gave her a call. From what I’ve been told, the call went something like this:

“Hello, is that Ms. Jones?”

“Speaking.”

“It’s Mr. Smith here, from Brand X Estate Agency. I’d like to talk to you about the sale of the house at No.1 Address Street. I spoke with your client, Mr. Sleeper, this afternoon. He was most uncooperative, and I wondered if you could perhaps speak to him and advise him that we really do need to exchange before the completion date?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Smith. He’s protecting his own interests under my advice. Good-bye.”

Smackdown.

I’d quite like to have a set of estate agents and house buyers that aren’t completely useless too. I had two phone calls from the estate agent this week.

The first told me that the chain was complete, everything was in place and we could expect to move at the beginning of August. Excellent news.

The second was rather less happy tidings, and by the end of the phone call to say I was utterly fuming would be an understatement. Apparently one of the buyers up the chain had neglected to mention that they were financing their purchase by cashing in bonds. Said bonds would not be liquidated until September 30th.

My mortgage offer expires on September 30th. Major alarm bills started ringing. In addition, the estate agent started pressuring us to exchange. Excuse me? You’ve just told me that I might not have a valid mortgage offer come completion and you want me to accept responsibility if the mortgage falls through or there is any delay? I don’t think so matey.

Pending solicitor’s advice now. Will not be impressed if we have to drop out now.

It seems that buying a house is in some respects like a war – long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. We’re in one such period of boredom right now, waiting for someone further up the chain to sort themselves out. In the meantime, plenty of mind space to start thinking of other things.

And the thing that I’ve been mostly thinking about, quite unexpectedly, is a prequel to The Logic Bomb. In that story, I covered the history of one man and the devices he worked with, which inadvertently brought down the economy. This time I’m going to be concentrating more on the actions of the Prime Minister who left office in scandal and brought with him the need for certain safeguards, implemented in TLB.

I’m going for as little of the fantastic as possible. It’ll be an interesting project and I hope I can pull it off.

Their prey gather in herds
With stiff knee-length skirts
And white ankle-socks.

But while they search for a mate,
My type hibernate in bedrooms above.
Composing their songs of love.

Slow progress on the house. Initial draft contracts have been approved, and our solicitor has sent “Additional preliminary enquiries” on to the vendors, whatever that means. No news yet on an exchange date, much less a completion date. Ah well.

In the meantime, though, I’ve made a start on clearing out all the junk I’ve accumulated, both over the last 5 years living here, and in the years before. When we moved in, a whole bunch of stuff was chucked, still boxed, in the study. If I were being truly ruthless, I’d chuck it without looking through it. Fortunately though, I’m not quite that insane. There’s a whole bunch of stuff in there of interest:

• 10 free tickets to Satan’s Hollow nightclub, Manchester (use by 31st December 2000). I went there for the grand opening and nearly knocked Richard O’Brien flying after drunkenly stumbling into him. He was utterly gracious about it. Good times.
• Entrance tickets to Empire State Building, International Visitor’s Invitation to the US Senate, and assorted other stuff from the first time we went to America in 2002. Been back several times, to different parts of the country, and thoroughly enjoyed myself every time.
• A large collection (upwards of 100) of “Free dial-up internet” discs. I started collecting these when they were common in the belief they might be valuable some day. In fifty years or so I’ll see if I’m right.

Stuff I won’t be keeping includes:

• Every payslip I was issued, July 1999-June 2005. Puts what I’m paid now into perspective all right. Whether I’m underpaid now, or was then, or whatever, I’m amazed that I managed to survive on so little. Then I remember I survived by getting into huge amounts of debt I’ve only recently paid off. Time to shred these, I think.
• Half a dozen assorted PCI and AGP video cards, along with a small mountain of other PC components, including a CD-Rewriter drive that must have cost me a week’s wages, and a DVD-ROM drive. There’s a couple of hard disks here too. One I can’t access and the other seems to be a backup of my PC Circa 2004. Straight to the bin for this little lot, except for an 802.11g WiFi PCI card I don’t remember buying. That might still be useful some day.
• A Compaq T1500 Thin Client PC! For a short while this acted as a box to display video on my TV. Now there’s more processing power in my mobile phone.
• A stack of videotapes. I’ve no idea what’s on them, not having owned a VCR in about four years.

Amazing the stuff that just gets put away in the belief it might come in useful some day. In recent times I’ve become a lot more pro-active about getting rid of unnedded cruft. Just as well, it seems. I’d have run out of space to live in if I’d ket accumulating it at the same rate.

Now it’s just me myself and the secrets that
Live within the walls
Of the mansions of Los Feliz

The sky is falling!

Like many people in this country I spent much of yesterday evening watching the television trying to work out exactly what the United Kingdom has let itself in for. And, while doing so, becoming increasingly puzzled at the reactions of both pundits and the general public at the news that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats had agreed to form a coalition to govern the country.

The election on Thursday had just one concrete result last week – no one party had won the confidence of a wide-enough ranging cross section of the country. While the Conservatives could have formed a minority government, the huge risk was that any bill that was in the least bit controversial (as almost all important new laws tend to be) would fail to pass – a lame-duck administration.

What are we left with then? It was clear from the off that a Labour – Lib Dem coalition could never achieve enough of a majority to get anything passed. They’d have  to water down anything or make huge concessions to the smaller parties, causing problems in the long term. There’s probably an element of truth in the complaints from both sides that the other wasn’t taking things seriously enough. There was just too fragility.

So, we’re left with what we’ve got, which has seemed inevitable since the results came in. Grass roots Lib Dems and Tories alike have recoiled at the news. It seems all too easy to dismiss the Liberals as having sold out or the Conservatives of being desperate. And while the parties disagree with each other on a great many things, then at least the things they can agree on will stand a good chance of getting done.

I do wonder if for some Liberal Democrat supporters the news of the coalition has been taken so badly because for so long they have been able to know that their MPs are in opposition and can therefore disagree with anything done by the party in power. A sort of underdog syndrome, if you will. Things from the ruling side will be very different and change will be feared. However, that being said, a fixed-term parliament will help this – grass roots  activists have five years to be convinced.

For me? I’m going to wait and see. A track record in government will make or break the minority party. Whichever it is, it’s going to be an interesting few years in politics.

I’ve voted. Have you? The campaign here has certainly been interesting. Labout appear to have given up entirely on the constituency, leaving just the Lib Dems and the Tories to slug it out. And slug it out they have – well, in a way. Seems to me that the Conservatives have done nothing but sling mud at their opponents from what I’ve seen from meeting the candidates. Everyone else has calmly stood back and explained their positions and policies. Well, it helped in one way – it reinforced the views I already had.

All that was left was to vote – and that wasn’t straightforward either, at least not as easy as it should have been. When I went, queues were stretching out of the polling station – an encouraging sign at least. However, because the other half is out of town, I’d been entrusted with her proxy vote, and that was where the problems began.

I never carry my polling card – it’s not necessary. I was able to cast my own vote easily enough, but the proxy vote? Bugger me. First problem – you’re not allowed to take more than one set of ballot papers into a polling booth at once, so I had to queue up, cast my own vote, and then queue up again to collect the second set of papers. Secondly, I didn’t have the proxy polling card. The text on it said I didn’t need it.

“You can’t vote without the proxy card,” the presiding officer told me. I argued back, and eventually ID was demanded of me (which I produced, again protesting). Finally I was allowed to cast a proxy vote, but what an uphill struggle!

Ah well, it’s over now. Fingers crossed for a happy result tomorrow.