Almost there .....

   It appears I'm finally on the last lap of the house selling saga. In time it will be a half remembered memory. At the moment it fills every waking moment. Five months, two buyers and lots of questions about drains, shared pathways and some really minor things. Which I can understand. The bit that frustrates the most is the legal stuff. We're paying someone a big chunk of money (£1500 plus tax) to handle the above. Our daughter is doing the same. We've come into contact with our ex-buyer and current buyers and the two solicitors acting for the sellers of the homes my ex and I are buying. Nothing much of importance happens unless you prod them with a stick and I'm pretty sure each prod  has added another few quid to the bill. When they say "everything is done." It isn't. When they say "we can proceed," you can't. Anyway we have exchanged contracts with our buyer and we complete on the 11th December. So there's no going back. It's sold.
  All the worry and frustration is gone. What's left, is what I've found out. I don't get half as stroppy over things as I used to. I recognise that, what's important to me may not be as important to someone else, even if I am paying them. If I want it done then I need to get involved. I've stopped getting excited about things and promises until they actually happen. Which if I think about it means I'm living more in the moment.
  We received a letter from the Solicitor with a breakdown of what and who we owe money to and the balance which will be divided between my ex and me. It lead to another conversation about the financial split we had agreed. We agreed this before but then my ex said her share wasn't enough. So we looked at it again. Now she feels we should look at it again. I won't go into detail but we have given both our daughters a small chunk to use as deposits for places of their own. No1 is in the process of buying somewhere. No2 is still at Uni so her's will go into the bank. What's left is split roughly 60:40 in her favour. No2 will be moving in with her for the moment. My ex is spending nearly all of her money on a place close to where she works. She could have moved out a bit further and got somewhere cheaper but she chose to stay close to where we used to live. I'm moving over 100 miles away. I don't know anyone there and don't have any work there. Before you reach for your hankies, I'm a few hundred yards from the sea, the house is a wonderful blank canvas and the town is going through a bit of a stop/start regeneration process. I think what bothers my ex is I'll have more cash left over than she will. The fact that I'm going to have to spend a lot of it to get the place liveable and all of the above doesn't really enter into her summing up. She also has a chunk of money hidden away, which she thinks I know nothing about. Strictly speaking anything property, money etc is jointly owned and jointly shared. As I think I've said before she's very money orientated and it's one of the things, although not one of the main issues that lead to the split. However I'm not going to get immersed in some major row. Which will only lead to giving a whole heap of money to a couple more legal eagles and both get less than we agreed in the first place. Anyway I have to stress that this is my side of the argument. I'm sure she has her reasons for feeling the way she does.

Onwards and upwards in the pursuit of fulfilment :-)))
   

Van, Elvis and me .....

I spent the weekend painting, then went for a drink (my reward). The pub of choice was the Neptune. It's a very old pub as are some of the regulars. God may have brought his first pint there when he turned 18. In fact it may have been one of the regulars that brought it for him.

   Apart from being old the Neptunes other claim to fame is it's floor. It slopes at a pretty alarming angle, whoever said craftsman from the past knew their stuff never met this crew.  If it's your first time and you've mistakenly chosen and drunk a couple of pints of the local brew, a walk to the toilets will have you convinced you've developed a serve limp.

    Anyway Sunday night is music night. So the place was rammed. It took a while to negotiate a clear route to the bar. I must of used up a year's worth of "excuse me's" and "alright's" over that ten foot journey. The bar staff are all female and not very tall.. I could be wrong about the height thing of course, the serve slope on my side of the bar may extend to their's.

   Once armed with a drink I aimed for a spot where there weren't a lot of heads, so hopefully a gap.  Here I could stand and watch things unfold for the next 40 minutes or so. The gap turned out to be the space between the doors to the ladies and gents toilets. I shared it with a redundant jukebox and a bench. Over the course of my pint I think I must of met most of the patrons that night, as the alcohol did it's stuff and moved swiftly to their bladders. First was Parka girl,  I say girl, because the Parka chose the ladies loo and wore high heels. Apart from those two clues there was little else to suggest what was hidden behind the olive green package. Then several large bellied gents one after the other. All wearing jeans and t-shirts with various logos, rendered ineligible after many years of weekly washing. You could tell which were the musio' s and which the dedicated beer merchants. Half wore hats the others carried their beer with them wherever they went. On the whole, the women. We'll those visiting the loo, made more of an effort to be presentable. There was evidence of hair brushes, make-up and perfume. The perfume being much appreciated by me. Considering my position between the loo's.

   After what seemed an age, punctuated with lots of "one, two" one, two, yeah" 's the music started. A cover of a long forgotten Van Morrison number, followed by an Elvis number. Everybody's happy, the musio' s have found enough space to do that head jogging thing, that passes for dancing when there isn't enough room and they have finally admired to themselves after too many years of self delusion that they dance rubbish. The beer merchants have the bar and the mini barmaids to themselves.

   My glass is almost empty and I seriously think about a second but that will lead to a third and then the musio's and the beer merchants will discover what I already know. I dance rubbish.

Onwards and upwards in the pursuit of fulfilment :-)))

Dark thoughts .....

   I have a black post. Sitting here unpublished and not meant to be published. I know I bang on about how this is my secret diary and it's here primarily to help me but a few people follow it. So I'm no longer comfortable  with spilling my thoughts out wholesale.. I add to it sometimes not often.
    I used to write and publish everything but things have changed and I have changed. It no longer feels helpful to me to write down a bit of crap that affected apart of my day or something that I still struggle with. Giving it some space here would suggest it has some importance, It's just the day to day black thought or a chain of events I got myself into and more importantly got myself out of. I feel my blog is more helpful to me if I chart the good stuff or see the positives in the odd bit of gloom. However for the record I do have the odd day where I would be happy to stay in bed with the phone on silent. I still do things in the wrong order. Pushing the important stuff to the back. I'm doing it now, the difference is I know it and I think I know why and this post is almost done.
   There is a chance that contracts on the house sale will happen tomorrow, meaning there is a very real chance that I could be watching ships sail up and down the English Channel by the end of the month and hear the annoying cries of seagulls instead of trains and planes. In the past this would of sent me into total future dreaming. Instead it's, ok let's wait and see (and a little dreaming).
   So I'm done. Except to say that I follow a few blogs and share the joy and pain of the writers and comment occasionally. Today though I'd like to let Shelia and Pixie know they crop up in my daily thoughts and I wish them strength and good wishes :-)

Onwards and upwards in the pursuit of fulfilment :-)))

   This is the second post of two that I'm struggling with. Nothing bad is happening, the sale seems to be moving along in the background and I'm not asking too many questions as I seriously don't want to consider what I'm going to have to do if this doesn't go through but let's not get all doom and gloom. It's only the first paragraph.
   To be very honest I have far more good than bad in my life at the moment. Fact is there has always been more good than bad mostly. Not being able to properly deal with the little bit of bad has been the issue. The last couple of years, where my life has kind of stood still have given me the opportunity to adjust things. I have to say it's more fate shoving things in my way, than me facing them but to my credit once there I have made the effort to be honest with myself and make some changes. Not always as quickly as I should of done but maybe that will be next on the list.
   In other news, the school teacher (who shall be known as miss from now on) had an interesting weekend wandering around the little seaside town I hope will be home soon. She has a couple of dogs and since I've always wanted a dog, they kind of got walked to death over the weekend. It was too wet to go around throwing sticks and shouting fetch so they have that terror to look forward too.
   Work is picking up to and I have a real Lord as a customer at the moment. His London house (he has a couple elsewhere) dates back to 1750 and has plumbing to match.
   That's about it for now.

Onwards and upwards in search of fulfilment :-)))