The light at the end of the tunnel (beware of the trains).

Part Four (in England).

Tis the season…. To put your six bedroom Essex style mansion with more bathrooms than bedrooms on the market. Even if it is in the further reaches of very rural Ireland. Once again I appear to be devoting my life to haunting the property sites online into the wee small hours, accompanied by a glass (or three) of red wine.

This is obviously also the season where various estate agents awake from their winter sonambulance, evict the spiders, dust off the computer and relist everything on their books. This is bloody confusing! There seem to be (if the pictures are to be believed) a glut of palatial holiday homes popping up. You know the sort, clinically tidy, with the sort of décor often associated with funeral homes and counselling centres. The atmosphere, even at the digital remove, screams waiting room, boredom, despair…. This echoes my feelings quite nicely, though it doesn’t encourage me to make an offer, even if I could afford that sort of money.

For the last week I’ve been oscillating wildly between properties. Should I push for the cottage, despite it’s obvious problems and elevated price, or should I give the surveyor a call and proceed with the new build? The cottage is cozy and charming, it’s got a lovely atmosphere and an acre of good land. The view and location are ok, if not stunning (Ok, I have to stand on a chair to appreciate the view from the bedroom…. Or knock a large hole in the wall). The neighbours seem nice enough, and they are certainly a presence (I can’t help worrying that they might be a bit omnipresent, but that could be a good thing…couldn’t it?). Himself is a great believer in the elusive and nebulous ‘warm feeling’. I suppose that’s what I get from the cottage, though it might just be in comparison to some other properties. Then again, if I were to get the cottage I would have a future where builders feature heavily, and you can rest assured that there will be a surprise with every blow of the sledgehammer and every prise of the crowbar (and every surprise has it’s price). Not that I’m at all worried about the pervasive rising damp, sagging lintels, spaghetti junction of pipes on the exterior wall, starling’s nest in the extension roof, rotting frames…..

Then there’s the strange bulge where one of the roof trusses enters the wall, or the flue pipe from the woodburner that runs in front of and inside the bedroom window (as my cousin very helpfully pointed out, if the chimney breast is gone, what’s the chimney resting on? Ummmm… some soggy roof trusses? I dragged two of my unsuspecting cousins off on a house viewing mission while I was over. The houses I had seen in glorious sunshine were now swathed in dense damp sea fog. This is normal, it was the sunshine that was unusual. We decided to start with the new build, it being further from their ultimate destination. We met up in the carpark of an outlet shop whose location defines the term ‘arse end of nowhere’. My kids remember it as being ‘the one with the donkeys’, not in the shop itself you understand… I arrived early and being the only car on the expanse of tarmac, I felt a bit conspicuous. To justify my presence I wandered in and flicked uninterestedly through racks of unsuitable clothing (it was all a bit floaty and ‘dry clean only’). I nearly choked when I flipped a price tag over….70% off, STILL €80 and with a couple of holes I could poke my finger through… I thought Ireland was supposed to be enduring austerity???? The immaculately coiffed assistant approached and asked me if I knew what I was doing (well, that’s what my brain translated it as). Mercifully my cousin texted at that point, giving me an excuse to make a run for it.

I led the way up a steep boreen. At least the grass wasn’t polishing the sump. The last time I had visited had been a clear day, so as we parked up and my cousins emerged from the safety of their car I had to tell them that they would have to imagine the magnificent view. I then warned them about the unstable rubble and cunningly hidden wires and bits of unidentified metal within it.

We wandered around and peered through windows… ‘well, it’s not an ugly house…’ was the first, and not entirely unqualified praise for the building. We continued to peer and poke, debating the probable use for each room, and I tried to describe the upstairs layout. We kicked pipes and tugged at wires (possibly inadvisable?). We ascended the mound in front of the house (which obscures the view) and peered into the brackish water of the bog surrounding it. “How much land is with it?” “Fifteen acres….maybe” “Of?” “What you see is what you get….” Thoughtful silence.

We headed back towards the cars. “It’s very isolated though…” “Well there are a couple of neighbours about half a mile up the road” “Ok, do you know who they are?” “Er, no, but one of them was found murdered years ago, just up the road, but there’s other neighbours just beyond…” There followed a brief pregnant silence before the two cousins fell about the place laughing. Now that’s what I call encouragement!

We proceeded to the cottage, past the local psycho’s place (I made inquiries as to whether there was a psycho-in-residence, due to the history of the area and it’s is isolation. There is, but apparently his wife is lovely).

When we bounced down the track to the cottage I was expecting something along the lines of “Oh God, why would you want to live here?” So I was a bit taken aback when both cousins burst into fulsome praise and approval “It’s gorgeous” “The Irish Riviera…”. We did the circuit of the house, peering into windows and trying doors (the neighbours were used to me by now). I thought the extension was probably on the verge of collapse and the rising damp had reached it’s apotheosis with nowhere left to go. I thought the teetering water tank and mangle of pipes would have them issuing dire warnings, but no, this was also their dream cottage. Bugger! Why is it that it’s always the one that’s overpriced that I love?

And so it goes on… I got a phone call from Ruin Man. You have to give him credit for maximum effort. He wanted to alert me to a new property on the market, a cottage not far from the other cottage. Do you remember the ‘new prospect’ I mentioned a while ago? Indeed. He did say it was built as a schoolmaster’s house, which might go a long way to explaining the deeply unwelcoming atmosphere there? I mentioned that I never did get on at school, and perhaps it was a little late for me now. I can imagine myself there of a night, the electricity flickering on and off in a gale, paraffin lamp lit, shadows looming… the spectre of some gnarled old bastard in a gown that made him look like a graveyard crow with a cane in his hand materialising on the edge of vision… Pass the poitin, I’ll die in the dark!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder,  so to speak. The charms of the cottage were working on me and I was beginning to imagine what work I would do on it and where the furniture would fit. Fatal! I haven’t even made an offer on the property yet, just made some tentative noises in the direction of the estate agent, which seem to be as pebbles into the abyss. Nothing ventured nothing gained. I texted the estate agent to prod her (I really wouldn’t want to prod him, God forbid, you wouldn’t know what might come back at you!). A curt ‘we are waiting to hear from the vendor and will revert’ Eh??? You mean you don’t know, but off the record you think I’m pissing into the wind, don’t you?

Now I reckon the new build could be obtained for €XXXk, although it does seem to rest on a tangled web of obligations and involvements (I never said a word about evasion, did I?). At least with that I would be certain of having somewhere, I’d just need to install some plumbing and a couple of Bull Mastiffs. No problem. So, how exactly does one go about getting a shotgun licence?

Objectively, the new build suffers from the fact that it’s only half a step removed from a building site. It’s grey, it’s bleak, it sits like a newly formed carbuncle on the landscape… except that it looked exactly the same three years ago when those nice chaps doing ‘Google street view’ drove by. Not a thing seems to have grown since, which doesn’t bode well for introducing a bit of vegetation in the hope of softening the aspect and making the place appear a bit more integrated into it’s surroundings. Judicious planting will not be enough (unless you plant gorse, and more gorse…).

So…. I can have the new build, right here, right now. All I need is enough dosh to finish it, a couple of large guard dogs and a lifetime’s supply of Valium.

OR I can offer for the cottage, be rejected and wait….and maybe increase the offer….and probably get bloody gazumped again, by another bloody Brit cash bloody buyer! (I’m secretly nurturing the hope that the author of my first gazumping finds that she has bought herself into septic tank hell, which neatly saved me from it and allows me a touch of schadenfreude).

And so to more browsing of the internet…. I think it’s possible to get addicted to looking at pictures of the inside of other people’s houses. It’s partly peeping Tom and partly Homes and Interiors (well, maybe not quite as grubby as that).

While wrestling with my daughter’s horse the other day (it’s a long story) I received an email. It was from the agent who took me to see the German house which he thought might go for a significant markdown. You remember the tentative offer on a holiday home, made out of desperation? The one dismissed as derisory? Ok, that isn’t how he described it for my recollection, but you get the picture.

I admit that I was a little distracted by the beastie trying to drag me across the field so he could flirt with his favourite chestnut mare (or in his case, snort snot all over her). I read the message as ‘There’s a garage/workshop behind the German house which is now on offer for €XXXk’. It’s a true blessing that my hands were otherwise engaged. As I lurched up the track, alternating between towing and being towed I fulminated and grumbled. X00k for a bloody garage? Would that come with plumbing and Ferrari included??? Mentally I composed a series of sarky messages which I could respond with. I knew this guy tended to overprice stuff, but this is insane!  That train of thought called to mind another property which he had shown us, another holiday home. It looked and felt like a converted garage, which it might well have been. It had a sauna, which for me, conjured up images of sagging beer guts having a swingers party. It was, he said, the guest cottage for a larger property. Oh yes, great. I get to play at being the grubby peasant tugging my forelock at the gate as the master roars past in his Range Rover… Chip on my shoulder? Me????

Rant over. This property had recently gone online for significantly more than the German one… so maybe that was the going rate for a garage up there…..

I continued to ruminate and fulminate and grind my teeth, but I forebore to send the sarky response. I was chatting to Himself on the phone that night, and tossed it in as an aside, “yer man has offered me a bloody garage…”

Himself made me read the mail to him. After a bit of patient explaining I finally grasped that the garage was part of the description, and it was the whole house for sale at a reduced price. Not wanting to get ahead of myself, I sent a cautious email, requesting clarification.

On first viewing it would be fair to say the place didn’t have me in raptures. It’s a little odd and rather, well, Germanic. Maybe a touch on the clinical side, but with a shit hot garage/workshop (now Himself WAS in raptures over that!). It’s funny how a bit of experience with the vagaries of housebuying/viewing can shift your perspective. I found, much to my own surprise, that my opinion had gone from ‘uninspiring’ to ‘pretty bloody wonderful’… how the hell did that happen? For wonderful perhaps read ‘available’ ‘affordable’ ‘structurally sound’ ‘uninfested’ ‘not a swamp’ and, very importantly NOT being offered by Shorty.

I got the feeling that this might be a personal and for a limited time only offer. The agent gave me the impression he wanted an answer Right Now (well, the owners are German). I made some encouraging noises, but dropped in that I was still looking at another couple of properties. I said I would speak to my solicitor. I did try, but it sounds like he’s had a POETS day (piss off early tomorrow’s Saturday), so much so that he was unavailable at 10.30am. I mailed the agent, made some even more encouraging noises and explained that my solicitor was off making bank holiday whoopee… Ummm, perhaps I shouldn’t have put it quite like that? The agent suggested I make some whoopee of my own.

Wish me luck.