Wet blankets

Part five and a half.

Things have begun to transpire, although I’m not altogether sure what they are. While I’ve been waiting to hear what the story is with the German house (hang on a minute! THEY asked ME if I wanted to buy their place…. So in theory, if I say ‘yes please’ that presupposes that they agree if I do???), if only it were that simple. Right, sorry, loosing the thread here….

So, I’ve been waiting to hear if the German bloke who asked me if I would still like to buy his house at a previously mentioned sum still wants to sell it to me now that I’ve said yes… In the meantime I get a message from the associate of falling off table man. Apparently I expressed an interest in a property by email a while ago. Their website has been down and they had an offer of €XXXk but it didn’t happen and would I still be interested. I’ve lost the bloody will to live! Actually, no, if it’s fallen through that many times, then there has to be a major problem which keeps rearing it’s bellend every survey, because I know this isn’t the first time a sale of this place has fallen through. I’ve been to see it (with Ruin Man). The house is beautiful, quaint, full of character, immaculately extended and finished… in a dark damp hole up a dark damp hill. I have a kids book called ‘Fungus the Bogeyman’, he is a lover of damp and slime and slugs and mildew and so on. This could be his perfect location. The fact that nobody seemed to have twigged that I was the same person who had made an offer (however derisory) on another of their properties, made me wonder whether they were A) unbelievably busy or B) permanently pissed. The third possibility may be that the partners do not communicate….

I have thus far failed to respond to their mail. This is in part because I cannot be arsed, but also because I received a text from the coherent partner a couple of days later. I had made an offer based on the surveyors advice on the damp cottage. I knew it was wildly unlikely to be accepted. It seems the vendors were prepared to contemplate a 5% reduction on the asking price. Now what I had suggested was more like 35%. The agent wished to know if I would like to increase my offer. I politely declined for the moment.

The weather here continues appalling. If it carries on, a trend for babies with webbed feet may develop (outside of Norfolk, where it has been happening for generations). Having dutifully been donkey walloping I felt obliged to walk the mutt. I don’t know if she was too thrilled at the prospect. Most of the vegetation is now up to my armpits, her legs are less than four inches long. It’s a struggle, and a wet one at that. We carried on regardless, as precipitation persisted. I have to admit I was a bit twitchy and was checking my phone every five minutes, looking for a response about the German place. At precisely 17.08 (slightly after I had given up hope for that day, and somewhere in the middle of a very wet field) I received a mail from the agent. To be honest I didn’t know what to make of it. It started “subject to contract. Contract denied”. So what the **** does that mean???? It’s not a term I’ve heard in England. Does it mean the guy has changed his mind??? Does it mean I imagined the whole thing in the first place???? (Further investigations eventually resolved this, it means **** all).

BUT the German guy would like to wait until he’s had his summer holiday in the house before he sells it, and by the way, it will be a couple of months after that before he can get round to shifting his shit…. Hello??? Does he want to sell me the bloody place or not???? I’d fancifully imagined that once I’d got to the point where we  (the vendor and I) both agree that it would be nice if I gave him lots of money, he would  then give me his house. Admittedly, not quite as much money as he’d been hoping for, but it’s still lots of real money.

So, to quote Pink Floyd, with every day that passes I am “shorter of breath and one day closer to death” and I STILL haven’t managed to buy a bloody house in Ireland, and everyone persists in pissing about the place, achieving precisely nothing (apart from winding me up). I thought German = straightforward and efficient. Clearly I’ve found the Irish variant…..

I’ve still been trawling the internet for properties. Mostly it’s same old same old. However, one of the sites has twigged that I am looking at property outside the UK. This means that I get daily emails trying to sell me property in Florida (I’m not THAT bloody close to death) or Cape Verde (with the malaria problem there, I might be that close to death shortly). Normally I junk these immediately. One turned up advertising a cottage in the Ionian though… I’ve been sailing there and it’s idyllic (apart from the apocalyptic thunderstorms). Suddenly I’m tempted. I sent the link to Himself, who took me to Greece in the first place. Somehow the idea seems to have grown wings… Sun….Sea…. Ouzo…. Bougainvillea rather than gorse… Free moorings… rabid cats….You know, the more I think about it…

Himself reckons that Greek estate agents have much in common with Irish estate agents. The effusive praise of the derelict shack, the absence of any interior pictures, the glossing over the glaring inadequacies… But at least out there you can rely on a bit of sunshine!

If I had been dealing with Shorty it would have been a no brainer (mind you, if I was stupid enough to deal with Shorty again it suggests I have no brain). I would have led him merrily up the garden path, and dropped him happily off the precipice at the end (what goes around comes around). At the moment this seems a little unfair, as no one involved has actually screwed me over…. YET. If this cocks up though, the next instalment will be all about buying property in Greece!