A moving tale, part 1

In case you're wondering where I've been for months....

At the stunning Romanesque church in Hoarwithy, Herefordshire.

I started my newsletter last year with good intentions. “At last, I’ve found a place to share pics and intriguing info about random places I visit!” But not long after I started it, we decided to move house.

The Sunday trips to interesting places turned into Sunday trips to Access self-storage and the local municipal tip. And the spare time I had (between the day job and my writing job) to pen my newsletter evaporated as I rounded up stuff for said storage and tip trips, and spent hours… days??? weeks??? months???! scrolling on Rightmove and visiting houses. The creative part of my brain shrivelled - partly with stress, and partly because each time I saw a house, whether on Rightmove or in person, I needed my imagination to project what life would be like in the place. What I would be like in the place. So I couldn’t even come up with ideas for newsletters, because I needed to preserve what creative space I had left after that for writing novels that pay the bills.

I wondered at first if I should do posts about Amusing Houses We Have Visited, but that wouldn’t be very kind, so… no. And I didn’t have flippin’ time to write about it anyway. There were solicitor emails — SO. MANY. SOLICITOR. EMAILS. There were surveys. There were mortgage advisors. There were insurance advisors. And estate agents. Oh, blimey, estate agents. And there were sellers and buyers and viewers and Google Streetview (“that bloody Amazon van is parked right in front — I can’t see if that gutter’s sagging!”), and photos taken at flattering angles with fish-eye lenses that bear little relation to reality. There were phone calls which I had to take on my computer so I could use captions because of that whole “hey, actually, I’m deaf” business. And there was stress. So much stress!

And there was my foot, which I damaged in May last year, and I ended up hobbling around in pain on a walking stick to visit houses.

So let’s go back to July last year and sell a house!

Who will buy my sweet terraced house?

Former industrial powerhouses like Birmingham and the Black Country erupted at the same time that red brick terraced houses were all the rage (if you’re in the US, they’re like your “row houses”). Huge swathes of the area are covered with them. They’re cheap (mostly) bijou (if you retain original features and not go too mad with uPVC), and usually convenient for bus or even tram and train routes. Excellent! They’re popular with landlords and first-time buyers as well. Marvellous.

After spending three or four months decluttering — hence all those trips to the tip and the storage unit — and trips to B&Q, we were ready to put the house on the market. The estate agent was enthusiastic. “It needs a little bit of work, but houses like this are really popular.” We had two viewers on the first viewing, and both put in offers. What a brilliant start! This whole house-buying-and-selling malarkey is easy! Offer accepted, and off we go!

That first viewing day was also our first viewing day. We’d gone to the area around the gorgeous Haden Hill Park (which is tied to the sad tale of “Bella” and the wych elm), which has a train station and a quite a few steep roads. But no houses that we wanted to live in. One of them had a lot of issues, especially considering how much they were asking for, and had benefitted from carefully-angled photos. There were polystyrene tiles on the bedroom ceiling, and double glazing that was busted so that there was two or three inches of water in the bottom. It had loads of decking, which looked quite nice — until I stepped on it and it nearly snapped underneath me. Another house we saw that day was actually quite nice although a little bit pokey upstairs, and a bit too far away from everything.

I really felt pressured at this point to go all-out and just find SOMEWHERE as soon as we could — and this, you will be unsurprised to learn, is a terrible idea. We were looking for three-bed semis, because after all those Victorian terraces, three-bed semis seem to be the next most-prolific house. After much depressing scrolling on Rightmove, we found one in an area of south Birmingham that we quite liked. Not too bad for buses or trains. It didn’t have a driveway, but the double garage made up for it, and it was nicely done up as well. We went to view it — West Midlands estate agents like to get everyone through in an hour on the same day for some reason — and there were loads of people. And I was worrying. I put in an offer — my “best and final offer” — and… we didn’t get the house. Even though our offer was the highest, they went with a cash buyer. Oh, to have a bank account bulging with that much cash!

The surveyor came to our house, and I was so stressed, the hairs on my head stood up so rigidly that my scalp hurt. What if the buyer pulls out? Will anyone else want this place? But the buyer seemed happy with the survey and things trundled on.

We needed to find somewhere else, quickly. But everything was bonkers.

There was the house just on the edge of a busy road, complete with a shed/outhouse/garden room that the vendor wanted to keep so that they could live in it once a year (I don’t know why either!). There was the house with the really grumpy vendor (who kept getting offers that weren’t high enough for him, even though the house really needed some work) who the estate agent warned us was sitting in the lounge scowling at his telly — I misheard and said very loudly “There’s a VANDAL in the lounge?”. So loudly that vendor heard me…. There was a three-bed semi, but we had reservations (mould, old roof), but it wasn’t terrible, and the kitchen was larger than a lot of 1930s semis as they’d extended it a bit. We took a tradesman we know with us for a second look… and promptly backed away.

The clock was ticking. It was August by this point. We’d had no holiday since going to see family at Easter but there wasn’t time as every spare moment was devoted to house-stuff: more decluttering, faffing around on Rightmove, viewing houses… and I spent my days bouncing between every emotion possible — stressed, optimistic, worried, excited, and very, very narky. I mean, I do anyway, but this was me and my rollercoaster emotions turned up to the max.

We found another 1930s semi, which had been done-up fairly recently. It smelt a bit musty, but then, it was an ex-rental and had been sitting empty for months. The kitchen was extended across the back and was huge — it had skylights and a kitchen island. Oh, for a kitchen island! The driveway was a bit annoying as there was a tree directly in front of it that you have to reverse around (thank goodness for parking sensors and a rear camera!), but it looked good to us. We viewed it on a Saturday, and the estate agent wanted us to make a decision on Monday. We drove off to Hay-on-Wye/Y Gelli Gandryll straight from the viewing for a one-night holiday, feeling very pleased with ourselves as we’d found a house at last. And we had a lovely time, which you can read all about!

I put the offer in on the Monday morning, and had another viewing that afternoon. It was a newer house, about a half a mile from the other one, and it’d been done up fairly recently as well. I really liked it, and wished I hadn’t had to put the offer in for the other house that morning. But at least, if our offer was turned down, we had other options.

But the offer was accepted. I was dreaming of supping sauvignon blanc from a wine fridge tucked under the kitchen island. But then the survey came back. And it wasn’t good. That musty smell I’d noticed wasn’t from the house being empty, but from a mysterious and deeply worrying damp patch. Things I’d been a bit uncertain about, like the fact I’d have to drag my wheelie bins across the neighbour’s driveway as the route from the side gate was diverted across it was flagged up as a serious issue (imagine if the neighbour moved out and was replaced by someone who refused to let you cross their driveway?). I’d wondered why the house only had one downpipe, which seemed a bit odd, and the surveyor confirmed It Isn’t A Good Thing. The surveyor couldn’t even look in the loft.

I really didn’t want to back out — I felt I’d wasted everyone’s time (not to mention £450 on the survey plus a few hundred in solicitors’ fees). But… it felt better to back out at that point and lose under a grand, rather than a buy a house that had issues that would cost thousands to resolve.

Fortunately, the newer house I’d seen was still on the market. And, to cut a long story short, our offer was accepted! Hurrah!

I thought things would move fast now. The survey didn’t flag up anything too worrying. There were more solicitor emails, more mortgage advisor emails. I put our Christmas decorations into storage, and my partner put away his winter clothes as well. But… but… our buyer was dragging his feet. Nothing was moving, and in the depths of December, with no Christmas decs and no idea when we’d move, plus writing deadlines that I couldn’t bend around a non-existent move date, I felt absolutely despairing. I went through a patch of depression, which was made worse (ironically) when I found out that my previous bouts of depression were making mortgage insurance extra expensive.

And in January… we lost our buyer.

BLOODY HELL NOOOOO!!!!!!

Stay tuned for what happened next on this long-winded, white-knuckle rollercoaster ride — taken from flattering angles using a fish-eye lens, of course!

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Book news!

Visit a little bookshop down a cobbled street in a Normandy village and uncover the secrets from its past.

The Resistance Book Club is the first instalment of our brand new WW2 saga series! Written by me and my friend Catherine Curzon, under our joint pen-name, Ellie Curzon. Available in ebook, paperback, audiobook, and in Kindle Unlimited. Pre-order your copy now!

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About me

I co-write WW2 saga fiction with my friend Catherine Curzon under our joint pen name, Ellie Curzon.

I’ve written two books on Victorian crime and forensics, and articles for Fortean Times and Family Tree magazine. I’ve appeared on BBC1’s Murder, Mystery and My Family, and BBC Radio 4’s Punt PI. I live in the West Midlands with a cat who looks like a Viking.

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