In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. Albert Camus
I haven’t written for some time now; I haven’t been able to bring myself to reflect on the process we have been experiencing. Enduring would be a more appropriate description. It is said that moving can be one of the most stressful things a person can go through. In this instance I can testify to the cliché being true, and the absurd thing about it – change in policy would make it all entirely avoidable. But here we are.
After the revelation that our buyers’ home had leasehold solar panels, the Deed of Variation was produced after a protracted, painful and opaque process and submitted to Land Registry. Despite being told by Land Registry themselves that this could be expedited, expedition remained a point of contention amongst professionals until the day it was finally submitted. Expedited no less. This should have been turned around within ten days. However (Come on, you knew there’d be a however!) after ten full days, we received notification that enquiries would now be raised; which would take until the end of November. Every day of this period, we wondered if someone would pull out, if our fragile chain would collapse under the strain, where the money would come from to pay our mortgage and rent for the cottage we had hired so Daughter could attend school, and whether the cottage would even be available every time we tried to extend the rental period.
Husband returned to Suffolk to take our Son to his hospital appointments as we could not register locally in Cumbria, our legal place of residence still being Suffolk. Similar issues have arisen in a multitude of ways with the management of my own chronic illness, and a phone-call from the school one afternoon to say Daughter had collapsed with low blood sugar, with no immediate recourse to a GP.
The ‘dog friendly’ cottage we are staying in (one pays a premium for this privilege) has freshly laid white carpets and the owners took exception to our Golden Retriever dropping “too much fur on the path outside” advising us that our cottage smells worse than anything they can describe, despite the husband being a farmer. This would be deeply offensive if I thought for a moment there were any truth in it. Over the years we have stayed in cottages throughout the Lakes and remain friends with the owners to this day. I am confident if we lived like farm animals, (or worse, as we currently stand accused), this would not be the case. Furthermore I am fastidious about the smell and presentation of my living environment. Regardless, the owners confronted me, coming into the entrance hall of the cottage ordering me to wash our dog after every walk and leave her to dry in the car. In Cumbria, in winter. With no access to an external water supply. I felt that my response was…firm but fair. Suffice to say Coco is not being washed after every walk and sure as shit is not being left to dry in the car.
I digress.
Against a backdrop of an awkward living environment and hours and days being spent driving up and down the M6, currently littered with roadworks and peppered with delays, we have waited on paperwork to be processed, hearing repeated and empty promises of “tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.” The cottage has become damp in the icy weather and chest infections have taken hold. Our registered GP’s back at home haven’t been taking calls or making appointments, so I spent several days on the sofa in the cottage, in desperate need of medication I couldn’t get hold of. As a severe asthmatic with bronchitis, gasping for breath, trying for days on end to even speak to a doctor, there was a bizarre irony in being bumped to safeguard covid vaccines. My intention here is not to get political. Merely to describe why I haven’t been writing and to highlight some of the realities and logistics involved in a relocation.
Eventually, on 26th November the magical ten days has passed and enquiries had been satisfied. But there was one insurmountable problem with 26th November. It was a Friday, and conveyancing procedure goes into hibernation on a Friday. So roll on Monday 29th November when we all waited with baited breath to exchange. We spent this time profitably of course, debating potential completion dates, complicated yet arguably simplified by the lack of availability that any removal firm had, in either Cumbria or Suffolk. Narrowed down to two days in the whole month of December that were even vague possibilities on our part, there was one chink in the chain, with all in agreement bar one. This negotiation around dates up and down the chain went on for two days. By now, the four of us were residing in four different places. The reasons why are complicated and for now, unimportant. But we were spent. Husband and I were exhaustively calling removal firms and being laughed at when asking for their availability. Repeatedly the answer was… “none.” We had two dates, and the clock was ticking on those. Anyone at any point could take our reservation. And then.
Bombshell.
A solicitor in the chain refused to release their client’s contract for exchange without monies being released from the bank. This is not something that happens on the day of exchange, but on completion, so everyone was floored. After all we had endured, waited for, planned, compromised on, paid for… this refusal to adhere to due process threatened to bring the cards down at the final hurdle. The whole chain came to a standstill. One moment we were told to standby for exchange, within hours we were told the chain could collapse as the solicitor would not budge.
This went on for days.
Everything felt so deeply, darkly if not characteristically uncertain. I felt physically sick, exhausted, angry and frustrated. I was overwhelmed with a desire to come home to Suffolk and curl up in my house, my bed, under a blanket on my sofa and feel warm again in a centrally heated house. I momentarily lost sight of the mountains and our dreams and allowed myself to imagine the feeling of waking up with certainty. The only way we could reclaim certainty was to gift it to ourselves and I knew this was within our control. On a cocktail of antibiotics, steroids, painkillers and exhaustion, I told Husband that for my own mental health we should put a deadline on the process. If we did not exchange by Friday 3rd December, we would lose our December removal dates and any hope of moving could not be contemplated or re-negotiated until 2022. We then received news that someone else in the chain was ready to pull out. 5pm on Friday 3rd December had been set as both a formal and informal deadline. Until then, we encouraged each other and tried to stay focused.
At 12:24pm on Friday 3rd December, we got the call. Husband phoned me from London where he was in a meeting. I sat silently and alone with the news that we had exchanged for half an hour before I could even move.
The belligerent solicitor who refused to release the contract had such pressure placed on them by every other solicitor and estate agent involved, they were ultimately over-ruled by their own client.
We move to the mountains on 15th December 2021. Wearied but not weakened. Drained but not defeated.
So how far is 300 miles? It is a very, very, VERY long way…
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