The Rollercoaster Song

20th July 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in 2 Comments

I had a friend who treated love like a luxury
development on the other side of town.

And one day his girl got up
And left and slammed the door
And his fine walls came falling down

But don’t be blue he built a fairground there
For you and I to ride –
Together we belong, you and I.

I’ll admit I’ve had some occasions in the homebuying process when I’ve wondered exacty what the solicitor’s doing for her cash. But then yesterday afternoon after getting no luck in trying to get me to buckle under and agree to shoulder the risk, the seller’s estate agent gave her a call. From what I’ve been told, the call went something like this:

“Hello, is that Ms. Jones?”

“Speaking.”

“It’s Mr. Smith here, from Brand X Estate Agency. I’d like to talk to you about the sale of the house at No.1 Address Street. I spoke with your client, Mr. Sleeper, this afternoon. He was most uncooperative, and I wondered if you could perhaps speak to him and advise him that we really do need to exchange before the completion date?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Smith. He’s protecting his own interests under my advice. Good-bye.”

Smackdown.

Test Match Special

17th July 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

Give me the sun, and the BBC.
Give me a chair positioned beautifully.
Give me a Test Match Special
Set me free.

I’d quite like to have a set of estate agents and house buyers that aren’t completely useless too. I had two phone calls from the estate agent this week.

The first told me that the chain was complete, everything was in place and we could expect to move at the beginning of August. Excellent news.

The second was rather less happy tidings, and by the end of the phone call to say I was utterly fuming would be an understatement. Apparently one of the buyers up the chain had neglected to mention that they were financing their purchase by cashing in bonds. Said bonds would not be liquidated until September 30th.

My mortgage offer expires on September 30th. Major alarm bills started ringing. In addition, the estate agent started pressuring us to exchange. Excuse me? You’ve just told me that I might not have a valid mortgage offer come completion and you want me to accept responsibility if the mortgage falls through or there is any delay? I don’t think so matey.

Pending solicitor’s advice now. Will not be impressed if we have to drop out now.

Anthem

11th June 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

I can’t run no more with that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up a thundercloud
And they’re going to hear from me.

It seems that buying a house is in some respects like a war – long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. We’re in one such period of boredom right now, waiting for someone further up the chain to sort themselves out. In the meantime, plenty of mind space to start thinking of other things.

And the thing that I’ve been mostly thinking about, quite unexpectedly, is a prequel to The Logic Bomb. In that story, I covered the history of one man and the devices he worked with, which inadvertently brought down the economy. This time I’m going to be concentrating more on the actions of the Prime Minister who left office in scandal and brought with him the need for certain safeguards, implemented in TLB.

I’m going for as little of the fantastic as possible. It’ll be an interesting project and I hope I can pull it off.

Songs of Love

25th May 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

Pale, pubescent beasts
Roam through the streets
And coffee shops.

Their prey gather in herds
With stiff knee-length skirts
And white ankle-socks.

But while they search for a mate,
My type hibernate in bedrooms above.
Composing their songs of love.

Slow progress on the house. Initial draft contracts have been approved, and our solicitor has sent “Additional preliminary enquiries” on to the vendors, whatever that means. No news yet on an exchange date, much less a completion date. Ah well.

In the meantime, though, I’ve made a start on clearing out all the junk I’ve accumulated, both over the last 5 years living here, and in the years before. When we moved in, a whole bunch of stuff was chucked, still boxed, in the study. If I were being truly ruthless, I’d chuck it without looking through it. Fortunately though, I’m not quite that insane. There’s a whole bunch of stuff in there of interest:

  • 10 free tickets to Satan’s Hollow nightclub, Manchester (use by 31st December 2000). I went there for the grand opening and nearly knocked Richard O’Brien flying after drunkenly stumbling into him. He was utterly gracious about it. Good times.
  • Entrance tickets to Empire State Building, International Visitor’s Invitation to the US Senate, and assorted other stuff from the first time we went to America in 2002. Been back several times, to different parts of the country, and thoroughly enjoyed myself every time.
  • A large collection (upwards of 100) of “Free dial-up internet” discs. I started collecting these when they were common in the belief they might be valuable some day. In fifty years or so I’ll see if I’m right.

Stuff I won’t be keeping includes:

  • Every payslip I was issued, July 1999-June 2005. Puts what I’m paid now into perspective all right. Whether I’m underpaid now, or was then, or whatever, I’m amazed that I managed to survive on so little. Then I remember I survived by getting into huge amounts of debt I’ve only recently paid off. Time to shred these, I think.
  • Half a dozen assorted PCI and AGP video cards, along with a small mountain of other PC components, including a CD-Rewriter drive that must have cost me a week’s wages, and a DVD-ROM drive. There’s a couple of hard disks here too. One I can’t access and the other seems to be a backup of my PC Circa 2004. Straight to the bin for this little lot, except for an 802.11g WiFi PCI card I don’t remember buying. That might still be useful some day.
  • A Compaq T1500 Thin Client PC! For a short while this acted as a box to display video on my TV. Now there’s more processing power in my mobile phone.
  • A stack of videotapes. I’ve no idea what’s on them, not having owned a VCR in about four years.

Amazing the stuff that just gets put away in the belief it might come in useful some day. In recent times I’ve become a lot more pro-active about getting rid of unnedded cruft. Just as well, it seems. I’d have run out of space to live in if I’d ket accumulating it at the same rate.

Mansions of Los Feliz

12th May 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

Well it’s a pretty bad place outside this door –
I could go out there but I don’t see what for.
And I’m happy living here in the dark
On the edge of my mind,
And it’s nobody else’s business.

Now it’s just me myself and the secrets that
Live within the walls
Of the mansions of Los Feliz

The sky is falling!

Like many people in this country I spent much of yesterday evening watching the television trying to work out exactly what the United Kingdom has let itself in for. And, while doing so, becoming increasingly puzzled at the reactions of both pundits and the general public at the news that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats had agreed to form a coalition to govern the country.

The election on Thursday had just one concrete result last week – no one party had won the confidence of a wide-enough ranging cross section of the country. While the Conservatives could have formed a minority government, the huge risk was that any bill that was in the least bit controversial (as almost all important new laws tend to be) would fail to pass – a lame-duck administration.

What are we left with then? It was clear from the off that a Labour – Lib Dem coalition could never achieve enough of a majority to get anything passed. They’d have  to water down anything or make huge concessions to the smaller parties, causing problems in the long term. There’s probably an element of truth in the complaints from both sides that the other wasn’t taking things seriously enough. There was just too fragility.

So, we’re left with what we’ve got, which has seemed inevitable since the results came in. Grass roots Lib Dems and Tories alike have recoiled at the news. It seems all too easy to dismiss the Liberals as having sold out or the Conservatives of being desperate. And while the parties disagree with each other on a great many things, then at least the things they can agree on will stand a good chance of getting done.

I do wonder if for some Liberal Democrat supporters the news of the coalition has been taken so badly because for so long they have been able to know that their MPs are in opposition and can therefore disagree with anything done by the party in power. A sort of underdog syndrome, if you will. Things from the ruling side will be very different and change will be feared. However, that being said, a fixed-term parliament will help this – grass roots  activists have five years to be convinced.

For me? I’m going to wait and see. A track record in government will make or break the minority party. Whichever it is, it’s going to be an interesting few years in politics.

You can call me Al

6th May 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

A man walks down the street  –
It’s a street in a strange world.
Maybe it’s the Third World,
Maybe it’s his first time around.
He doesn’t speak the language.
He holds no currency.
He is a foreign man.

I’ve voted. Have you? The campaign here has certainly been interesting. Labout appear to have given up entirely on the constituency, leaving just the Lib Dems and the Tories to slug it out. And slug it out they have – well, in a way. Seems to me that the Conservatives have done nothing but sling mud at their opponents from what I’ve seen from meeting the candidates. Everyone else has calmly stood back and explained their positions and policies. Well, it helped in one way – it reinforced the views I already had.

All that was left was to vote – and that wasn’t straightforward either, at least not as easy as it should have been. When I went, queues were stretching out of the polling station – an encouraging sign at least. However, because the other half is out of town, I’d been entrusted with her proxy vote, and that was where the problems began.

I never carry my polling card – it’s not necessary. I was able to cast my own vote easily enough, but the proxy vote? Bugger me. First problem – you’re not allowed to take more than one set of ballot papers into a polling booth at once, so I had to queue up, cast my own vote, and then queue up again to collect the second set of papers. Secondly, I didn’t have the proxy polling card. The text on it said I didn’t need it.

“You can’t vote without the proxy card,” the presiding officer told me. I argued back, and eventually ID was demanded of me (which I produced, again protesting). Finally I was allowed to cast a proxy vote, but what an uphill struggle!

Ah well, it’s over now. Fingers crossed for a happy result tomorrow.

Starman

2nd May 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment
Sempre estar lá e ver ele voltar-
Não era mais o mesmo mas estava em seu lugar.
Sempre estar lá e ver ele voltar
O tolo teme a noite como a noite
Vai temer o fogo…
 
He came, he surveyed, he went away. And so did the bank’s surveyor too. The net result of which we have a mortgage offer, and know exactly what’s wrong with our house. The homebuyer’s report is an amazingly arse-covering document; a whole bunch of things that I hadn’t even thought of as being worthy of my attention are flagged up as “Urgent! Needs sorting right now!”. These things include that the fuse box is old (but still servicable; the wiring’s reasonably recent), there’s no banister on the bottom three stairs, and that the doors have non-safety glass in them. The one thing I didn’t know about was that there’s some damp in the extension, but it doesn’t seem to be anything that’ll cost a lot to fix.
 
I’m glad I paid a completely independent surveyor; my surveyor had the ability to spell complicated words like “Asbestos” (the garage roof’s made of it; given it’s over twenty years old that’s not surprising) and to count to four – the number of bedrooms –  unlike the bank’s guy who counted three, and also decided that the house was worth less than we’d offered for it. Happily on that point the bank seem to have ignored him and decided to lend the amount requested anyway (and my own surveyor, who didn’t know the offer price, had agreed with me on value spot-on).
So, it progresses. And given the competency level of the bank’s surveyor, I wonder just what else in the way of fail we’re going to encounter.

Ten Years Alseep

27th April 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

Ten years asleep in the queue for the late night bus –
With all of us.

Breakfast television is the biggest decision I’ve made
In the last decade.

It wouldn’t happen in another world.
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer planet.
It would’ve happened in another world,
So don’t pretend to care when you don’t care!

I was wondering when the stress of buying would kick in. On Wednesday I had the phone call. My mortgage broker was calling to tell me that there was a problem. The day before he’d called me to tell me everything was OK and the finance company’s survey was going through. This time he was calling me to tell me he’d (inadvertently) lied. Apparently there was a problem with the application. Eight years ago I had a few financial issues, and had a credit card withdrawn. Eight years ago! Apparently they wanted to know why – I could barely remember myself. I ended up telling them how much I’d earned back then, having recently graduated, and they went away again.

Finally the survey was booked in and performed yesterday, but it was a rather nerve-wracking few days. What else would they find in my credit history that didn’t appear on my credit files (I checked them before we even applied)?

Now waiting to hear back from my own surveyor as to the state of the house. Then we’ll see what’s what…

It’s all been done

13th April 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

I knew you before the West was won.
And I heard you say,
“The past was much more fun.”
You go your way, I go mine –
But I’ll see you next time.

It’s all been done,
It’s all been done.
It’s all been done before!

Two conversations of interest this afternoon in the the ever-complicating saga of the house, though this time it’s sheer incredulity that I’m left with, rather than anything else.

The first conversation was a call from my mortgage broker. He’s sent all the paperwork off to the lender and he’ll chase them if he’s not heard anything by the end of the week. Nice, efficient, pleasant, and I trust him. He’s earning less commission than he would have if we’d gone with the original plans, but still perfectly pro-active and helpful. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was after our remortgage business in a couple of years’ time.

The second conversation? The estate agent, phoning to tell me that our vendors have found somewhere to live. First thought – wow, that was fast. They only started looking last week! There was more though. The vendors have arranged their mortgage through the estate agent. Would I care to do so? No. Not even if they can guarantee to beat the rate I’ve been quoted elsewhere? No. Not even if they can give me a fixed rate of 3.2 %? Not a chance, matey. I don’t believe for a second I can get that rate. Even if I hadn’t already paid for the valuation survey, I’d be going elsewhere for my mortgage. Somewhere where they’re up front about how much they earn from my business.

All this, too, after they’d already spoken to my mortgage broker! So far all I’ve got from the buying process is a list of who not to sell through when we come to sell, however many years down the line it is. I think I’ve met at best one even remotely trustworthy bloke so far, and that was because he was a sole trader in a sea of national franchises.

Let me down Easy

11th April 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in 2 Comments

At first you smile, then turn away
I’ve been thinking of what I should say
All last night I stayed up dreaming,
I’m still dreaming.

Movement on the house front. On Tuesday the estate agent called me to tell me that the vendors were looking for about 10k more than I was willing to offer. Was I willing to increase my offer?, he asked. The reply was a firm “No.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “I’ll pass that on and get back to you for a final decision.”

I wasn’t hopeful. When we looked at the place originally it was on the basis of  “Slim chance we can negotiate them down”. The initial price reduction was a pleasant surprise – but still no guarantee that anything would happen. I placed the offer fully expecting to get laughed at, and to move on to the house we expected to be able to get. The next day, he called me back.

“Congratulations, your offer has been accepted” was the news on the other end of the line.

Wow. To say I was in shock was an understatement. Didn’t really expect to get the place, happy that we have it. Cue a mad rush to phone a solicitor, phone the mortgage broker, get everything in place. Then to phone the beloved who’s been working away from home and break the good news to her.

It hasn’t all been sweetness and light, though. We met the mortgage advisor on Saturday morning to get everything finalised, and had some news that brought us back down to earth with a jolt. The mortgage we’d been planning on taking out had been withdrawn from the market. That was a problem – in our budget there was a choice of a hike of 0.7% interest (not a small amount of money per month), to try a mortgage provider who was unlikely to take us on, or putting down a bigger deposit. Now, fortunately, we’re first-time buyers so the stamp duty we’d previously allowed for was no longer an issue. With some careful calculations, we were able to arrive at a conclusion. We could just afford to go up to 15%. We’ll spend the summer being very skint indeed, wipe out our savings completely, but on the other hand the combination of bigger deposit and lower interest rate means we’ll be able to save more afterwards (I have a number of guaranteed bonuses coming in over the next six months too). At least the lender seems happy to accept our mortgage request without too much trouble.

So, if (touch wood) we complete, we’ll own more equity in our home than we’d originally intended. Let’s hope this is the last bad news we hear in our journey.