Drat, drat & double drat.

Astoundingly, a house came on the market yesterday that is just around the corner & is within our price range. “Ok”, I think “I’ll show it to C, see what she thinks & arrange a viewing”. So I show it to C, get her approval to continue. On phoning the estate agents, I find that there have been 12 viewings already (within a day!?) & the estate agents expect it to go off the market before the next available viewing opportunity!

I’ve made the appointment anyway (11:30am on 11th November – so just after the minutes silence), on the off-chance that all 12 of the viewers either make ridiculously small bids, or don’t want to buy it, but the estate agent was not confident that the property would be on the market for long…!

Right then. Back to it.

S

Life update

Bit of a mixed bag (since my last post a mere 2 hours or so ago);

Firstly, the phone conversation with my parents went vastly better than expected, with a good 25 minutes of catching up taking place. My father, as might be expected from his letter, is genuinely determined to go out of his way to repair our (currently broken) relationship & we had a nice long chat that was most definitely friendly in nature. He was very happy that my life was progressing along relatively well, and seemed surprised that I was planning on buying a house & settling down in Amsterdam for the foreseeable future. I raised the possibility of coming over in Christmas 2007 (we plan ahead dontcheknow), and there I got an agreement in principle, which is all I was really after. In all, a very nice & companionable conversation.

The conversation with my mother on the other hand was definitely frostier, though you could tell that she was going out of her way to be nice. It sort of came to a rather bumpy end though, when she asked me whether I knew what day it was & what I’d done. When I responded that I’ve just completed a 14 hour day & could barely remember my own name, she made her excuses & hung up rather abruptly. On investigation on the interweb, it turns out that its All Souls day, so I’ve blotted my copybook again.

I can say the following for the record; it was great talking to them and I’m going to go out of my way to remain in regular contact. I’d love to have a friendly & working relationship with them & I am greatly heartened that my father obviously seems to feel the same way. On the other hand, I’m tired of having to tiptoe through my mothers religious-themed minefield; if she thinks that I’m going to made to feel guilty about not having done anything on one of the more obscure feast days, then she is going to remain resolutely disappointed.

Having said all that, I’ve spent the last 2 hours comforting our new starter, who started on Wednesday. One of her best friends has died, completely out of the blue. She’s completely distraught.

It makes you appreciate just how fragile life really is & how unimportant these things are.

S