Moving House

We bought a new house at the start of the year.

I really liked our old house.

It was big (4 double bedrooms, a huge lounge, large dining area off the kitchen, 2 bathrooms and a nice quiet study.  It was warm (gas hot-air central heating), very light and very private.  We had extensive decking areas on 3 sides and a large garage/workshop, but it had one major problem.
It was on 2 floors.  Apart from one bedroom downstairs, next to the garage/workshop, all the rooms were up one flight of stairs.


The problem was SWMBO's knees.

Don't get me wrong, I think that they are lovely knees.
I could spend hours minutes kissing her lovely knees, but they had developed an internal fault, and they caused her great pain when climbing the stairs.
At one time last year, I came home to discover her crouched on the stairs in tears. She had become stuck halfway up, and couldn't move up or down.


We had to move.

Do you find this moving? ... I bloody don't

We discovered a lovely "cottage" (M'Beloved's description, not mine) just 500 m down our nice, quiet street.  The "cottage" is smaller, but still has 4 bedrooms, large lounge and separate dining room, smaller study area off the kitchen, reasonable garage/workshop, conservatory, a big front garden with big, old Beech trees and a small back and side garden, so it's not exactly tiny.  But it's on one level, no stairs.

New house from the front road.

So we bought it.


We sold our original house to an English couple living here in New Zealand.  I should emphasise the Englishness of these bastards did not trigger any inherent Scottish ant-Anglo feeling, they were just bastards.

The house sale went smoothly enough, and I managed to get the house cleared by 11pm on the sale date (by arrangement with the new owners, they were moving in the next day) There was quite a pile of rubbish piled up under the house in the double integral carports, but I was back at 5:30am to clear it away to the landfill.

It's a dirty job, but somebody has to take out the trash

Next day, at about 4:30pm, I got a call from our estate agent, who forwarded a text (and photo) from the new owners, showing a huge pile of rubbish in the carports, and asking demanding to know when I was going to remove it.

I was flabbergasted (to quote the late Frankie Howerd, my flabber had never been more gasted)
I had cleared it all up.  What were they playing at?

I arranged to turn up at the old house in 15 minutes with the estate agent who was coming with a very large van.


Under the house was a huge pile of stuff. Some of it admittedly was bits and pieces I had missed.
An old Singer sewing machine, parts of an old brass bed.  I was certainly guilty of missing those as they had been behind the gas boiler, but the rest?


Multiple cans of paint (left, because they matched the paint used in the house)
About 10 rolls of wallpaper, similarly used in the house.
Lots of off-cut timber, PAR for general use.
A wooden garden bench that matched the decks
Multiple large plant pots, with flowering shrubs that set of the deck and the raised gardens.
A 4 metre workbench that has been wrenched off the workshop storage.
A set of shelving we had used to store gumboots and outside shoes.
More shelving used to support nails, screws and tools.
Sheets of vinyl flooring and large pieces of carpet, all offcuts from that used in our their house, just in case.
All of the shelving had been bolted to the walls, so as far as I was concerned it was part of the fixtures and fittings, and was part of the house.

My blood pressure went screaming through the roof, and I was about to go up and tell them what to do with this stuff, but the estate agent said "forget it" It would be easier to remove the stuff and so avoid any unpleasantness.


Reluctantly I did.


About halfway finished loading this stuff into the van, when Mr English Bastard himself comes strolling down the stairs, and asks how we were getting on.


I'm afraid I lost my temper and told him to get out of my fücking sight before I did something I would regret.

We dumped all the stuff in the landfill, except the pots and plants which I kept, and the old Singer, which I gifted to a very grateful estate agent (he said it was worth a couple of hundred dollars)


Every house I've ever bought always had pots of matching paint in the garage, and I was always very happy to keep it.  Similarly I was always happy to get extra wood for DIY tasks.


I hope the bastards rot.

Now I don't feel so guilty about not telling them about the dodgy bits of the decking, nor the highly sensitive gas boiler, which unless coaxed in an understanding way, would refuse to ignite.


I felt a bit happier in the middle of last winter when I saw a gas engineer's van parked outside our old house.

Oops, sorry, maybe I should have mention the leaky gas valve ... NOT

I hope the gas fitter soaked him for a huge bill, the sanctimonious English Fückwit.