The Chain

In theory it works like this: a young couple want to move from their tiny flat into a 2-bed terrace house; the owners of the 2-bed want to move into a 3-bed semi; the semi owners want a 4-bed detached; the 4-bed owners , whose family have flown the nest, want to downsize into a bungalow before they can come back, and the elderly couple in the bungalow, now finding the garden a little too much to cope with, want to move into a flat.  This is the house-buying chain: each link totally reliant on its neighbours, each one as fragile as the next.

The first thing to know is that when buying of selling a property in England nobody is actually committed to anything at all until contracts are exchanged, and this happens at the very end of a lengthy process that usually takes several fraught months.  Make all the plans you like baby, somebody is always going to pull out at the very last minute.  Panic will kick in on either side of the crumbling link – someone no longer has a house to buy, someone else no longer has a buyer for their house.  Somebody will end up panic-buying anything with a roof whilst somebody else is dropping the asking price by daily increments.  Two separate chains become a knot and everyone within it is doomed!

It is a commonly held opinion that buying/selling a house and moving home is the most stressful thing that most of us will ever do.  I doubt that many of us will ever sit in a roomful of snakes, so it is possible.  And when the move is done, well, it doesn’t really stop does it?  Now is the time to spot all of the defects you missed before you bought it; this is the time when you notice that a damp patch doesn’t stay painted over forever; this is the time that you notice that the hallway was light and airy only because the front door doesn’t close properly; this is the moment you realise that the sofa doesn’t fit…

Not that we’re in that position yet.  We have neither buyer, nor anywhere to buy.  We are looking, tentatively, but it is difficult: you either find a buyer whilst you have no idea of where you might go, or you find your dream home and lose it while waiting for someone to buy your own.  This is Limbo.  Meanwhile, we stalk around ‘maybe’ houses with uncomfortable homeowners who look as though they are waiting for the axe to fall, me looking for somewhere to store my CD’s and books, my wife looking for walls to knock down.  We leave full of the positives and wake up the next morning full of the negatives.  Sooner or later, I suppose, it will all resolve around us and we will become a link in our own little chain… and woe betide anyone who breaks that one up.

This very evening we have visited ‘a bit of a project’ – two bedrooms (we need three), a small kitchen (we ‘need’ a large kitchen/diner), a low-ceilinged conservatory that would almost certainly ‘have to come down’ in order to build a less Lillipution extension – and having gone through the motions inside we went into the garden which was ‘a good size for us’.  I was by now at the ‘had the contact lenses in about an hour too long’ stage, but I made out something moving on the grass.  “I think you have a bunny on your lawn” I said, and the owner shooed it away.  But it came back defiantly, sedately enough for my poor beleaguered peepers to register that it was, in fact, the biggest bloody rat I have ever seen in my life; the result, apparently, of a next door neighbour keeping chickens.  It was the size of a kangaroo. 

The ‘project’ is not at the top of our list…

Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise
Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies… The Chain – Fleetwood Mac (Christine McVie / John McVie / Lindsey Buckingham / Mick Fleetwood / Stephanie Nicks)