Our House

Yippee!  I have accepted an offer on my house!

F@@k!  I have accepted an offer on my house!

After almost 8 months of waiting for an offer receiving only a drip feed of viewings the new estate agents, Edison Ford, seems to have done the job.  In the past week I have had 15 viewings, five offers from two families of which I have accepted one very close to my magic number.   Truly a masterclass in selling strategy and marketing.  Bish! Bash! Bosh!

However, sometimes in life you have to be careful what you wish for.  Since receiving the offer I have had a very startled look.  A rabbit in the headlights.  The enormity of what I have done, what it all means and what I have to do to move out of the house is starting to dawn on me.

Moving out of my family home is clearly going to be a very emotional one.  It is the place where Caroline and I have brought our kids up, where they have made friends and where we had a fun and loving time together.  There is no way that we would have moved out of this house.  It’s just a great house.  But I made the decision to make the move some time ago.  Although it’s going to be painful it’s for the best.

The major act now is to pack up 26 years of accumulated family “memorabilia”.  This is going to be crazy!  Downsizing from a four bedroom house with a large garden to an apartment is going to be the toughest task ever!  I am scared to go into the attic.  Christmas decorations of every festive colour possible, the stuff you put out of sight as you convince yourself that “I will deal with that next week”, the cricket kit that fitted a more sprightly figure and most of all so many photo albums.

The photo albums will be the toughest one to deal with.  The photos are so personable and depict my beautiful wife’s life.  How can I disposed of these illustrations of Caroline’s life?  The plan will be to scan the photos digitally and store them in the “cloud” somewhere.  What to do with the albums themselves?  They will probably be in storage somewhere.

Anyway the packing starts now.  Watch this space

I am so relieved that I am eventually on the road to finalising the sale of my house.  I am aware there are still pitfalls in front of me that need to be navigated but someone has made a decent offer.  I feel I am reaching the next major junction on our journey to where we do not know.  We will all be really sad to leave our house in Frampton Cotterell.  It was a real lifestyle place where we could really relax and chill.  Our own sanctuary.  Although filled with memories of so many good times it is now merely a shell.  The love and fun in many ways has now disappeared.  It is the right time to move.

I expect many of my friends will be around in the next few weeks to have their last glance around and help me downsize my drinks cabinet!

So much to contemplate!  Oh and there is the small matter of finding somewhere to live!