(Hey, we’d not heard anything but what’s new? It was worth a go)

So I nearly fell over when I saw that they’ve suspended all viewings while they sort out the EPC. The EPC which they saw right back at the beginning. What on earth are they playing at? And more importantly, why haven’t they decided this is worth mentioning to us?

I appreciate it’s hard out there, very hard, but TALK TO US.

The house has been on the market since December 2007 and I’m getting very very bored. I want to move on. We’ve identified the vague area we want to move to down here, we know what our budget is likely to be. Everything’s set except the small matter of the NorthHouse.

Looking at the land registry, nothing has been selling on our estate.  So would dropping the price make any difference?  Are we at the point where we’d let it go for pence just to get our deposit out of it so we can get on with our life?  If we could stick on to it as an investment we would, but in the meantime we’re living in a damp basement flat with a neighbour who’s a nice guy but likes sticking on dodgy RnB at weird hours of the morning.

In an attempt to make things feel more like home I’ve been making window boxes for our wall. It really helps.

Last time we did this a friend insisted I had to write a ‘What I did on my holidays’ essay for every day. I’m not sure we’ve done something interesting every day, but in that spirit, here’s what we’ve done so far:

Friday
My holiday started early when I left work at lunchtime to go to my final French exam. I’ve not found the practice papers hard, so I was looking forward to the exam if anything (in the same way you might look forward to a good puzzle; a crossword or a suduku). Afterwards, I went for a drink with Helen, one of the other students, and realised that after a year of studying with her I hadn’t picked up on how much we actually have in common. One of the things I’ve really loved about going back to college is making so many new friends, and hopefully I’ve just met another one.

The holiday started for real when Stuart finished work and we got ready for Out of the Blue. They were returning after a couple of month’s absence in a new venue (the refurbished Ohm) and it was great to have them back. We danced all night, and walked home to the dawn chorus (and we might have detoured via the dodgy take away where we were the only sober people in the place apart from the staff).

Saturday
We had planned to spend Saturday recovering, but instead I ended up going to the Take That concert at the City of Manchester stadium. My friend Deborah had bought tickets on eBay (yes, your alarm bells should start ringing) for Sunday’s reserved seating. We ended up with tickets for Saturday’s general admission. At least we even got tickets – other people buying from the same seller ended up with nothing. I put it down to the beautiful way Deborah complained to the seller…

I have to be honest, I wasn’t a Take That fan first time round. Not because I disliked Take That, particularly, more because the whole boy band thing passed me by. Doesn’t stop me admitting that the concert was brilliant. I suppose one of the advantages of being absolutely massive is that you can do whatever you want – and if whatever you want includes a tango version of It Only Takes a Minute, then that’s alright by me.

I wasn’t as impressed by the catering at the stadium, though. I was expecting outrageous prices (£3 for a tiny microwave pizza, £2 for a pie). What I wasn’t expecting was them to sell out of everything I was able to eat before the main act came on. In the end, I had to be content with a bag of crisps. I was very very glad that I’d decided to eat lots of flapjack before I went in (the theory was all the oats and sugar would keep me going through the day. After all, the 6 1” square pieces I ate provided a meal’s worth of calories on their own.)

Wednesday
You’ve seen the picture of my big camp mirror already. What I didn’t mention is how much trouble it was to put it up. I’ve had it for ages, but not been able to work out how to get to the space above the stairs. Eventually, we bought a special ladder with a platform that supposedly works on stairs. It sort of did, but not enough. We still had to dangle precariously over the stairs to get to the wall.

The really annoying thing is after a morning of measuring and measuring again it’s still not hanging straight. The fixings on the back aren’t equal and while we’ve compensated for it, we didn’t do it enough. So the whole thing has to come down again and we’ve got to work out how to pad out the hooks to correct it. I’m really tempted to leave it like it is, except it’ll drive me mad every time I walk past it. Nothing’s ever easy, is it?

Thursday
After a quick trip to Decathlon in Stockport (a sports shop that sells sports equipment? Weird.) we went searching for somewhere to skate that wasn’t up and down our street. We’d hoped that Tatton park might have somewhere, so we went down to have a look. It was very odd to go there when there wasn’t an RHS show on, and I hadn’t appreciated how beautiful it was. While there wasn’t anywhere skate friendly, we’re planning to go back with our bikes to suss out the isolated corners in the near future. Even I feel hopeful that I could potter round without falling off and really hurting myself. Again.

We’re not parking there again though. £4? Rip off!

Friday
I’m so sad! Stuart was up at Maplin looking for plastic boxes for his Thecus mod, and I wandered over to laugh at the rubbish disco equipment. I hadn’t realised how cheap that sort of thing actually is, and so I am the proud owner of a 20cm mirror ball to hang over my decks – and the motor to make it work. Not bad for a tenner, eh? I’m after a strobe next, although I suppose I’d better learn how to mix first.

Today
Our dynamic holiday gets better and better. Today we cleared our backlog of ironing – it only took 5 hours. Rock and roll!

Nice, huh?

Yesterday we managed to get some vegetables from the supermarket, make some great soup, drink a bottle of pink fizz, and go out on the skates. Today, we’ve done the ironing (in the garden, the weather has been that nice) and shredded some post that’s been hanging round. And that’s it.

It felt really good to get out on the skates. The first time I went outside, I couldn’t bring myself to move more than an arms length from the house, but this time Stuart walked me up and down the path until I’d got the feel of the basic movement. I’m now confident enough to go up and down in straight lines without holding on to anything, although I’m really really slow.

When I’ve got Stuart within grab distance, I’m even beginning to get the confidence to start swooshing a little bit, rather than making baby steps. I’ve just got to transfer that to when I’m skating on my own. This weekend’s progress has given me enough knowledge to see where I can get if I carry on trying, bit by bit.

Stuart’s coming on too – for each length of the road I make, he’s zooming up and down four or five times, doing his fancy pants turns at the end. I’m so jealous, even though he’s insistent that he’s nowhere near as good as he used to be.

The most worrying bit of all this is the two kids who are also practicing on our street. They’re about 8, and they could have us any time. God knows what they’re making of the two fat old duffers wobbling around looking like they’re going to fall any moment.

That’s not strictly quite true, we’ve been getting rid of rubbish ever since we first moved in, but we’ve moved onto the things that might come in useful one day, or that have emotional resons for being kept (except we can’t quite remember what the reasons actually are). These are things that can’t be thrown, they’re too important for that.

So, about 15 years after everyone else, we’ve dipped our toes into ebay. And now we want to know how everyone else does it – it’s a complete and utter faff. I have a newfound respect for the people who sell tinfoil hats for pets for 30p – it’s taken us a whole evening to list just one thing. And I bet it won’t sell (to anyone sane, anyway), so it’s going to get binned anyway.

It’s like leftovers – you’ve got to put them into a box in the fridge, so you feel OK about throwing them away 3 days later when they’ve gone off.