Blog On The Motorway

I have often heard the old line that moving house is one of the most stressful things that you can do, but I’ve never really understood it. Throughout my life I have moved on a pretty regular basis. In fact I would say the longest I have ever lived in one house would be about four years, and at one point in my childhood I remember that there were 8 moves in two years. The result of this is that I no longer fear the ‘dreaded move.’ In fact, I rather enjoy it, with the promise of reinvention that it offers each time, the chance to make new a home. Until now.

Ellen and I have been looking for a new house for over a year, off and on, although we’ve only really been serious about it since January. We’re renters, so the stress involved in buying and selling houses is something that doesn’t really apply to us, but we soon found ourselves in a market where the landlord is king (or queen) and there are far more people looking for places than there are places themselves. Time and time again we would find a place, only to find that it had already been snapped up by what Daisy Steiner would call ‘psychic house hunters.’ But then, finally, we found a nice three bedroom place in a not great but not too awful part of Acomb, with a nice big garden to boot. On this occasion we weren’t too late, and deciding not to over think things too much, we snapped it up.

Now, it’s less than two weeks until we move and the wheels are starting to come off. Our finances are being somewhat tested by the fact that we need to find rent and bond, as well as money for a sofa bed, bookcases and a lot more besides. We went up there on Friday and discovered that the whole house needs repainting, rather than the one small patch of wall that we spotted when we first looked around, and today we have found out that the white goods (fridge, freezer, washing machine etc) that we were assured were part of the property are, in fact, not. So suddenly we are looking at having to find the money for everything we already knew about, as well as at least three rather expensive items and redecorating costs, all in the space of two weeks.*

This is all solvable, of course, but this is more in the way of headaches that I am used to when it comes to moving, and it come on the back of five months of hard slog to even get to this point. I cannot wait to be in the new house, but I just wish things could be simple again, when you just packed up your stuff and moved it. Anyway, grumble over. I was going to talk about the ongoing melee that is the hung parliament, but by the time this gets posted it’s likely to be redundant, and I expect we’ll see an announcement today or tomorrow, but I have to say one thing. As far as I can see, and as much as I hate the Tories, the Lib Dems have no option but to get into Government with them, either in coalition, or through a general agreement. Why? Because for years the Lib Dems have been talking about Proportional Representation, and this is exactly the kind of result that PR would throw together on a regular basis. This is their only real chance to show the country that the system they advocate would work, and Clegg has to know that the public wouldn’t view a Lib/Lab coalition the same way. Cameron won the election, not enough to get a majority, but he is the clear winner and the Lib Dems need to understand that, even if they don’t like it. Hell, I don’t like it, but Clegg needs to think not just of his supporters and back benchers, but the country as a whole. Pull this off, and he will be seen as the usher of a new era of politics. To his credit, it seems that he thinks the same way, even if he’s having trouble convicing the rest of his party.**

*Since typing this, and after about 5 conversations with the estate agents, a compromise deal has been hammered out on the white goods. Which pretty much throws this whole blog post into redundancy, but hey, I’m gonna make you sit there and read it all anyway. I did well at negotiating though, they should put me in charge of the government.

**For fuck’s sake. Just as I’m entering this, Brown goes on the news and announces joint talks with Lib Dems as well as his intention to step down. It’s too soon to make any sense of this really, although I am torn between being really happy on an instinctual level, (not least with the idea of seeing Cameron’s face right now) and thinking it’s a terrible terrible idea to get into bed with Labour, for all the reasons outlined above.