Deals and compromises

Yesterday I saw that the chap who wanted to exchange a paperclip for a house finally made it. Some people in a town in Saskatchewan, Canada offered him a house in return for a part in a film. He’s exchanged all sorts of things along the way, including a snow globe. Sorted. Now, if only I could achieve the same it would make my life much easier. I did ask someone the other day if they would give me either (it’s always polite to offer a choice) a million pounds or a house. They politely declined. Now had I offered a paperclip in exchange that might just have sweetened the deal enough. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. *sigh*

Anyway, yesterday I decided to use the more traditional method for acquiring property and went to see another maisonette. An estate agent called me yesterday afternoon and I arranged to go and see it last night, partly because it meant I had an excuse to escape work promptly and also because the estate agent reckoned it would probably go quite quickly. So I phoned my mum and she agreed to meet me there so we could have a look together.

My mum is normally late for everything but for once it was me who was late because there were various bits of confusion on the tube due to the destination of the train changing at the last minute. Someone decided that the best thing to do was pull the emergency alarm so that they could get off and get on a different train instead. So that delayed the whole service and I hope they were deeply embarrassed by the chaos they caused. All they had to do was get off at the next stop but instead delayed the whole service.

The problem with viewing places with mum is that she doesn’t seem to have particularly strong opinions on places, so is a bit non-committal in her thoughts. It’s not that I want her to be really enthusiastic or critical but I had to keep pressing her for her to give an opinion particularly. Knowing what she thought would be helpful but I suppose that some of it comes back to the issue of ultimately it being my decision, so to a degree my own opinion is the only one that matters.

I went back to my parents’ house for dinner afterwards and ended up having an argument with my father who then refused to eat with us, so that was lovely, but it gave me the chance to see if I could glean what mum’s opinion was on the place we had seen. I think the conclusion we both came to was that it was nice but an awful lot of money and some of that money was because of the postcode. It was about £20,000 more than the place I put an offer in on recently, which is a lot of money. *Thinks* you probably didn’t need me to tell you that.

I am considering writing to Canada and asking if they have any other houses that are going spare and would like to donate to a worthy cause (that’s me, in case you weren’t sure), but the slight downside is that it would be a very long commute to work everyday. I know what you’re thinking “you’ve got to be willing to compromise somewhere” but I’m thinking anywhere more than a five hour journey by plane is probably a bit far. If I carry on like this I may end up in a cardboard box on the Embankment, which would be much closer to work, so would considerably cut my commuting distance – see? I am willing to consider all sorts of option.

*Wanders off to start collecting up the photocopying paper boxes – and a paperclip*