It's the taking part that counts

I asked my landlady how the open day went and she said two lots of people came round. So I don’t think that can be described as a rip roaring success. Nor as enough justification to have once again removed my towels and the toilet paper from the bathroom, moved various items about on my desk or thrown some of the paper that was on my desk into the bin, which I have now retrieved. I really don’t feel comfortable with her keep going into my room. It feels like such an invasion of privacy, but she just doesn’t see it like that as she thinks she is just being practical.

I went round to see the place I am interested in buying again and still think it is very nice. The estate agent who was there this time didn’t seem to know very much about the property so I phoned the one I had originally spoken to and asked him various things. There are 79 years left to run on the lease, so I want to know if the current owner has ever looked into having it extended. If I bought the place I would try to get it extended, but unless you have lived in a property for two years you don’t have the legal right to do that, so I would have to ask her to start the proceedings etc. It could cost quite a lot of money but then I guess that is something to negotiate on with the price. I also want to know what things like the service charges cover and who owns a somewhat abandoned looking car that is taking up one of the parking spaces. Anyway, I have said to the estate agent that I am interested and so that at least means if she gets any offers in the interim that she is less likely to accept.

The slight complication with this – isn’t there always a complication – is that the friend I spoke to a couple of weeks ago about possibly buying somewhere with is apparently very keen to do this. Except I don’t know this from her, I saw her dad yesterday and he said it to me. I said that I was interested in a particular place and might well put in an offer, but would phone J and find out what the situation is. She was meant to have phoned me back over a week ago to tell me what the likelihood of her getting a mortgage is, given that she already owns somewhere else, and I haven’t heard anything, so I don’t even know if it is viable. Anyway, I’d better phone her later and find out what’s going on. I did actually say to her when we spoke that I would carry on looking on my own though, but maybe she didn’t quite realise what that might mean.

I went round to see a friend yesterday afternoon, which was interesting. Interesting in the sense that we were walking her dog in the afternoon and whilst we didn’t have an argument, I was so annoyed by a couple of things she said that I almost handed her the dog lead and walked off. I managed to resist the urge though as storming off or putting the phone down on people really isn’t my style. When I was driving home last night I was on a dual carriageway and at one point suddenly noticed that a car was reversing toward me on the main carriageway. Surely this isn’t normal behaviour – or legal for that matter? Perhaps it was my friend trying to make sure she won in the disagreement. She can be very competitive. *looks all suspicious*