Update on house buying

A while ago I mentioned that we'd had an offer accepted on a house! A quick update is due.

The process has been moving along quite well. We stalled a bit while we chose a mortgage but that's applied for, the legal stuff has all moved along as it should, the survey is now done, and it seems that nothing can now stand in the way of our purchase (famous last words...you read them here!).

My main feeling, other then excitement, is the completely overwhelming amount of information that's involved. We requested some extra reports and searches because the house:
- is near a flood plain (far enough from it to be safe though),
- is near the site of an old refuse site,
- has recently had an extension built.

So we have the following documentation:
- an environmental report,
- a water and drainage report,
- a survey and homebuyers report,
- the information pack from the seller,
- all the mortgage information,
- information on buildings and contents insurance.

In addition, today we've received a couple of quotes and information packs for life assurance and payment protection. And my brain has just overloaded. I can't take any more!!!

There's been some discussion recently about things called home information packs that the seller is supposed to put together. I believe these are becoming mandatory for 3-bedroom houses just this week (if only we'd waited!!). What a good idea this is! If our purchase had fallen through the searches we've done and paid for would have to be re-done and re-paid-for. With a Home Information Pack it's all done once and by the seller, which seems to make a whole world of sense to me.

We are excited, we are thankful for the hugely privileged position that we find ourselves in in being able to buy a house in the first place, we're particularly thankful for the house that we've found that meets our needs so well...but my brain really is quite full up now and I need a rest.

Getting used to being ill

I don't remember being ill much as a kid, teenager, or even in my early working years. But that all seems to have changed lately.

The last two weeks, since getting back from Greenbelt, have been one physical problem after another. Starting with what appeared to be food poisoning or a stomach bug of some sort, morphing into a "flu-like virus" which has kept me in bed for most of this week, and then, having finally recovered from that, I did my back in, to the extent that I could hardly move last night (and I almost certainly shouldn't be using a computer right now).

I've been sick, aching, tired, emotionally drained and now in a huge amount of pain, for nearly two weeks. Add this to the couple of weeks I had off earlier in the year for my stress/depression (I'll write a "whatever happened to post at some point"), and it's been a pretty bad year for me health-wise.

Yet, there are positives to take from all of this. When I first started having my flu-like symptoms I said to Sally "I'm not very good at being ill". By which I meant that, my response to being unwell isn't always very good. I feel like I give up quite easily, but in reality I think I push myself too hard when I'm ill. I'm NOT good at stopping and resting and doing nothing. I feel guilty about not being at work and so I throw myself back into it too quickly.

But I've been learning about these things. I started to recover last weekend and took up too much too quickly and the bug came back to get me as a result. So I had a whole week off, and even when I started to feel myself again I made use of the doctor's sick note and rested.

I've learned to leave alone things that need doing around the house (it's a bit of a tip at the moment but I don't care!!!). I've learned the pleasure of sitting still and reading a book. I've learned not to feel guilty about not being at work - the world continues to turn even when I'm sat in bed doing nothing.


I've prayed a lot, I've chilled out a lot. Sally's been fantastic, as have others who have rallied round to help me out. It's taken a long time but I do think it's nearly over and I'm looking forward to carrying on normally, but with a few lessons learned.

Naturewatch: Fat spider

I like spiders! Which is just as well as there's about a million in our garden. Probably mostly the grown up babies that I spotted back in the spring.

I just liked this one because it used to be quite a skinny spider but she (we think it's a she) has put her web in such a good place that she's had a few meals too many and got really fat!

A case of "Who ate all the flies?"

Book: The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

I've been off sick the last few days, sleeping, resting, and taking my mind off my churning stomach by both reading and writing.

One result of which is that, after about 6 months of on-and-off reading, I've finally finished a book!

The Eyre Affair is a cleverly comic, extremely eccentric romp through time space and reality. I'm sure I missed out on a lot of gags by not being familiar with some of the literary classics on which it's quite heavily based (Bronte and Shakespear getting lots of mentions), but I still found it amusing and entertaining.

It's clever in the sense that the book mashes together reality and fiction. It's set in Swindon, but it's not quite the Swindon we know...or the United Kingdom that we know, for that matter. Names, places, events, often sound familiar, but have been taken into a slightly-alternative reality. This skipping between reality and fiction is also a topic of the book.

I'm not very good at reading, and it took so long that I'm sure I missed out on some meta-narratives, and was not able to appreciate the intricacies of the book. But it was still a very entertaining read.

Would I read it again? Or the next book in the series? Possibly, but I was troubled throughout by the fact that I wasn't quite getting it all because of my lack of literary knowledge, so I certainly won't go straight to the library. Recommend for the quirky, clever, and well-read reader.

Charity and Justice

I'd like to post a link to this article about Charity and Justice. Relevant Magazine doesn't always hit the mark (more below) but this article explains an important difference between what the author calls "charity" (giving to help people in need) and "justice" (trying to fix the things that make charity needed). It's worth reading, thinking about, and taking action on.

Having spoken at some length about "Christian" media in my Greenbelt post, I now mention Relevant Magazine again. Relevant is a very-American media company who are publishing a couple of magazines, some books and resources, and a website, mostly aimed at a Christian audience but, as with Greenbelt, you could get lots from it if you weren't following God in any kind of way.

Sometimes it misses the mark totally, but if you ignore the American-ness, the vast amounts of advertising (someone's got to pay to make these things happen), and some of the less useful articles, there's some useful, interesting, thought-provoking, and sometimes challenging stuff in there.

I hope this article was in one of those categories.