The Landlady says may the best house win

I have run out of steam as far as buying a foreign property is concerned.

The buying of land in Africa failed because The Boyfriend broke his foot at an inopportune moment – although when is it ever opportune to break your foot? – rendering the transaction impossible. It was actually quite a relief as the paperwork for the purchase was barely legitimate and we’d have been flying by the seat of our – ragged in his case, due to the collision – pants, had it gone ahead. More worryingly, the President of said country has recently bulldozed lots of ‘illegitimate’ properties to the ground, a procedure that I actually witnessed while there. It was actually not dissimilar to what happens in this country, apart from ‘they’ – they being the politicians – dress it up so much that you can barely recognise it as bull-dozering… In Africa, I called it ‘naked’ politics, which is a fairly accurate description.

I was on the point of buying a house in Spain a couple of years ago, until I realised that I would then be obliged to go there all the time, when there is so much more of the world that I haven’t seen yet. I will almost certainly expire before the possibilities of the world do, so why commit myself?

“I was on the point of buying a house in Spain until I realised I would then be obliged to go there all the time”

I then turned my attention to the fact that I haven’t actually got that much money, now that I’ve stopped investing in property and that my own abode could do with some TLC, especially as it’s mainly my house that creates my income. This has been outlined by the fact that recently, my millionaire neighbours all have scaffolding up while my house gently leaks.

I called my lovely builder, who is now only mainly concerned with ‘big’ projects, but quite rightly keeps his old customers on the back-burner for when the big projects run out. He might be able to fit me in some time before my front wall caves in and the neighbours start to complain that my house is leaking all over their new paintwork.

My other projects are as follows:
• Replace the electric shower in the downstairs bathroom. A task I can do myself with great adeptness, however would sooner eat my own liver than execute and have therefore procrastinated about for the past six months.
• Replace the weeping window sills in my bedrooms. Well, they used to weep but have now graduated to sobbing uncontrollably.
• Re-plaster the laundry room after extreme leak. Regarding this task, part of me has to say ‘who cares?’ Only The Big Son (who’s actually blind as far as interiors are concerned) and I ever see it.
• Fix stained glass in front door with something other than parcel tape.