Further house-hunting

Aaargh! We’ve looked at more houses and it turned out that the owner of the one house we liked had already accepted an offer!

I drove over to Woodstock to have breakfast with Steve Vickers at 8 this morning. The aim was to begin to flesh out some ideas for the Bah?’? Educational Institute (or whatever it will eventually be called). We also caught up with what our respective offspring are doing, what Becky is doing and Steve?s plans to reduce his work at Nebosh while retaining his salary! The discussion about the Bah?’? Educational Institute was very productive. Becky put in some useful ideas as well.

Then on to Hertfordshire with Erica to view a couple of houses. We had lunch at the large pub in Oaklands (can?t remember its name) before going on to the first house, in Chestnut Walk. I fell in love with 20 Chestnut Walk pretty well instantly. Chestnut Walk is a private road, narrow and leafy with an extraordinary variety of houses large and small along it. No. 20 was a ?chalet? house - formerly a bungalow with large rooms in the roof. It was different, interesting but not too quirky, and it felt like home. Erica also liked it but was not quite as ecstatic as I was.

The other house we looked at, in Mardley Wood, was about the same age as 24GC, but there was something repulsive about it. Neither Erica nor I felt that we could make this our home, even though it had plenty of space. It was the atmosphere, or something.

After we?d seen that house (Linda from Putterill?s in Knebworth took us around both houses and there was a Mrs Bell who was looking at the Mardley Wood property at the same time as us) we fetched Hari from her uni office (Bella, who was delivering her MSc thesis, was with her - we dropped Bella at the beginning of the road into the business park) and took her to the flat. While we were drinking tea and singing the praises of Chestnut Walk, my mobile rang. It was Linda. She had discovered that the vendor had already accepted an offer slightly below the asking price. I felt gutted. I had set my heart on 20 Chestnut Walk and we had been preparing to make an offer.

So now we?re in some difficulty, since there just are not the houses on the market that we would like.