Well laid plans of Mice and Men

Kay & Stu

OK we’ve gone and done it! I know some will say ‘you Bl***y fools and at your age.’ but life I reply is not a rehearsal and you only have one chance, so for us this is it.

What am I getting on about? Well changing our life style to one of a dream that has been in our minds for the past two years. My good wife Kay and I have decided to sell our home of the past thirty two happy years and purchase a large American Recreational Vehicle AKA an (RV) to spend as much time as we can touring the UK and Europe.

We will be residing occasionally with our youngest daughter and her partner for short periods now and again as that will be our permanent address in the UK but for the bulk of the time we will live like nomads enjoying the freedom of visiting places we have always wanted to see.

This was a practical solution to an old problem that was beginning to get worse.

The passing of time tells me that age doesn't come alone and that it was getting more and more difficult to keep the garden and house in the condition it now enjoys. Several years ago health problems meant that the ability to do certain things would become harder with each passing year so it had become time to think of downsizing.

We did look at several bungalows not long ago, but either the location or price dictated that was not feasible.

So purchasing an RV  and to enjoy the freedom of exploring what we had both enjoyed with our caravan whilst moving in with a daughter who has the room to spare and for us to use as our main base had some good benefits.

Firstly it enabled us to keep our roots in Kay's home town I.e. doctors and such, but secondly we would be away from under their feet for most of the year. 

After all would you want aging parents cramping your life day after day? I know I wouldn't and we wouldn't blame her for not wanting that either.

Both of our children are grown and have families of their own and we were left with a three bed semi with a large garden and a future of watching the sun set each night on a large council estate waiting for the grim reaper to visit.
At first our small close of a dozen houses was a haven of peace and quiet but as the older generations have departed it bit by bit (literally in some cases) and the younger more vociferous generation are moving in.

There is only so much F’n this and F’n that, that you can take and when you see the very young of these families repeating their parents not only disrespectful behaviour and language but their ignorant ways. You start to realise that all the love and attention you have given to your bricks and mortar can soon mean very little to your comfortable quiet life and possible future safety.
Though to be honest, that can happen wherever you decide to live theses days from a palace to a flat.

We suddenly realized that the house had become a comfort blanket and what we asked ourselves had happened to our sense of adventure?

We had toyed with the idea of renting but were soon put off that by the nightmare stories of properties being trashed. Also we didn’t want the constant worry of returning to a home that would possibly need major reinvestment to get it back to its normal well loved state, the hard work that would have involved and we would still have our original problem of maintenance.

Well we said to ourselves it’s either now or never and as all our collateral was invested in the house it was time to sell up and get on with it, so we put the plan into action on Monday the 23^rd of August.

We expected it to be a long drawn out process, well houses weren’t selling and mortgages were hard to come by and cash was short due to the recession.
Oh how wrong we were!!!!

We rang three estate agents on the Monday the 23^rd of August to arrange valuations. One arrived on the following Wednesday the 25^th and on Thursday the 26^th, the other two arrived. We opted for one who then arrived back on the 27^th to talk through the process; he arrived back again on the 31^st to take photographs and announced he had a potential buyer who would like to view that Friday. Yee gods we thought this is moving too fast!

On Friday the 3^rd of September the buyers came and very nice they were to. They had a good look around and requested to come back the following day Saturday the 4^th to view again which they did.

This was moving far faster than we had ever planned for and knowing how that the housing market was depressed, had expected that the property would have been on the market for at least a year. We had also decided that if after a year it hadn’t sold, we would cancel our dream and stay put, well time after all is against us at our age.

 The offer came back on Monday the 6^th of September and we are due to sign contracts by the 5^th of October.

Good God! We realised that all this had happened in just under a fortnight. We had yet to arrange selling off of some of our furniture and goods. The Girls would take some and some would be trashed being too old or of no use and something’s would go in storage.

We can’t purchase the RV until the sale of the house has gone through so we will just have to keep looking and viewing potential units.

Kay is a really organised lady and to keep me in tow has laid out our entire plan on a flow chart. The pair of us sat down with butterflies bouncing around in our stomachs as we suddenly realised it was all Go, Go, Go.

The reason I am writing this Blog is twofold it will remind us of how far we are through our dream, complete with trials and tribulations and hopefully give useful information to others intending to go down this path.

So keep tuned in and enjoy the ride!!!!!!!!! We look forward to comments from other people intending to do the same or even if your wish is just to see two old fools behaving like teenagers.

Just for us to remember what the old house looked like when we left it here is a selection of the photos that the estate agent took

The front

Our kitchen

Living room

Main bedroom

My Playpen at the bottom of the garden

Dining room

The conservatory

Second Bedroom Kay's Office

Rear of the house

View from my Playpen

My Grape Vines and the Patio

The small bedroom

And finally the Bathroom

P.S The photo at the top was taken when we were caravaning at the Leek C&CC Site two years ago, thank god we've both lost a great deal of weight since then which means we can carry more load in the RV.