Roller coaster

week that is.

Monday an early morning phonecall got me a days work in a school were the staff were dropping like nine pins to a strange illness, followed by finally collecting Kelly from the station and signing up for Slimmers World, 

Tuesday I took little Finley to shop for all the fruit and veg I would need and visited my dad who also seemed to be developing the strange illness going round (strange as in no-one could really describe the symptoms other than to say they felt ill or wibbly!)
 

Wednesday it was back to work again but luckily those who had succumbed to the virus had all recovered. 

Thursday we heard that my Uncle Derek had died after a long fight with the dreaded Big C.  RIP

We also spent the day interviewing estate agents as the time had finally arrived to put our house on the market. We had seen a bungalow with lots of potential and were hoping it would hang around long enough for us to at least be able to say ours was up for sale even it it hadnt been sold, when we made our offer.

 Having estate agents round is an odd experience, and it was interesting to compare the different sales pitches. The first turned out to belong to the same golf club as Martin and in fact had even played a round with him at one time. His approach was to spend ages chatting to Martin about golf and almost ignoring me, then when I was forced upstairs to change a dirty nappy from our little man, proceed to tell finally Martin all the stuff we needed to know about how their company were going to market our home.

The second one tended to start talking about herself the minute we finished the first half of any answer to a question e.g How long have you been in this house? Twenty eight years ever since ....ooooh thats nearly as long as I have been an estate agent.  Then she spent the next 15 minutes trying to sell us stuff already on their books and to get us registered before she finally gave us the info we needed. Having valued the house she then told us it was best to put it on at the exact asking price because that would be what we got (and we all really know that no one offers the asking price when buying), Oh and our 3 bed semi detatched house would be in direct competition with the 2 bedroom bungalows on the other side of the main road?????

It turned out the last agent we saw (recommended by Kelly) had once owned a nursery and we knew each other from when she used to attend monthly consortium meetings at my previous school. She came in and immediately asked about what we were wanting to do, and then using a presentation 'big' book made a proper professional presentation on how and what her company could do for us. No hard sell, no trying to be our friend and no genderism. Not only that her commision was cheaper than the others. 

So guess which one we chose?

On Friday I got a text from the agency at 6 15 am asking me to work (a different school this time) so I had to leave Martin who was supporting a head ache, to clean up and dress the house for the agent to come back and measure and take photos. Mmmmm......

Finally the week ended with our annual family outing at the local playhouse pantomime although sadly dad was still feeling rough so couldnt join us. I dont really think he missed much or maybe after such a heavy week or from lack of sleep I was just too tired, but I really didnt think it was up to previous years performances. Still it was nice to go out together as a family and we did laugh at our favourite two stooges who never seem to let down the play or the audiance.

Sadly by saturday the bungalow we had set our hearts on had been sold, leaving not a lot on the market at the moment. This at least takes the pressure off the rush to get all the paperwork done for getting ours on the market but is worrying in that there doesnt seem anything for us to buy.