It seemed to good to be true, a nice house, in our price range with money to spare and the chance for us to have exactly the kitchen and bathroom we wanted. As is mostly the case, it was too good to be true.
The valuation report came back with signs of movement and the mortgage lender told us we’d need a full survey before they’d give us the cash. That report came back yesterday and the first thing the surveyor said to me on the phone was “Don’t touch this with a barge poll”.
In short the roof is too heavy for the walls and is pushing them apart. That and the many other issues found would amount to a bill nearing £100,000 to get it in a state that the mortgage company would be happy to lend us the money.
Back to house hunting I guess 
After waiting 5 months for our vendors to find somewhere to move to we decided we just couldn’t keep waiting. We’d been keeping an eye on houses in the village we wanted to move to but nothing that met what we wanted came on the market.
Last weekend we figured it was time to look in other areas and headed out to the town just down the road from where we were looking. We looked at a couple of places and one of them was really interesting. Seemed it had be repossessed by the bank who were now trying to get their cash back and wanted to exchange ASAP. This put us in a favourable position as we have no chain, a mortgage offer already and a solicitor waiting to get to work.
The house itself is bigger than the one we currently have an offer on. Needs a bit of work (double glazing, carpets, and new kitchen) to finish off the job the previous owners were doing before they ran out of cash, but as it’s a lot cheaper we’ll have money spare to do it. It’s not the area we dreamed off, but it’s not bad either. Our offer got accepted today and fingers crossed we could be exchanging in 3 weeks or so.
Thank you for stealing my bike you little shit. In order to keep training for the Charity Bike Ride ride I’m doing next year i just had to spend 600quid on new bike, accessories and insurance.
I hope the wheels buckel and you fall under a bus you twat.
All the worst,
Alex
Last weekend at the Big Chill was fantastic. We got there Thursday evening and got the tents up in a fairly good location.
The tent I’d bought in a hurry two days earlier turned out to be absolutely massive. Next time I take it anywhere I’ll take an inflatable double mattress too. The festival was as good as I remembered from previous years and the music was fantastic, I listened to a load of bands I’d never heard of before and now feature in my Spotify favourites.
I managed to get up in time on the Sunday to get naked and painted for Spencer Tunick. It was certainly an interesting experience and look forward to getting my free copy in the post. Incase you need proof then here’s a picture of me after the event.
You can find more pics on these news stories at The Metro and TNT Magazine.
On Monday we made our way back to london and when i got back i thought it would a nice way to finish off the long weekend would be a good thai massage from the place down the road. I cycled down there as I’m trying to cycle everywhere as part of my training for next year’s Vietnam to Cambodia bike ride. I chained the bike up nearby and went to get my massage, and hour later I leave to find my bike gone. Some thieving bastard had nicked it in broad daylight from a busy main road right opposite a bus stop. Reported it to the police but not expecting to ever see it again. That sucked.
So, five awesome days and one shitty afternoon.
Not sure if you’ve heard of Spencer Tunick, he’s the guy that does art installations involving thousands of naked people.
Well he’s doing his next installation at the Big Chill this weekend and as I’ll be there I figured why not try and raise some sponsorship money for my charity bike ride.
So if enough people sponsor me before Sunday I will take part. And if you don’t sponsor me I’ll send you the photo! 
You can sponsor my 440km bike ride here. It’s for MAG (Mines Advisory Group) and will help clear unexploded devices from many countries around the world.
I’m heading off to the Big Chill festival today for a weekend of relaxing in a field listening to great music.
Looking forward to Massive Attack, Bonobo, Morceeba, Plan B, and a bunch of others.
Next year in January I will be cycling the 440km from Saigon in Vietnam to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
The ride takes a total of 5 days and will be raising money for MAG, the Mines Advisory Group. MAG is a charity that spends it’s time clearing unexploded mines, bombs and other explosives from current and former war zones. They have projects in many countries around the world and I’ve seen their work first hand in Laos when I was there a few years back. Whilst their work directly saves the lives of people who may accidentally trigger these dormant explosives, it also helps to hand back land to local communities so that it is safe enough for them to use again. They also educate the local populations about the dangers of these devices and provide employment for many people in these countries. You can read more about them here.
I have photos from my visit to Phonsavan, they help to give an impression of the scale of the problem. The explosives surrounded by sand bags in the scrap yard are yet to be made safe and could still kill.
More details about the bike challange are available here.
If you wish to sponsor me you can do so at my Just Giving page. If you’re a UK tax payer don’t forget to tick the gift aid box and the government will increase your donation by over 25%.
Back in March we finally found a house to buy in an area that we really like. Because of the current market there isn’t really a lot on but after a few months searching we found somewhere that was ideal. It had enough space, needed no immediate improvement, nice garden, good area and backed onto a park. The expansion potential is also very good.
We made an offer, had it accepted, got a mortgage and a solictor and waited for things to happen. Within a week the vendors had lost the property they had an offer on. This did not bode well but we figured it wouldn’t take them too long to find a new property. Three and a half months later we got back from holiday to find a letter from our solicitor, the chain was complete and things would start moving. Hurray!
I phoned the Estate Agents to get confirmation, yes they were buying an empty house with no chain, excellent. I then phoned the solicitor to ask what we needed to do and was told to just wait for the draft papers to come through. Three weeks later we’d not recieved anything, phone the solicitor again to ask what was up and she said she hadn’t heard from the vendor’s solicitor but would get in touch with them.
I figured I may as well phone the estate agents, our usual contact was on holiday so I spoke to another agent who said the vendors were still looking. “What? We were told they had an offer on a house”, this seemed to be news to this guy who said he’d contact the vendors and find out. Five minutes later he called back with the news that vendors no longer had an offer on the house as it required to much work to update so they’re looking again.
Well thanks a bunch for letting us know! It’s a shame you have no choice over estate agents when it comes to buying a house because with service like that I’d drop them and go elsewhere.
We’re now back where we were 4 months ago with an offer on a house who’s vendors have nowhere to go. It wouldn’t be so bad if the market was good enough for us to pull out and get another house but we keep looking and there is just nothing that matches what we’re looking for. When we first had the offer accepted we thought we might be in by now, at this rate it would be nice to be in by Christmas.
“Hello, I’m called Li Shan”
On monday I started Mandarin evening classes. Two days a week, 2 hours per class. I have 5 weeks of classes in an intensive course that I hope will give me a good foundation that I can continue with the next level of classes.
When I was in China I picked up a number of words, phrases, and characters, but never really had any foundation to my “learning”, so it was hard to get it right and remember things correctly. After the first two lessons I’ve found a lot of what I picked up now makes more sense to me.
In the class last night I had to pick a chinese name. The teacher wasn’t too keen on the name I’d used with my Students in China, xióng mao (Panda), so we settled on Li Shan.
I’ll be back in China in June and look forward to practising what I’ve learnt.
Update: I did have the proper chinese characters rather than pinyin, but they just failed in wordpress.
I’ve been a rugby fan for sometime now but last weekend was my first trip to watch a game at Twickenham. We went to watch the Barbarians Vs New Zealand match.
Firstly i must say how impressed I am with the stadium. We were quite high up but had an amazing view over the pitch. The game itself was great, much better than the boring England Vs NZ game two weeks previously.
At Christmas we’re off to watch Harlequins Vs Wasps which should be a great game and today i bought a load of weekend tickets to the London Sevens next May. Can’t wait.
