I officially owe lots of money to the men in suits..

So, I have a mortgage. It's official and to prove it the bank has just nicked nearly £600 out of my bank account as an 'arrangement fee'. Translation - money in return for them lending me money which will be repayed threefold over the years. I might set up a bank - I'm mystified as to how they all have lost money in the last couple of years as I have never been so conscious as I am at the moment of how they make money off you at every single bloody opportunity.

Anyway, enough whinging. Spring is after all officially here. The geese have arrived back from their winter holidays, parents and three children in noisy and ebullient form. They are currently practising their formation flying over the house then landing in the field and discussing in their loudest voices who did the best.

The crocuses (crocii?) are in such full bloom that they have fallen over under the weight of their own blossoms and there are bright green leaves unfurling on the dog roses.

It's odd to not be gardening but there seems little point as I should be in the new house in the next six weeks. There is plenty of garden space there but no actual garden - a lot of lawn and a few bedraggled shrubs. I'm not sure how much actual top soil there is either - this is Wales where you often discover granite mere cms under the soil. I'm planning on taking as much of my current garden with me as possible but will first have to find somewhere to plant everything at the new house.

I spend a lot of time at the moment imagining myself living there to get used to the idea and to wean myself off the current hovel. I think it is working. I nearly drove to the new house after my meeting today I was so convinced I already lived there. I was going to go for a walk round the reservoir and everything.

The estate agent board has a 'sold subject to..' sign on it and I have a mortgage - it must be real. Up until now I have been convinced that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax and that something would go wrong and I wouldn't get the house. From this point on if the whole thing falls through it will be very expensive as I will have paid for the survey, have incurred solicitors charges and the banks arrangement fee. Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong. How odd that by May I might be living in my own house though. For four years I have been agonising over the house search, despairing of ever finding anything and wondering if I should just give up and stay where I am. Now, in the space of just a few weeks, my whole world has been shifted like a kaleidescope and there is suddenly a new view ahead of me of what my life will look like.

Insuring I'm ripped off....

So, life is a little hectic right now. In addition to trying to buy a house I have been working in France, London and Dorset (small commute then!) and at the moment it is a miracle if I am in one place for more than three hours at a time. This is a little tiring but it's the life I chose, and still choose, so I shall not complain too much (today!).

The thing I do want to whinge bitterly about is insurance and house surveys. I met with the bank today to finalise the mortgage arrangements (aaargh - fear - debt - penury - fear...). As part of the mortgage I have to get a valuation for which they charge a small yet painful fee of £256.00 This is for somebody to drive by the house on their way home and say 'looks rubbish to me - I'd only pay X'. They then inform the bank of this on their headed paper knocked up on Powerpoint. It's a disgrace and the world's biggest con. I mean I could do that. You could do that. For god's sake, the Loyal Hound could do that.

The next option is to do a Homebuyers Report. This is when they do exactly the same thing but write a longer report explaining that though they didn't see anything because the door was closed / they didn't go upstairs / they never actually went there the house could have damp, a roof that will blow off if somebody sneezes, windows that don't fit, a boiler that will explode every other Tuesday. This is an even bigger rip off at £550. I could still do that, as could you. It's just a bigger con.

The last and only viable option is a Buildings Survey. This is where they visit the house and actually go inside. They are usually a qualified surveyor of some kind and they prove it by bringing damp meters, test tubes and pipettes and possibly a lab coat and they test everything they can find. Then they inform you that the house is a death trap, everything that could go wrong, just might and that you would be nuts to buy it. This small novella will cost £856.00. OUCH. There are so many other things that I could buy with that money. Things I'd actually like to buy. I mean, when else do you pay to receive bad news?

I would so love to be the person who says 'bollocks to that' and just doesn't get a survey but at the back of my mind is the fact that if I don't get the survey then Sod's Law says that I will end up with a house that does have death watch beetle encamped on the sofa watching daytime television and drinking Horlicks. If I get the survey at least I would know this, but if I don't then I will have bought a house with a sitting tenant that could make it worthless. So, I have had to agree to spend nearly a thousand pounds on a survey 'just to be sure'. It's downright depressing.

I mean, we seem to insure against EVERYTHING. Car Insurance, health insurance, contents insurance, building insurance, travel insurance, life insurance, mortgage insurance, public liability insurance (Ok I have that one for work but I do have it). The bank also wanted me to take Sickness Insurance and Trauma Insurance (I might need that one if I survive the process of buying a house which is vilely traumatic). If I saved up all the money that I spent on insurance I'd be a millionaire and could retire in a fortnight.

When it comes down to it I don't actually know anybody whose life has been ruined because they didn't have insurance. I do know plenty of people though who had insurance which didn't pay out at the vital moment because of some incomprehensible and devious bit of small print that said the insurance was invalid if you had a vowel in your name, or you tried to claim in the afternoon, or you preferred Cindy to Barbie.... you get the general gist. It's the world's biggest scam and I fall for it everytime. Why? well, just in case of course.

I'm never going to be the person who doesn't insure, but I am it seems always going to be the person who bitches and moans about the fact that I wish I didn't have to. The only thing insurance seems to do, whether it be a survey or travel insurance, is insure that I get robbed once a month like clockwork.

Waiting for the phone to ring.....

So, I've been looking for a house for 4 years now. Having sold my flat in London some 5 years ago it never occurred to me that buying in Wales would be difficult. In fact I was pretty certain that I would be able to afford well, Wales. What a fool I was! The last few years have seen property in Wales go stratospheric. Beyond sense or reason and certainly beyond my self employed budget. A small hovel in the hills, usually with 2 bedrooms, a downstairs bathroom (lucky it's not outside I suppose) and tiny rooms with doorways so low that I concuss myself has been disappearing off the market at the 350k mark, well out of my reach and not what I want to live in anyway.

For the last 18 months though I have had my eye on a house that I couldn't afford but which looked interesting. Finally the price dropped in January. Not really within my reach, but certainly enough for me to justify going to visit it without the estate agents going 'Pah! I don't think so fair and impoverished maiden. You shall not cross the threshold of this house you could never afford'. Instead, they sighed a heavy sigh (they are used to me visiting everything that comes on the market and then saying I hate it and think it is overpriced and not big enough for the Loyal Hound should he wish to live on his own). A visit was arranged.

The house is lived in by a bachelor and his brother. Not a dating type of bachelor but an overweight and pale man who has a shy smile and possibly a fear of the outdoors. The house smells of unwashed sheets and the Sitting Room was dominated by a large flat screen television on which Battlestar Galactica or some such sci fi thing was playing.

Although the house technically has everything I have dreamt of, I didn't like it. It didn't feel like home. I left feeling despondent but that night I drew up how it could be laid out, I dithered, I agonised and I realised that though I didn't love it at the moment that could change. I didn't love the hovel when I moved in and now it is more home than I could ever have imagined. Things change. So, I rang him and offered him money for the house. Nothing like as much money as he wanted and unsurprisingly he said "No. Sod off." (well more politely than that).

This should have been the end of it. I went off to the big smoke for work and couldn't shake the house from my thoughts. I'd lie in bed thinking about it before I fell asleep. It had everything that I say I want for the forseeable future. I have looked at a lot of houses in the last four years and finding something that ticks all the boxes I have is not easy and is inevitably well out of my financial reach.

This house needed more thought. I made an appointment to go back with a builder and look at how much it would cost to make it what I wanted. I met with the bank to find out how much money they would lend me. I went back to the bachelor on Saturday and I made him an offer. I didn't think it had a hope in hell so you can imagine my shock when he said that his answer was likely to be 'yes, 99% yes' and he would ring me and confirm once he had spoken to the people he was buying from.

Now I am waiting. Waiting for him to ring and say definitely yes. In the intervening days between making the offer and waiting for him to ring I have realised how much I want this house. Please, bachelor, ring me and say yes.

See the irony of how my life seems to be dependent on single men failing to ring me?