When are you going to start looking at houses?

It was during a phone conversation with a friend a few days ago, that he asked me: "When are you going to start looking at houses? You seem to be on a permanent holiday."

He had a point. Since hitching up the caravan and leaving our home, we had spent a couple of nights on a local site, ten days in the Yorkshire Dales, walking, drinking, eating out, walking, drinking, eating out... (you get the picture) Before travelling down to Nantwich in Cheshire to (at last) start searching. Supposedly.

We spent ten days in the Yorkshire Dales instead of house hunting

He pushed the point home. "So when are you going to start?"

"Well, we have to settle down here first - but next week we'll get serious!" I said with indignation.

When I'd put the phone down, I thought about next week. On Monday we were meeting up with my eldest daughter, Natalie, to collect mail which had been diverted to her address, and have a pub lunch. Maybe Tuesday then? Tuesday... we were having a meal with my youngest, Laura. Okay, so we should be able to start the ball rolling on Wednesday? But that was when we had to rush back up to Merseyside for dental appointments and a visit to see the surgeon who had operated on my hand. (I've got 'The Viking's Disease - but that's another story). Then there was Linda's hair appointment (no chance of that being postponed!), and eating out with friends...

This house hunting lark isn't as easy as it sounds! Perhaps that's why it took us so long to sell our own property. A sort of lethargy, or trusting too much in fate to come up with the goods?

In truth we have been doing some virtual house hunting since the beginning of the year, when it seemed (after being let down in the past) that the current buyers might be serious.

I set up an alert system with Rightmove so they'd sent me emails with links to new properties based on the maps I'd set up online. The problem with this is that the only filter I could set was regarding the price band, so most get deleted with hardly a glance. There's another problem too. We don't have a definitive idea of where we want to live!

If you're working, it's easy. You want to be within about half an hour's drive of where you work. Our focus is more fluid than that. We don't want to be too far from the Warrington area where most of our friends live, and my two daughters in Lancashire.

So, that could be Cheshire, north Shropshire, Lancashire or North Wales.

Then there's the type of property and it's position: No new build, because we want room for the caravan, not on a through road because of traffic noise, preferably detached (It wouldn't be fair to inflict AC/DC cranked up on our surround sound system on our new neighbours), not next to a river or a school or a National Trust Property. Preferably a character property, maybe a barn conversion, but one that's already been done up. We're happy to put in a new kitchen or bathroom, but we don't want to start knocking walls down...

We have to be detached so as not to inflict AC/DC on our new neighbours...

Can you see the problem?

My daughters can. They give us a funny look when we're talking to them that says; you're never going to find anything perfect enough.

Well, maybe we'll have to compromise. Perhaps.

(Read my novels; Stench of Evil https://goo.gl/VQOVuS and The Devil in Them https://goo.gl/aS1cjZ in ebook format and paperback...)