Finally I have a mortgage I can start to pay off!

Fortune_Smiles

That's very difficult MV.  Hopefully mum will get used to the idea soon.  Negativity can be a way of trying to slow things down and control the change.  Would it help to schedule some provisional visits now or make a plan for Christmas so mum has something positive to focus on?

My family were also a bit worried about our move.  Now they love that we are here and come to stay with us for their annual holidays 😲

Fortune x

themadvix

Thanks Fortune. I had thought about trying to schedule stuff but as we don’t have a moving date yet (or formal mortgage offer or survey!), it’s not so easy. I am tempted to tell her we’ll be coming back for Christmas (probably just for the day) as per usual but not sure what usual looks like since things were already a bit in flux prior to Covid (and then what if that ruins Christmas again?).

 We’ve just had a chat on the phone that managed to be ok - might take niece out for the day tomorrow, depending on weather. If not I think we’ll go for a walk in the afternoon anyway. I need to have a chat with her but it needs to be face to face.

 Pretty much everyone else wants to come and visit and I fear we may never get rid of my dad and his partner or DH’s uncle who loves Norfolk (although the mainly veggie menu will probably put both of them off! 😂)! (Dad is retiring at Christmas and also wanting to come and help with DIY… DH is not so keen…)

Karmacat

I'm pleased at all the good news in your posts - and there *is* a lot there, especially about your buyers but so sorry about your mum's attitude.  90 minutes each way is perfectly do-able, you're absolutely right, and Norfolk is a brilliant county.  I hadn't been there until about ten years ago (uh oh, I probably already wrote that on your thread, sorry!) You've found such a lovely property - DIY from your dad might be the worst problem you have  

South_coast

themadvix said:

I think she’d be more likely to move down to the south coast if she moved though! She’ll be joining you instead! 😂

One unexpected Mother is enough, thank you 🤣!

themadvix

Morning all,

Thanks Karma - I don't think you'd mentioned how much you like Norfolk, but feel free to mention away! And thanks I think SC?! I suppose if you reject her she'll have fewer choices of where to go! 

We're not taking niece to an NT place as the weather is pretty miserable here and niece has decided she wants to stay with her cousins who are visiting for a bit longer. We'll go for a walk instead - and hopefully we can sort things out a bit.

In the meantime I've picked up a small platform job as I didn't have any other work arrive overnight. I also did another platform job yesterday evening, which has already been approved by the client. As DH was away, it seemed like a good opportunity to earn (especially as I spent a lot of yesterday doing not a lot and reading the forums). My debtor client has paid the last of the recent invoices, so it's just waiting for her to pay off the debt and then we'll be square. I think I said that there's more work arriving from her tomorrow and with any luck the big regular project for the American client will arrive on Thursday as scheduled (I'll believe it when I see it). It's feeling like hard work at the moment to get money in... but that's self-employment sometimes and at least I know how to deal with it.

In good news, our mortgage has been underwritten without having to provide any other docs - just the valuation to complete and we'll have a mortgage offer (AIP has come through, but it's kind of irrelevant now). As a pre-application valuation was put in by our mortgage advisor due to the nature of the property, hopefully the valuation should come back fine. I went and dropped off all our paperwork yesterday afternoon. Just waiting on a savings statement DH has ordered and the Building Control certificate for our 2017-installed boiler, which we never received - I've spoken to the plumber this morning and he's going to look into it for me. A bit bizarre at the solicitor's - they're still not letting anyone in, so I stood on the threshold in a draughty passageway with my mask on and handed the stuff over at a door with tape across it (and then had the door shut on me while she copied my ID docs and returned them!).

MS things:
* Clicks done, no win on the HW today though
* Resurrected 1P - £2.70 in there, so a way off of claiming!
* @£9.26 on Qmee
* PA painfully slow as the academic world is on holiday, but I should at least reach £5 this month.
* Another small Ebay sale (one less thing to move, a few pounds more for the moving fund)
* DH has renegotiated with V0dafone for our broadband - they were looking to put our price up but as DH pointed out we could have just ended the contract when we moved and got a new customer deal. He's got it put back to £22/month (it was £23.81 or something) but managed to double the speeds we can get - which will work at the new address, so that's really helpful - we'll be relying on a good connection even more when we're out in the countryside! (New router has just arrived as I've been typing)
* £1 Populous survey just done - at £11 already

Gratitudes:
* Phoning the plumber wasn't as scary as I expected (I hate phoning tradesmen because I know they're in the middle of stuff and they're not always easy to talk to!)
* Lunch and a walk with mum later (pity about niece, but can't blame her for wanting more playtime!
* Just had a text to say mortgage valuation survey will be tomorrow! 

Have a good day all!

Karmacat

It's all rolling along and getting done!  Really, really good news! 

We spent a week there every year between 2010 and 2017, inclusive.  And our Norfolk-based rellies are in a little village with a bus service to Norwich for their daughter, so we saw a lot that they'd found, as locals.  The two issues are flooding - not where you might expect, and it's not as flat as the Somerset Levels, for instance, and also (back in the day, at least) the sheer number of tourists jamming up the roads - the bridge at Wroxham, for instance, and it's almost impossible to find a detour around it.  Roy's of Wroxham is a local pearl, however   There's an awful lot of *amazing* stuff to see - you'll love the NT properties round there  

Staffordia

Another Norfolk fan here, although we much prefer it when the children are at school 😉 

Great bird watching opportunities and a really nice Norfolk Wildlife Trust cafe at Cley where you can sit and look across the marshes.  Joint membership is about £42 p.a. and worth it imo.

Fabulous beaches and often empty out of season.

Just be prepared for journeys to be slower than you anticipate,  tractors and elderly drivers 🙄

try_harder

What wonderful and exciting news i am so pleased for you ..You will be joining me too living here in Norfolk and depending on where you are in Norfolk you also have beautiful Suffolk not far away

Suffolk_lass

try_harder said:

What wonderful and exciting news i am so pleased for you ..You will be joining me too living here in Norfolk and depending on where you are in Norfolk you also have beautiful Suffolk not far away

Yes, it's not bad here either!

Re your Mum, it reminds me of that TV programme where a couple/family go to Australia or NZ and compare lifestyles, costs, employment, education - and then they get the messages from home. So often they suck the pleasure out of the opportunity and the couple don't go because of what amounts to emotional blackmail. I'm sure your Mum would be appalled if she really thought through how she is being

themadvix

Morning all,

Thanks for all your lovely messages. Staffordia, you make a good point about traffic - I will bear it in mind! TH, we'll be quite near the border with Suffolk (and SL, we love Suffolk too - if something had come up there then we'd have moved that way too ). We'll be a bit more inland and away from where the tourist traffic is likely to congregate, but still in beautiful countryside and near enough the coast to get to Blakeney for fish and chip suppers watching the sunset

So Mum and I had a relatively nice afternoon yesterday and we discussed the house. I do think she is genuinely concerned about me being lonely, which is fair enough (as mums are supposed to worry), but there's definitely some other things going on. I had quite a wobble last night and it is really hard to know how many reservations are too many, but I still want to move and still love the place and still want to buy the house. But it's not always easy to not see the downsides. I think if we knew a bit more about the finances it would help - there's a lot of unknowns (how much will it cost to heat/run the house, how much income does the holiday let bring in, how much is the house going to cost us in upkeep and maintenance being GII listed, etc. etc.). We keep coming back to, if it's really not for us, then we can always move 'back'. And I've realised that I need to stop viewing it as 'forever', because I know this freaks me out. When I first became pescatarian I used to get upset about the thought of never eating meat again - it took a long time for me to get over this and my approach had to be that I wouldn't eat it today or tomorrow.... As Chiglepig says, it's a case of (not) eating the elephant one step at a time. I need to use this approach with moving away too (for the scary bits).

Sorry what a lot of ramblings...

In MSE news:
* Picked up 2 cat sitting jobs - a repeat customer in September (hopefully not too close to moving date!) and one this weekend - popping to meet them and get keys this afternoon.
* Picked up and completed another platform job last night
* Used the Lidl app to get a free pastry - DH had this last night (poor thing didn't get back from his work trip till 7 and had only had a Burger King all day)
* Also bought flour and a pizza for my dinner last night in Lidl. Yet to use the flour, but the pizza was pretty pathetic - none of the veg had any flavour, it was all watery! So while I may have to cut back on spending a bit, I won't make that mistake again. 
* No veg box again this week, but think we'll have one next week - non-organic Olio carrots just aren't as nice (and there's only so much spinach, chard and French beans you can eat from the garden!)
* Clicks done (no HW winnings)
* 1P survey done
* PA survey done
* Olio collection this morning has supplied DH with snacks for today, bread and a pastry for me and some flowers

Gratitudes:
* Mum bought me a lovely lunch out yesterday (and we had a generally good chat)
* Lovely Olioers
* Sis and niece popping up later
* Cat sitting jobs popping up unexpectedly (feeling a bit frustrated that I'm getting repeat bookings from several clients now and having built it up, I'll be leaving! Had to turn another down as it was for October half term )

Have a good day all!