Mrs and Mrs Housebuyer (standing in our living room)
“It’s much bigger than our house, we haven’t got a separate dining room. With the extension I would definitely call it a four bedroom house rather than three.”
Mrs & Mrs Housebuyer (when the estate agents phone to see if they are interested)
“It’s about the same size of our present house. We are really looking for a four bedroom house”
Mr Housebuyer (in our kitchen)
“We would like a bigger kitchen but we could easily extend through to the extension”
Me: “You might have problems as that’s a supporting wall”
Mr Housebuyer “Not a problem at all, I could put in an RSJ and make a really great kitchen. It’s got loads of potential”
Mr Housebuyer (when the estate agents phone to see if they are interested)
“No, the kitchen’s too small”
Mr Housebuyer to the estate agent when cancelling a viewing
“I drove past last night and there’s not enough parking”
Well maybe not for a car dealership but we parked our camper van, our Volvo estate and my work Astra van in the front for a couple of years!
Well after the initial flurry of interest it has now gone rather quiet with no interest in the house for the past week. A couple came last weekend and were very impressed saying it ‘was just what they wanted’ but I suspect that they were not actually intending to buy but just seeing what is about. Their house (just up the road) doesn’t appear to be for sale. Guess we’ll just have to weather this sort of thing.
Real limbo time now. A few things left to do on the house but I can’t get motivated to do them. Keep looking at the estate agents sites in the Western Isles but all it does is make it worse! If only we had been sensible when we were young and saved our money instead of spending it!
Two weeks in and we haven’t sold the house yet! I know, I know, but now that’s it’s up for sale we just want to get out and get the van hired for the long trip north.
Seven viewings in the fist week and they (almost) all said the same thing - Lovely house, beautifully presented but there’s no central heating. So? Put the bloody central heating in then and knock the cost off the offer. I would jump at the chance of putting my own heating in rather than putting up with someone else’s radiators. Underfloor heating or skirting board heaters are far better options than trying to squeeze your furniture around inefficient radiators.
Anyway this evening we had a viewing from a lady and her son - she wants to buy a house for him to go to the local uni. Now if a young, strapping, student can’t cope without cushy central heating, lord knows what the future will bring. Thought we were supposed to be concerned about global warming anyway.
Six weeks after my brother-in-law Sean died, with two post-mortems held plus an inquest opened and adjourned we finally got the go ahead for the funeral. It was Tuesday 10th November 2009 when we got to say our final goodbyes.
Sean was always one for a laugh and a drink and the escapades he got up to were legend. We couldn’t have an ordinary funeral could we? There would be no long slow funeral procession, no piles of flowers on the coffin, no wearing of black and - most definitely - no vicar (unless we could find one that got pissed with Sean down the pub every Friday night!). So I did all the words (the eulogy I guess you’d call it) and we had a wake rather than a funeral. I’d bet that the Chapel at Southend Crematorium had never heard so much laughter!
Choosing the right funeral directors was the first step, it had to be someone who would do exactly what we wanted and we struck gold with T. Cribb & Sons of Leigh-on-Sea with the lovely Sandie doing the arranging and Graham Grimm as the Funeral Director (what a great name for an undertaker!). He was a great bloke, smiling and laughing with the rest of us! Sandie knew from the outset what we wanted and Graham said he just does what Sandie tells him! He got it absolutely right. Mention must also go to Brian who was the Attendant at the Crematorium who I ran everything past the day before and he got all the timing spot on (he also got the bottle of Vodka but we’ll come on to that later).
So we all met at the Crematorium and Sean was already there in his box. There were nine of us altogether. Me and Sandy (his big sister), his mum Pauline, his best mate Mel who had known Sean since school and who flew over from Sicily, his most recent drinking buddy Terry who had known him thirty years, Terry’s lady friend, Sean’s first girlfriend Lolli who he had kept in touch with since they were 17, his last girlfriend Linda who he had been in love with since they were at school together but had only got together with (finally!) about five years ago and his cousin Barry who came down from Edinburgh.
As we walked in we had Queen playing ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’ and once we were all seated I gave the nod to Mr Grimm to bring in the coffin. Apparently you normally stand at this point but we wanted to remain seated in case Sean’s 87 year old mum fell over! The coffin was placed on the catafalque and Terry had arranged with the funeral director to have a bottle of Smirnoff and a packet of Hamlets placed on top of the coffin so up those went. Great stuff! The only flowers we had were white roses - one for each of us to place down at the end - but Graham the funeral man asked Sandy if she would like a rose placed on the coffin. We hadn’t thought of that, another great gesture. Queen played on and came to an end and it was time for me to stand up at the front and say the words.
My bits paid tribute to a life lost far too early (the same age as most of us there) and asked everyone to celebrate Sean’s life instead of mourning his death (actually I might post them for posterity). Mine had one or two laughs but it was his mate Mel that brought the house down! He related all the capers they used to get up to and everybody was falling about laughing! Mel has a pregnant donkey back in Sicily and if the baby is a boy he’s going to call him Sean so he can go out back and have a drink with the donkey whenever he misses his old mate Sean! It turned into a wake rather than a funeral which is exactly what me and Sandy wanted and what Sean would have planned for himself.
I said the final goodbyes on behalf of everybody and we played him out with Van Morrison’s ‘Across the Bridge Where Angels Dwell’ - a stunning track with the most beautiful of words perfect for a funeral. The curtains closed on the line ‘Close your eyes in fields of wonder’ and we were done. The perfect funeral.
All of us were around Sean’s age except for his mum who is 87 and I have to admit that she was probably a little trepidatious at what I had planned but I told her ‘Trust me, this is what Sean would have wanted’. Once it was all over she thanked me for ‘the most beautiful funeral that was perfect for Sean’. It worked for everybody and it worked exactly as I knew it would.
Some people might not feel it’s right to have a laugh at a funeral but it was our funeral and it was Sean’s funeral. He would have loved it, we all loved it and I don’t give a toss what anyone else might say.
Now all(!) that’s left is to have an inquest and find out who was responsible for taking away, far, far too early, a great bloke who had a few more laughs left in him and who had finally found the love of his life to settle down with. Linda is now all alone, Sandy has lost her little brother and her mum has lost her son. It was not an ordinary death and someone should know what they have done. We’ll do all we can to see that that happens.
Well I was going to write about a great holiday but events have got in the way.
This planned move to The Outer Hebrides has stumbled through many obstacles. First our son was made redundant, then my wife, Sandy, was made redundant, then I was made redundant and a couple of days before our holiday Sandy was made redundant again! Last Thursday Sandy’s younger brother died, aged 57. No, he didn’t just ‘die’ he was killed by his GP but that’s another story. Sean (Sandy’s brother not our son) lived at home looking after his (and of course Sandy’s) mum who is 87 and partially sighted. She doesn’t want to (and probably couldn’t) spend the rest of her life alone so where does that leave us all? Guess she’ll come to live with us.
She never was enamoured with our moving to ‘the back of beyond’ (her first words when we told her) but I’m sure she’ll love it once she comes to terms with the idea. One thing is certain, we’re moving to The Outer Hebrides, hopefully sooner rather than later.
At the moment I’m 170 miles from home in a house preserved from the 1960’s waiting for the Coroner to call. I’ve had to spend over 300 quid on a Netbook and broadband dongle just to keep sane and keep in touch with the modern world!
