The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret

Oh, yes, we moved house - thanks in no small part to Mr and Mrs Buchan and their Car of Vastness. The new house is lovely, though slightly strewn with boxes (which we must, at some point, Deal With).

I am inexpressibly pleased with living in a house once more. I have in the past said that I would not be truly happy living in a flat, and while it did not at the time seem so very bad, as soon as I was again in a house with stairs and a front door I was filled with an immense sense of well-being and relief. Admittedly part of it may be relief at getting out from under the uncaring, unlawful, negligent, incompetent excuse for a letting agency known as Sanderson James, but even putting that aside, it's just so much nicer on every level. And it has two levels!

The lovely diegoliger has been busying himself about the place with Interior Design and Layout, so if anyone cares to visit and finds the arrangement at all appealing the credit must go entirely to him. Apart from the sofa. I bought that.

I own a sofa and a bin and have built a chest of drawers. I am a man now.

See diegoliger's post here regarding our current state of potential electric doom.

Holy crap, man.

Apropos of http://kingandy.livejournal.com/540478.html:

We have spoken to Sanderson James; apparently the way the insurance process works is:
- Sanderson James ask the Insurers to set up the policy;
- the Insurers send details to the Tenant;
- the Tenant then informs Sanderson James of any areas in which the property does not meet the details of the policy, and SJ then make the appropriate improvements.

So, as far as SJ are concerned, the fault is ours for not asking them to upgrade the locks.

As it happens, we never received the policy details by post. Indeed, for the first five months of our tenancy we could not get at our post, since nobody could find a key to it. When we did get in to the post, however, no communication regarding the insurance could be found.

SJ are of the opinion that it was our responsibility to expect said communication, and contact them when it did not materialise.

I should probably mention that, having acquired a copy of the documentation from SJ this afternoon, it does turn out to contain all the statutory details mentioned by others. So it's looking increasingly as though we have nobody to point the finger at. Except possibly the Royal Mail for not delivering our documents, or Sanderson James for not letting us know to expect said documentation. I suspect, however, that they could successfully argue that we should have taken more of an interest in our own affairs.

Still. I maintain that when your estate agent offers to insure your contents, your contents will then be insured. There's an implied level of responsibility, which they do not seem willing to take.

We will be communicating with Ant's family lawyer as soon as is reasonably practicable but my general sense is that we are going to fall through the cracks of mishandling and incompetence.

Quick quick update!

We now have a flat of our own and almost all our stuff out of Vince & Katy's house. The PC will likely be the next to go hence the quick quick update. We has no internets at the new place! Rather than a cable/satellite package we're thinking of Freeview and ADSL. Who can tell me about ADSL? I gather you need a pre-existing phone line...

Will follow this up with a protected entry with address details, but don't post anything yet because we don't have a key for the mailbox. (There are one or two kinks to work out with the letting agency...)

I can't be bothered to look up remember what I last posted about this, and certainly not in a public place, so here's an update on the current immediate-future housing situation.

Some people from foul_temptress's shindig may recall my mentioning that we'd seen some houses that day, including a particularly nice apartment on Hyde Road with two bedrooms and a nice sized living room. Well, after the next property we viewed turned out to be a magical mystery house built for dwarves^[1], we decided to apply for the apartment. (We've been back for a quick scout around outside since, and did notice that the paint on the outside at the back is peeling a bit, but meh, that's not our problem.) Apparently all they're waiting for now is a quick chat with the landlord, which shouldn't take too long.

The apartment is currently vacant so theoretically we could be moving in a week or two. It's also unfurnished, but between Ant's own stuff, his generous boss and the lovely ladies at his church, we should only have a couple of bits and bobs to worry about - mostly beds and shelving, probably. (Would you like to know more?)

It's also lacking a shower curtain. Quite by chance, an advertisement for this has just dropped into my inbox. I mention this only by way of synchronicity.

[1] It was an adorable little mid-terrace cottage across from the Donkey Sanctuary. The kitchen was in the basement, which wouldn't have been so bad if there was any way to get to the basement without leaving the house. Also there was woodworm, the windows weren't double-glazed, all the doors were five feet tall and there was a magical one-way system preventing easy road access. And anyway, gays aren't welcome in the magical wood.

I am currently trying to decide whether to move into bacony's spare room or remain chez stsquad. It is a tricky decision.

To this end I spent the night at Katy's place, in order to check out the commute. My findings suggest that though the drive is perhaps technically more direct, it does go through Stockport and the traffic in Stockport in the morning does not move above 10mph. (Luckily I set off half an hour earlier than usual, so was only five minutes late for work.) However, I think I could speed things up by driving past Stockport on the M60 and proceeding down the A34 as usual.

Here is a summary of the pros of each:

Katy	Alex
House is finished	Gigant-o-vision
Lower rent	Commute does not go through Stockport
Meals thrown in	Does not require effort of moving
Quieter road	Superfast broadband[1]
Cheap, regular, punctual buses	Trams run late into the night
Katy	Alex

Thus my dilemma. I'm not sure on the relative dimensions of the rooms - Katy's is wider than Alex's but not so long, but I think I'd have a little more effective space (if only because there's a chunk of dead space in my room at Alex's filled with stuff I've been meaning to throw out for a while now).

I'm leaning towards the move, but remain very much torn.

[1] Also IMAP access to Alex's email server, which is unavailable from outside the house network - it's Webmail or nothing.