TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

To all intents and purposes, apart from filling out the forms for the tax man, waiting for their response, worrying about any other claims which still might turn up against us, and waiting for the leftover pennies to transfer from one account to another, the sale of mum’s former home is more or less complete, and another giant step has been made in dealing with her Estate.

I made my last ever visit to the flat on Monday evening and read the meters and walked around trying to drink it all in so that I might remember the place, but there’s something vaguely depressing about an empty home, and somehow a set of bare rooms seem to draw attention to their overall bleakness and shabbiness, and every little mark or blemish seems to scream out to remind you that they are there, and that you’ve been damned lucky to persuade someone that a few little rooms were actually “worth” anything at all.

As I locked the door for the last time, knowing that I was unlikely ever to return to that place, part of me was overwhelmed with sadness, whilst another was just hollering at me to “take the money and run, you lucky, lucky people…”

That last few days was filled with almost unbearable tension as days slipped by with tales of missing documents, non-appearances of deposits, and flights from Australia, and right up until the email arrived telling me that exchanges had occurred and completion would be the following day, I still didn’t really believe that it was actually going to happen, and fully expected to find myself back at square one before the week was out.

However, the last day of ownership of mum’s flat started with a round of phone calls, which meant a confusing call to the electricity company – who still seem ill-equipped to deal with bereavement – which left me wondering if they believed that I was moving from my mother’s home to the place I’ve lived in for nearly two decades.

Then the water company seemed perplexed by the fact that my meter readings didn’t tally with the electronic ones they’d taken in January, despite the fact that nobody had let them in and the meter seemed outrageously analogue.

The insurance company were far more pragmatic, but told me that the cover would stop “immediately” as I made that call, which seemed worth the risk, given that the place was essentially empty, and the clock was ticking.

Finally, there was an exchange of emails asking if it was okay to cancel the Direct Debit for the management fees, before the scariness and wondrousness of Online Banking meant that I could stop those with the click of an icon.

Later on, I rang the Estate Agents, just to confirm their Friday closing times so that I could drop off the last set of keys. They told me that the first sale in the chain had already completed, and indulged a bit of chunnering about my solicitor not ringing them the previous day, so I promised to pass on any email notifications as and when I got them.

An almost unbearably tense morning followed until the email finally popped in confirming that my mother’s home no longer belonged to me, and I made a brief courtesy call to the Estate Agents just as the new owner arrived to pick up his keys, so, as the old “News of the World” might have put it “I made my excuses and left” – or at least terminated the call.

There was a brief flurry of emails between my solicitor and myself as a mildly depressing afternoon drifted by, some of which involved a “vital document” which had been mislaid, which is the kind of thing that happens when you write important information that your legal adviser needs on a “Post-It” note because you can’t find anything else to write it on as you’re dashing about.

Other self-adhesive note-taking formats are, of course, available.

Finally, on my way home from work, I swung by to drop off that last set of keys and, without any great deal of ceremony, or any real acknowledgement of the seismic shift that they represented in my mind, they were accepted from me and the whole process was officially over, and I headed home through truly spectacularly awful Friday evening traffic in a slightly melancholy mood, reflecting upon so many things that it took half a bottle of very strong wine to help pass the evening.

I still don’t really know how I feel about this change in my life. I suspect that it’s going to take quite some time for me to adjust to this alteration in my circumstances, and I will have to remind myself time and again that the place no longer belongs to us, that I no longer have to worry about it, or just “drop by” and that the world has moved on in an infinitismally small and yet astonishingly huge way.