NEVER-ENDING STORY

Will it never end…???

I'm kind of losing track of the number of half-written posts there now are in my "drafts" folder claiming that we appear to be approaching the end of the tunnel when it comes to matters of dealing with my late mother's financial dealings and the sale of her home.

Every so often, I compose a few lines which purport to be the beginning of the end, or at least the end of the beginning, words laced with hope, sometimes wracked with despair, and I rip them from my very soul before having to file them away again when yet another obstacle hoves into view, much like that iceberg which got in the way of the Titanic, and puts the mockers on getting on with what I still hope will one day be my so-called life.

I may yet put together a week of these pieces just to clear out the broom cupboard and to let you know what's been going on as I attempt to bend time backwards and arse-about-face, and confuse the whole lot of you about what's happening when, almost as much as I've been confused myself.

The latest fiasco began with a tentative email to my Solicitor asking if we were still "on" to complete on Friday which received a long reply which claimed that the Management Fees were still owing and would need to be deducted from the sale price when the time came.

This came as rather a surprise to me, given that I'd gone through hoops in order to make a swift payment of those very debts just as soon as I finally achieved Executor status back in February, and given that the Direct Debit has been paid on the first available day of the month ever since.

Given that my teeth have been grinding at having to pay those fees at all, especially as the Management Agents take a fair old cut of the sale price anyway for doing nothing, charged me fees for giving out the necessary information as required by the perfectly normal conveyancing process, and still seem to want more from me to repair the bumps and scrapes caused by getting people in to remove some of the furniture to donate it to charity ("No good turn goes unpunished"), I'm rather disinclined to pay the monthly maintenance fees, on a place no-one is living in remember, twice…

Still, the evidence that I had indeed made those payments was indeed sent off, and I awaited the response from my solicitor after she was going to phone them during the afternoon with a certain amount of bated breath. After all, debts claimed to be owing on the property - even if there weren't any - might just have been enough to tip the deal away from me, and I might have had to instigate a proper old brouhaha in terms of compensation and suchlike if they'd muddied the waters and scuppered the deal for me just because they can't check their own accounts properly.

In the meantime, another email popped in to say that one solicitor had talked to another solicitor about what a third solicitor had mentioned, and that problems with documentation might be causing another hiccup, and could I possibly ring the Estate Agent because they are allowed to talk to all of the solicitors, whereas individual solicitors can only talk to each other.

Or something.

This I duly did, and mutterings of "Gross Incompetence" were very swiftly forthcoming, mostly to do with documents which had been requested, supplied, and acknowledged four times already, but, luckily, this was not from our end of the arrangement, and I was, at least, able to ascertain that it wasn't essential for me to get the keys to the Estate Agents just yet, that they were still hopeful of achieving a Friday completion (my own solicitor remaining sceptical about this…), and that the world has, essentially, gone a little bit mad when it comes to finally closing the deal.

It also triggered another broken night of insomnia, and my current recurring nightmare, but that, I think, is a story for another day.

Meanwhile, my car remained in the garage, after making some rather dubious-sounding noises during and after our recent trip to the Lakes. This had meant a certain amount of reorganisation of my life as I tried to get on with my working life and was unable to transport certain equipment to certain other places as safely and securely as I would usually like.

Still, the natty (but very tiny) little Polo that they lent me seemed jolly enough and I was able to dash off at the end of the day and rendezvous avec le Beloved au gare in a manner which had seemed unlikely just a few short hours earlier, and before the world unravelled itself for the umpteenth time.

Plans do keep on changing but, as I think I might have mentioned before…

Will it never end…???