On my knees

"PLEASE approve my mortgage! Pleaaaaaaaase!!!"

This painting, Jupiter and Thetis, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1811), is for kinky fans of big brooding men and supplicant women. In the original legend Thetis, the sea-nymph, goes to ex-boyf Zeus to beg him to intervene in the Trojan War on behalf of her mortal son, Achilles. 

It works, btw.

Things I have learned during the half-year house-moving process:

• Mr Ashbless must love me very very much.
• If you e-mail any British company with an offer of money for their advertised services, the chance of you getting any response whatsoever is about ... 40% tops.  If you really want them, phone.
• Banks are incompetent. Like, unbelievably incompetent. We've lost track of the number of times we've phoned or sent them information/money, only for them to fail to log it in the computer and deny any record that they've ever spoken to us. Repeatedly. HSBC actually sent us a crate of wine to apologise for arsing us around for months, but I still hate them.
• If you are trying to get a interest-only mortgage, when they ask you how you're going to pay it off, FFS do NOT regale them with talk of savings, investments, rental income, inheritances or any carefully-worked financial plan you have. That will just bring everything to crashing halt. The magic words are, "We will make regular overpayments." That is all they want to hear and all they will accept.
• There is NOTHING you can do to your old house to make people buy it. They either like it or they don't, and buyers are mostly crazy. Just Febreze the shit out of everything and cross your fingers.
• The whole chain system is bolloxed. How ANYONE ever manages to synchronise with half-a-dozen other buyers + lenders/solicitors/removal companies to move house on the same bloody day is absolutely beyond comprehension. We didn't even try, in the end.

Anyway, it's all signed, sealed and hopefully soon will be delivered. We've even accepted an offer on our old place!

2018 FTW!