Better late than never. I convinced Greg to take me sightseeing in Sandwich, I’ve been there a hundred times yet never actually seen most of it. We visited the sweet shop and bought a whole load of things in the charity shops. I bought some wollen trousers for work for £3.45 and an awesome 40′s dress! Oh and the antiques! I love antiques shopping!

And in keeping with the fact that Greg lives on the farm…

We saw the hedgepig again. He’s funny when he walks.

The view from Gregs window.

The chickens Well the bantams, the rest are in the field in the photo above.

We went to a boot fair ( I bought a working polaroid camera – with film!!) in the Herald and saw another white herald too! We convoyed in the queue until greg realised he’d lost his phone! (it was on his bedside table!)

I met up with Sarah for lunch at Tiny Tims in Canterbury. Its horrifically touristy. Touristy in Canterbury is advertising the ghosts of your building on the menu. The food is simply amazing though. I was SO full after all that!

Well flat really, but the word house is easier to say!

Greg and I have finally signed for a ground floor flat in New Cross. (Zone 2 – London) Lewisham. For three months. I’d like to say we’re being cautious and that’s why its only three months, but that’s not quite how it happened.

We went house hunting forever ago it seems now and had about 5 viewings booked one afternoon. On our way to the first viewing we booked another viewing, just in case. Turns out all the other houses that day were pretty dire so we pretty much had all our hopes pinned on this place. Well not really but this place turned out to be amazing.

It was in a new development, near to new cross, new cross gate and south bermondsey stations. It has parking, loads of it in fact and the area is quite. There’s also the Surrey Quays shopping center nearby which means we can still do our 2am trips to supermarkets!

The flat itself is on the ground floor. With a large living room a separate but not too much kitchen, a small hall way, large bedroom and a nice sized bathroom too. Its perfect.

We signed up that day to take the house off the market. Handing over £300 in the process. We filled out the form that would be sent to the landlord for him to agree to our price of £195 a week. We also wrote some terms down. Such as ‘Clean the bathroom’ (it was VILE!) ‘Fix the extractor fan’ (it never turned off) ‘Replace the cooker’ (no light to show that it was on and half the knobs are missing.)

We set the date for signing the contract for the next week. It was later set back by a week, and then another week. At which point we were getting worried and frustrated. Turns out the house was in the process of being sold. The new landlord wouldn’t buy the house unless it had tennants and they didn’t want us to move in until everything had been finalised.

Thats when they told us about the change in our contract. We’d signed up for a 12 month with a break contract, meaning after 6 months, with 2 months notice we could leave the property. Now we could only have a 3 month contract which would be renewed by the new landlord. Because its illegal to have a tenancy agreement with someone who doesn’t own the house.

This was our first problem. We wanted the house, but we could be homeless in 3 months if the new landlord upped the rent or decided to do something else with the house.

After many worried phone calls and visits to the letting agents, Greg sorted it out. Ultimately if this all went wrong he’s the one losing out not be, I have a home in London to go back to – he has Kent!

All was well, we went in the other week to sign the contract and they even gave us the keys a day early so we could show the rents. They all saw how nice it was and approved! Yay. Unfortunately our wishes, clean the bathroom etc hadn’t been done. This was of course because of all the 3month new owner confusion.

This was the state of the bathroom. Those like me who are uber squemish about dirty bathrooms look away now!

I felt that this was unacceptable. Surely they couldn’t let the previous tennants get away with this, but they had. And they expected us to move in amongst their bodily excretions and HAIR! Oh the HAIRS! I can’t stand it.

Now I’m not the best person when it comes to getting things done at least not on the phone. So along with proof of my current address I sent the photos and asked when the house would be cleaned. (After all they had promised us) No reply. I asked Greg to phone them, as the subject was a little difficult for me to deal with, It made me angry that they wouldn’t even admit that the bathroom was disgusting or pass it onto the landlord to even ask his opinion.

Greg didn’t manage to get much out of them so I got out the big guns. I set my mother on them. She’s the reason I can’t use public toilets and carry antiseptic soap! She also works for CAB, . So she knows her stuff. Either way, she spoke to the manager, who reminds me of Moss from the IT crowd and after two days he sorted it with the new landlord. Who wont be our land lord for three months, to pay for the house to be cleaned. In the words of Greg that mans going out our Christmas list!!!