Fast movers

This time I’ve a few good excuses for being late with my blogging. As of last Thursday we’d decided that there was no way we were going to get into our new home before a trip to Scotland which we’d already booked for first thing on Sunday morning. Nothing had been resolved on the split between “black money” and the declared price for the house.

So, Thursday evening we were deciding what we’d need to take with us back to Scotland while leaving sufficient room for the new clothes we planned to buy. (Ibiza’s a great place for wealthy stick insects to get their gear or little old ladies to buy sensible clobber, but there’s not a lot in between.) In the midst of this first Barbara’s aunt phoned and, almost simultaneously, my mobile went.

Barbara saw me turn white. It was our English landlord. We were supposed to ring him the night before, but as we were no further forward with finding somewhere new to stay, I hadn’t got round to it. He’d seemed quite relaxed last time we’d spoken and I assumed he’d let us know if they were coming over. But, no. His flights were booked for a week on Saturday. We had two days to empty and clean the apartment and nowhere to put our stuff, let alone a place for us to sleep.

Fortunately our erstwhile negotiator was planning on opening a second-hand furniture shop and so had an empty warehouse. So, all we had to do was put our lives into boxes and one problem would be solved. It is, however, rather harder to pack everything than it is to spend a few days slinging stuff such as clothes in the back of the car and hanging them straight up in a new home.

But, that new home was not going to be available immediately even if we could come to an agreement on rental or purchase terms. The problem was the tenant. Yes, the one with a penchant for bad business deals and unfortunate friendships. Apparently, after his last disagreement he hadn’t stopped drinking. His wife phoned our agent saying: “Help. You’ve got to rescue me.” So they slipped a few valium into his drink and ,while he was asleep, got the wife packed and onto a plane. They also took his car keys for his own protection. Unfortunately he didn’t see things in quite that way. After countless phone calls our negotiator gave in. She does have several businesses to run along with single-handedly bringing up two primary-school-aged children. It kind of goes without saying that as soon as he got the keys back he wrote off the car.

We heard all this on Saturday when in the midst of packing we got a call from our negotiator who’d spent the morning with the seller. He wasn’t going to budge on the amount of money to be declared as the official selling price.