I have somewhere to live

Hurrah

But first a bit of back-story:

About 5 months ago we were coming to the end of our 12-month tenancy agreement and agreed with our landlady on a one month revolving contract whereby either of us could give one months notice and then the other party would either have to find new tenants or leave the flat.

Ha hah we thought, our landlady lives in America and seems a few bills away from complete bankruptcy so we can happily and lazily look for somewhere we might like to live whilst she relies on our tenancy as one the only things providing her with food and water. Then when we've found a suitable, ground floor, large-roomed, quiet-streeted, train-accessible flat we can simply up sticks.

But it turns out our landlady was not as debt-riddled as we thought and also not as in-America as we thought and one month ago she phoned to say she would very much like to move back into her flat and so could we please vacate the premises within one month. Suddenly our search for a property took on a severe sense of urgency which was not helped by estate agent incompetence (see earlier blog). Anyway we've now found somewhere and whilst not perfect it fits all the criteria above and crucially didn't have people moving into it the next day (as was true of one property we were shown - yes, really).

So the moral of the story is first making agreements that you think only help you can sometimes come and bite you in the arse and also estate agents are useless (bit of a recurring moral there but I feel it needs reiterating).