Houses

Our time in the house in Hout Bay is coming to an end. We have a lease until the end of the month, but since the house needs to be completely clean (with all the sheets ironed, the carpets cleaned etc.) by Monday, we're planning to move out already on Thursday. The carpet cleaners can then wash the carpets on Friday, and hopefully Joyce can take care of the rest. She'll be here on three days this week, which is a great help. I would have asked her to come at the weekend, but yet another friend of hers has died of Aids, so there's another funeral to attend, again 12 hours away by bus.

Our house hasn't yet sold in England, but I feel quite OK about it at the moment. The reason for my newly found calmness is, that I found yet another lovely house at the weekend, a house we could fund without selling Littlebury. It looks absolutely wonderful from the outside. It's on a good bit of land, and it has a swimmin pool. No space for three horses (like most houses we've looked at so far), but I'm allergic to horses anyway... The catch? Everything is properly built, everything is clean, everything works - everything, except the layout. The house is a disaster inside. I have no idea what the people were thinking of when they built the house. "Nothing much," would be my best guess. It would be a dusty business to change the layout, but it wouldn't cost a great deal. After the changes were made the house would rise in value. Tempting, very tempting.