I am getting back into it here and things are progressing well despite the archaic way the English sell houses. A local council search can take up to 8 weeks as there are only two people working in the land registry department at Wiltshire council. It sounds like they still have to actually search through dusty archives in the bowels of the town hall to find a file that has been gathering dust for the past quarter of a century. I picture some wizened old guy with half moon glasses, a bent back and a walking stick shuffling along rows of dusty files stacked 10 feet high looking for the right one. When he reaches the place he cannot reach the right shelf as he is too bloody short and has to shuffle off back to the start to get someone to help him with the ladder. He then comes shuffling back with an equally decrepit old crone, after stopping for the obligatory cup of tea as they are council workers after all, and a wheeled ladder. He then has to try to climb said ladder one shaky step at a time before locating the right file. Then returning to terra firma he places the file in a carefully selected spot for later retrieval and with his old biddy he returns the ladder to storage. Another cup of tea later, break necessary as he has worn himself out with all the strenuous exercise, he returns to the file only to have forgotten where he left it. Back to checking the logs that he consulted in the first place he eventually finds the file and then return to his cubby hole that is the Land Registry Department on the top floor of the town hall, tucked away out of sight in the rafters. He then informs the solicitor who requested the file to come and collect. This takes another age as the young thing that clerks for the local lawyer is a bit ditzy, as she was only employed for her 38DD's, cannot find the town hall let alone the garret office of the Land Registry dept. Unfortunately this is not my file as mine was only requested two weeks ago and is still about 30 down in the pile. Ho hum modern local government at work.
Any way the guy selling, although concerned realises there is nothing I can do about it but just keep hassling my estate agent, to hassle the buyers, to hassle their solicitors, to hassle the Land Registry dept. which causes the whole process to grind to a halt, as when the phone rings in the garret in the rafters of the town hall it seems to reset the brain of the two old servants of the council and they have to begin their latest search all over again.
We have agreed to extend the sale agreement until the end of the year to cover this fiasco. We will also put into place an usufruct (look it up, I had to) so I can take over on the 1st Nov and pay him when the house eventually sells.
Apart from that all is going well and I am enjoying the sunshine and the diving in the lake.
