Cotton socks

Monday August 18, 2008

A day that started out looking fine and promising more quiet enjoyment.  Then the emails started hitting the fan.

It transpired that the previous buyers’ solicitor was not just being tardy with the contract documents and HIP.  They’d lost the darn things.  Sally our solicitor was splendidly gentle and soothing with me–Gosh, but she knows how to handle irrational older gentlemen–but I suspect that she was less than gentle and not in the least soothing to the solicitors’ clerk at the other end.

“Leave it with me and I’ll get back to you this afternoon, John,” she typed.  “As a precaution, though, it might be worthwhile seeing if you can get a new copy of the HIP.”

“I’ll do that,” I said.  “If need be we’ll pay for a new one on an emergency basis.  In that case I shall of course look to the errant solicitor for reimbursement.”

“That’s a good line.  There’s just time to pass it on to him before he goes off for his lunch.”

Graham, several stages beyond incandescent, peeled himself from the ceiling.

“I don’t know how you can keep so cool,” he spluttered.  He does a good splutter.

“Years of experience and a deep inner conviction that none of it’ll matter in a hundred years.”

“Bloody silly expression.  Can’t you do better than that?”

“Nope.  Not worth the effort.  I’ll go and poke around the garden with me stick instead.  Put the coffee on, there’s a dear.”

Garden after August rainstorm

Late foxglove blooms

Anyway, it all worked out OK by the end of the day, and the errant documents were placed in the express post. “I was a little firm,” Sally said. I’ll bet my little cotton socks she was.