Homes and houses

Our house has been on the market for about a month now, and selling it hasn't been the whirlwind bidding war we were told to expect! This means our price bracket is a little lower than our fantasy.

And no-one seems to be selling right now. We've hit the market at the wrong time! Or so it seems. The gorgeous houses we can afford seem to rest on main roads ('All I know about roads around there is that Rob Collins was killed on one of them', says my once jobbing indie musician partner, acquaintance of Rob, and dad to our 4 year old, which makes this comment particularly hard hitting).

Others in the game are little cottages with ceilings our heads touch (quite literally), with a need for a 6 month renovation and 100k budget. Which would be fine if it weren't for heads touching the ceiling. That does seem to be a game changer.

Watching our son run around the gardens of the houses we've viewed, we know we'd be making the right choice to move out of town. He is in his element.

So, we wait. A house in a hillside hamlet near a Valley town has come up, which is something we haven't really considered before. It's a jump into the unknown. Having lived in a post-industrial mining town in Northumberland for most of my life, I know the ups and downs of places like that. Not least in that selling your house again can be very tricky and drawn out if you decide to move (and potential buyers google the town name like I did). The ups are that you get loads for your money in a beautiful place. But that's a hard sell if the schools or opportunities aren't there.

Our other options are houses with less land than we need - but the potential to beg a farmer to sell us a bit more. It's a flummoxing time and quite stressful to boot, as we weigh up the pros and cons.

I did have a nice email yesterday though, in response to a Wanted Ad I'd put out there. Someone who said if we're really stuck, we can come and live on their farm in a caravan, while maintaining their no-dig organic market garden! Such a nice thought... if only we could downsize that much...