It’s all happening (I hope!)

2017 was mostly a year of taking one step forward and two back.

It began optimistically enough with my husband and I deciding to move house. It was something we’d been thinking about for a while. Every time we visited family in Lancashire we fantasized about living there permanently, but we were reluctant to leave our home in Cambridgeshire because it was close to our daughter and son-in-law.
 
Then daughter and son-in-law announced they were going to move – to Canada. It was certainly a surprise, but we soon saw a bright side. They were planning to start a new chapter of their lives – and so could we.
 
We put our house up for sale, found a buyer, and made an offer on a house in Lancashire that had everything on our wish list. A couple of months later, when we were about to agree a completion date, our buyer pulled out of the deal. Aargh!

We put our house back on the market and received another offer for it. Everything seemed to be going smoothly – until the new would-be buyers also changed their minds!
 
We put the house up for sale again, but it was autumn by then and the market had slowed down. We had some viewings but nobody was buying. The Lancashire house we wanted was also put back on the market.
 
Two days before Christmas, when we were resigned to nothing else happening until well into the New Year, we had a call from our estate agent. Could we do a viewing? That viewer became our third prospective buyer. The not-so-good news was that the house we’d wanted had been sold to someone else.
 
Fast forward to today …

​We’ve found another house to buy (which is even better than the one we lost) and have almost finished going through the whole conveyancing process again. Trying not to get too excited, but we are cautiously saying ‘when we move’ instead of ‘if we ever move’. I don’t think I’ll really believe it though until I have a new door key clutched tightly in my hand!
 
And my writing?
 
Some of you may remember that part of my prize for winning a short story competition run by Alfie Dog Fiction was an offer from them to publish a collection of stories if I could produce enough, of an acceptable quality, to fill a book. It was a very big IF, and much harder than I expected, but I’m very pleased to report I’ve finally done it! My collection is now being expertly prepared for publication.

​               Watch this space …