the road to location location location part 3...

after the disappointment of the house purchase falling through, it was so hard starting all over again. scott and i now felt very wary that it could happen again. how were we protected? who's to say the next house we found wouldn't just go the same way and we would lose more money?  i spent every day going on the estate agents websites, findaproperty.com, walking around hastings looking for for sale signs. i was totally on a mission.

i was still doing my stall at portobello market on saturdays, so i was busy making stock for that and all the shops i stocked, filling website orders, running to the post office and i was also starting to slow down a little the bigger my bump got. so it was hard fitting it all in. one day, i saw a house listed just a few streets down the hill from us which looked promising. so we made an appointment to have a look.

as we waited outside for the estate agent, we surveyed the area. the street seemed alright. i noticed a few kids around. the outside of the house looked nice. the property was a repossession being sold by auction. the estate agent arrived and we went in for a gander. it was obvious straight away that the people that had lived there had left in a hurry. there were still loads of boxes littered around full of...well...their lives. kids toys and books and clothing etc... it was all a little sad for me.

we made our way through the various rooms. it was all ok, but i wasn't really "feeling it".  i really wanted to like it and tried to see the potential. we walked upstairs to one of the bedrooms and as i scanned the room, something on the ceiling caught my eye. i looked up again and realised that somehow, very crudely embedded into the ceiling, was this huge rubber dildo... classic...but at this point, we were feeling so desperate, that didn't even put me off. it was like a "feature".

we talked through the pros and cons for a few days (not quite sure where the dildo fit into that). on one of my post office trips, i was talking to kay who worked there. kay was a tough cookie who to some could seem really rude and intimidating, but i got on her good side early on. she was the kind of person who just gets shit done quickly with speed and ease. she was never flustered by anything. she chatted and worked away at the same time. she knew of the ongoing house drama. i told her about the place we looked at and she said, "not THAT road. you fucking joking? you wouldn't want to live there. it's ROUGH." and if kay said it was rough...

i found it so hard to believe what a difference a couple streets in any direction could mean. as nothing else was materializing, we still mulled it over. we decided to go for another look. this time, as we waited for the estate agent, we noticed the kids on the road looked a bit more frightening... a bit more menacing than we remembered. we also noticed the house next door had a few boarded up windows and there were 3 massive, heavily tattooed guys coming in and out of it throwing boxes into a car. they saw us waiting outside and i asked if they were moving in or out. "we're OUT of here!" one of them said. "this road is a NIGHTMARE! kids throwing rocks through the windows, bullying, break-ins, we've had enough." i think pretty much needless to say, we decided to give it a miss.

that night, as we sat and watched tv, "location location location" was on. there was a bit at the end that said anyone wanting help finding a house should contact them. this was perfect. i thought our situation had all the elements needed for a show like this...hastings is an "up and coming" area, i was pregnant, we had artistic careers, we were desperate... i went straight to the computer and started writing an email to them. the next day... much to scott's total horror...i had a reply! more to come....

i think scott would say this pretty much sums things up...