I'm not sure if your aware but ...

over the past decade, and a bit longer (plus three days) Jim and I have been pursuing the much admired-until-you-try-it past time of purchasing a home together.

Let me clear the air here and now, because since this joint business venture has begun we have received many a disparaging comment upon both mine and Jim's good names. When informed about our intended investment, many friends and colleagues have opted for either "Arrrr" or "Oooo that'll be nice".

I can't help feeling that the over explicit implicated undertone in those comments suggests that Jim and I have finally admitted our overwhelming feelings for each other and succumb to one another's butch and manly charms.

I hate to disappoint, but this is one occasion I feel I must.

We have not chosen a life of Big Brother and poodles. We have merely picked to buy a place together as it is not economically viable to purchase properties independently of one another, and as Jim so aptly puts it "for sh1ts and giggles".

Plus the fact he goes for Brunettes and I don't know enough about cars.

Here follows a simple and easy to follow guide on how to buy a place of residence. Some points can be edited to suit their intended recipient/recipients and their respective countries.

1. Decide to buy a place.
2. Decide to buy a place with a building on it.
3. Decide to buy a place with a building on it that you can afford.
4. Realise you can't afford much more than a can of economy pack baked beans to live in.
5. Look for a long standing friend to buy a building with.
6. Offer them a chair.
7. Break the news to them that they are dying.
8. Inform them you were only joking about the last bit and inform them that you actually wish to buy a home with them.
8a. Threaten to mention their weird third nipple to the world if they refuse.
9. Agree the deal with a rather vigorous and slightly painful handshake.
10. Go and ask an adult how you buy a place with a building on it.
11. Wake up after selected parents’ speech and decide to look it up on the internet instead.
12. Buy a small cat called Bernard off e-bay.
13. Log off computer.
14. Log back into computer and return to surfing the internet remembering you were meant to be looking up how to buy a place with a building on it.
15. After thoroughly reading two lines on a particularly boring web site, both agree to just wing it and see how it goes.
16. Visit an estate agent.
17. Ask about legal advice from someone you'll come to know as Squirrel.
18. Exit estate agents believing you honestly know what Squirrel has just told you.
19. Enter second estate agents and begin to tire of the "same old questions."
20. Look at pretty colour photographs of houses.
21. Nod over enthusiastically when asked if you want a fixed or variable rate mortgage.
22. Hesitate as it dawns on the two of you that they require an answer.
23. Blurt out the one you can remember then breathe an audible sigh of relief as it appears you picked the right one for you.
24. Return home to a barrage of questions from your respective parents, which you fail to answer suitably by just using shoulder movements.
25. Spend numerous nights driving around between the hours of 01:00 and 03:30 discussing where you could fit the third car, whilst local residents watch you suspiciously assuming you to be burglars out "casing joints" for their "next big job."
26. Sign up to more and more estate agents until every call on your phone begins with the words "Good morning Mr B******* this is Sharon from **** **** we have a property you might be interested in."
27. Arrange some property viewings.
28. Get horrifically drunk the night/morning before said property viewings.
29. Arrive at the first address looking like a recently exhumed corpse.
30. Stagger violently through the days events never really sure if your legs are working and mumbling incoherently, creating the impression that you may well require lots of shiny metal bars fitted round the house, and a chair lift.
31. Blog about it.
32. View yet more properties, now beginning to play estate agents off against one another.
33. Crash your car at one of the houses by not noticing a rather alarmingly large step at the end of their stupid paved driveway.
34. Discuss the property’s potential whilst attempting to work in that day’s key word of monumental.
35. Visit a house without the estate agent, and be shown round by the home owner, whilst making polite responses to a grotty little hovel with thirteen children in.
36. Wipe your feet as you leave last house.
37. Phone estate agents and ask them what they're playing at whilst being encouraged by your home investment partner or best mate.
38. Return to stupid driveway house and discover that the next door neighbour has an over zealous taste for loud abrasive music which can be heard from every room of the property your looking round.
39. Visit a new age recycle friendly house which some refer to as Telly-tubby homes.
40. Discover they only have one parking space, and leave rather hurriedly.
41. Look at an alright house in a road spitting distance (literally) from a less than savoury demographic of chavs.
42. Exit said property and be seen to be overly excited to discover that your car is still their and hasn't been damaged.
43. See no. 25.
44. Visit an estate called “Sunny Delight” (or something very similar) and marvel at the disrepair of one house, whilst also convincing your homie that it would be a wise investment.
45. Discover the owner’s wife has recently died, and decide to put in a viciously low bid when the estate agent informs you that he is looking for a quick sale as where he currently lives has too many painful memories.
46. Enter the garden of the property to discover a large cross in one corner with some flowers next to it.
47. Get a chill down spine as you suspect that he may have buried her in the back garden.
48. Become dispirited when a parent says “I think you two are too lazy to take on a project like this.”
49. Put in low offer.
50. Wait a week.
51. Receive a reply stating he no longer wishes to sell his house.
52. Receive another call two weeks later enquiring if the bid is still “on the table”
53. Discover seller has dropped price to what you originally offered, and duly inform him that your offer has also now dropped by the same amount.
54. Receive no further calls from that seller or estate agents.
55. Visit a first floor flat with original feature oak floorboards, rout iron staircase, iron radiators and fully fitted plush kitchen and spend most of your time there; discussing how you could rig up a zip line from the fire escape into the trees at the end of the communal gardens so you could “deliver the sausages to the BBQ in style.”
56. Discover aforementioned road is getting fancy gates at both ends and seriously consider buying the property solely to impress visitors to your swanky private abode.
57. Decide against it when the owner states “I’m holding out for the asking price.”
58. Petrol bomb the property, returning the next day, to state that your original offer no longer stands due to the obviously recent fire damage they failed to make you aware of.
59. Visit a new development and be shown round by an overly posh lady by the name of Sabine who pronounces the word Six as Sex.
60. Spend the next 40 minutes finding ways to make her say the word Six.
61. Inform Jim after leaving the new construction that all the way through our visit she had assumed we were builders and originally not spoken to us because she assumed “us chaps had attended to do the wiring.”
62. Restrain Jim for the next 7 minutes, directly outside the front of the property as he fights to go back in and tell her we are not builders via the use of numerous colourful words that she will no doubt not have been privy to in her life thus far.
63. Almost faint on the discovery that your expected roomie has sold one of his cars to be more sensible.
64. Find out it was the one he has spent X amount of money on in the past 12 months.
65. Faint.
66. Recover suitably to head around 200 yards further up the road to another new build property.
67. Meet the sales assistant who appears suitably nice and discover your projected buying partner has a penchant for naming her every one of his ex’s names rather than her actual name.
68. Wander round a building site commenting on the fact that the sales assistant can speak more normally than the posh lady down the road and that the flats are a better size.
69. Sweat profusely and procrastinate over whether to buy one of the flats.
70. Do above for approximately 4 hours.
71. Decide to opt for the “what the hell, what’s the worst that could happen” approach.
72. Put in a deposit.
73. Then tell your folks, who are away on holiday and in control of your sizeable wedge of money.
74. Carry on regardless when they return and begin to offer their unfalteringly hesitant opinion.
75. Live care free for the next three weeks, occasionally visiting your friends home to offer an over dramatic gyration of your left wrist to sign every piece of printed document thrust in front of you.
76. Consider therapy for your friend when you discover he is a twitchy nervous wreck from the constant calls he is receiving from Estate agents, sales assistant and solicitors.
77. Buy the frame for a king size bed and secrete it in strategic positions in six different areas of your folks place in the hope that it will take them until you move out to discover what all the large pieces of wood actually construct.
78. Complete on the property and move in with little more than the clothes on your back and a mattress (not on your back).
79. Live in a squat-like environment for five days.
80. Transport king size bed in small hatchback, much to the amazement of many and the direct physical pain of you.
81. Build bed.
82. Admire bed.
83. Realise bed is different coloured wood to rest of bedroom furniture.
84. Not admire bed quite so much.
85. Bounce across bed to get to window.
86. Break bed.
87. Repair bed…
88. …around two weeks later.
89. Receive cards from loved ones informing you that you are now a home owner and that you are no longer welcome in your old home without an invite.


I know what you’re thinking and yes it really is that simple !

Ps my current leave of absence is due to having no home telephone line at present. Well more accurately, we do have one, it’s just tied to a tree at the moment and not a telegraph pole. It makes calling people difficult and internet use impossible.