I saw this advert last night, and it cheered me up quite a lot. Alpacas are smaller than llamas, but equally appealing.

So if you haven’t found that last minute present for someone yet, go to Oxfam Unwrapped and get someone an alpaca package!

Two months after accepting our offer, and after we’ve had a survey, a structural engineers report, all searches etc. completed, the vendor of the property we were buying has decided to withdraw from the sale.

We found out through a letter from her solicitor to ours. The solicitor has no other information. The vendor hasn’t even told the estate agent!

So after spending in excess of £1,000 we have nothing to show for it. This is our third property to fall through due to the vendor withdrawing or a bad survey results. Frankly, we’ve had enough.

In the UK, there is no legal redress available for these situations. You can only ask for some contribution towards the cost but the vendor is under no obligation (other than a moral one, and those tend not to get you very far these days).

We’re now looking for somewhere longer term to rent from 11th January when we have to leave our current home.

Sick and tired of things. Makes me wonder whether coming back to the UK was a good idea after all.

Not long until Christmas now. I’ve done some shopping, and it looks like we’re going to be doing a lot of travelling. We’ll be in Cleethorpes for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, then down to Bury St Edmunds on Boxing Day.

We’re busy as usual. The current house-move situation is that the vendor hasn’t said when she will be moving out, but we have to move out of our current place by 12th January. So we’ll be homeless at that point. As a result, we’re viewing short term rentals, which isn’t a whole lot of fun, but we can’t see many alternatives.

What else has been happening? Well, my brother, Nick, got married. He’s a few years older than me, and I think a lot of people had given up on the idea of him ever getting married, but he’s done it and the wedding was great. Here’s a photo as proof:

Nick lent me his flashy DSLR camera for the wedding and the results can be seen on Nick and Deb’s wedding photo gallery. The pictures that Vic and I took using our own camera are in a Flickr collection.

So merry Christmas everyone, and here’s hoping things settle down a bit in the New Year… (well, by February anyway)