Life in the boonies.....well Suffolk

[greenwoo]

Quick update for those that may wonder....

Still in rented up here near Bury St Edmunds; nice part of the world, and def a friendlier somewhat slower pace of life - comes to comething when lorries are quicker down some of the twisty A roads than the cars.

Haven't found any houses worthy of a looksee for ages, seems that vendors are either scared to try or are still pricing according to mid '22 levels.

Have had another run out with a local 'generic' car group....got an unpleasant surprise when a parking ticket rocked up a week later for us meeting in a Tescos before opening hours on a Sunday ( watch out folks). Naturally I sent a shitty mail to the parking compnay that was rebuffed - nice to know that they have their client at heart ( i explained the economics of me paying a £35 fine that would lose their client £6k this year in food/fuel). I toned down ( a bit) a similar email to Tesco who have waived the charge.

Either the rest of the group is laid back or cash rich, as apparently everyone else just paid it!

Planning runs here is erm, tricky - you'd think ( with no local knowledge ) that it'd be easy, pick a B road and it should be good and an A road would be (normally) boring? Nah.
Lots of the A roads are more like B roads on steroids....just about big enough for 2 arctics to pass, and twisty as hell - the rest are a decent size punctuated by 30mph villages. B roads can be truly tiny or closer to a normal A road. Haven't planned/suggested a run yet - will be doing that in a cple of weeks....

Feel the need to do so as this Group like to do 'something' once a month! and 'something' could has 2x this year been a visit to a 'posh' garage with a little driving to get there ( for mid morning coffee)...hmmm.

On the upside, found a specialist garage that thrives on MX5's not too far away. ( more on that in a sep post in 'Car section'.

Later this year AJ (daughter) is getting married, so seems that learning some form of 'formal' dance is a good (?) idea; Apparently it's not cool to get half pissed and ask the DJ to play Sandstorm to throw some shapes to....who knew! Salso has been chosen, 'uck me, my feet only ever move that fast after a an extra spicey Jalfrezi. Been to small group lessons 5 times now and have had a hoot - bugger all good at it, but gives us a joint interest.

Slowly finding out who we can trust up here to sit teh hounds, so hopefully will be making a few trips 'Darn Sarf' as the year progresses.

That's All Folks.....

[locost220]

Nice update on life up northish, glad you seem to be zeroin on the car issues and also trying to get out and use it but they need a bit of rocket up them by the sounds of it. Keep up the lessons sure it will come good mate. Hope to see you down here sometime

[DJ.]

Glad you're getting on well Mark. I was father of the bride and I'm crap at dancing, it's usually slow music so just sway a bit, move your feet.

I think it will be a while for the housing market to settle. We bought in 93 a couple of years after the crash and although the prices had dropped to realistic levels, no one was moving. It takes people a long time to accept their house is only worth what someone is actually willing to pay and many would prefer to stay in fantasy land rather than accept the value has dropped. It's stupid really, because the place they're moving to has dropped too. Hopefully you sold high and may get a bargain if someone is forced to move in a hurry.

[greenwoo]

thx D,
yep we did ok on selling, not as well as if we'd been ready the year before - but looking at Rightmove, a number of other homes that were on around the same time as ours sat or were removed due to wrong pricing.

Ironically it was us who pushed the agent to put it on for lower than they said, on completion day the Manager said ' good job you went with your gut as all i've been doing for the past 2 weeks is renegotiating/trying to keep chains together'.

Not so much worried about a bargain, more 'the right home'....right now there's bugger all out there that truly fits the spec/brief that we have; almost irrespective of £'s. We'll see what shakes out over the coming months.....