Our house

Finally, after three days of deliberating, the vendors of my desired purchase have given me 30 more days to sell my house (and therefore buy theirs).
This is a very good thing, because I have looked at about 50 houses since, and do not want to buy any of them.
This is also a very bad thing, as I need to keep mine clean and tidy for another month.
And, really, after my initial flush of exhuberance with the Windex, I'm over it. In fact, I've been deliberately leaving flicks of toothpaste on the bathroom mirror just to make a statement. (What the statement is, though, I'm not sure: you want my house, you get my toothpaste? or: I don't really want to sell my house at all, so there).
Enough of that, with a mortgage again (I was mortgage-free for three years, how blissful that was) I need to stay focused on the main game. Getting the mortgage down to an amount that would be paid off by my life insurance should I go under a bus. Pleasant thoughts one has, late at night.
Although interest rates are predicted to be cut, mine is the bank that enjoys putting them up faster and more often than any other, so I won't wait with a brick on foot for a reprieve.
Mind you, when I first borrowed for a house in the late 1980s, the interest rate I paid was 18%, so I'm not too perturbed when it hovers around 7%, despite the bleatings on affordability. Luxuries!
What a gamble that was, that first house. Bought at auction for $62,000, it was even more frightening that a renovator's delight. A former maternity hospital in Wickham, with a bona fide ghost (friendly, just a mother checking on my babies), it had its hat way below its ears.
The bank manager came to inspect (as they did in those days) to see if the young couple were barking mad buying on the wrong side of the tracks a ramshackle old joint that was most certainly haunted. He fell through the front verandah, and may have had misgivings were it not for the lovely heritage brigade from nearby Tighes Hill urging him to give the young couple a go.
He did, and we did, and it's a beautiful house to this day.
We had two babies there, and many parties.
Our neighbours were nothing if not interesting.
We had a brothel across the road at one stage and many an hour I spent peering out the venetians at the street action it attracted. The things I saw on a table top truck one dark and seedy night made my knees tremble!
But we moved on, to leafier suburbs with better schools and not so many brothels.
I still yearn for Wickham, and will probably move back there once the kids are out on their own.
There's something about the ships, the tugs, the trawlers and the folks who trawl the streets that enliven. It's a bit unsafe, and a bit unsavoury. I like it.