House accelerando

Well, after finding out that some of the necessary work on the house was less necessary than we thought, due to a misunderstanding about the age of the boiler, and deciding that in view of that we'd agree to the vendor's asking price, and then getting into further disputes about indemnities for the road access and mains water supply and, by the way, just where was that document that the people doing the official searches were supposed to have come up with weeks ago... we were finally informed that, yes, the vendors would sign the indemnities their solicitor had been making a fuss about signing, and now that that was sorted out could we do exchange of contracts tomorrow.

You bet we could. Of course, it would mean coming up with ten per cent of the house price by tomorrow morning in order to make the downpayment, but that wasn't a problem thanks to that nice man at the BMA who talked to me all those years ago - ten, in fact - about investing some of my money, and actually overcame my phobia of all things financial for long enough to get me to sign on the dotted line of a ten-year investment plan. Which had duly matured last month. Payment had shown up in my account on Monday. We were all set to go.

I logged on to our bank's website for the formality of the few keystrokes and mouse clicks which would be needed to transfer the money from my account to Barry's so that he could pay the solicitor tomorrow, already planning the relaxing evening with my e-mails that would follow the sorting out of this detail.

The 'insufficient funds' screen came up.

Repeated attempts at transfer were made, with the same result.

A call to the bank's helpline yielded the information that, actually, transfers took seven working days to go through, and so we could expect the money by Wednesday. And, no, they couldn't arrange an overdraft in the meantime.

Increasingly panicked discussion with the nice lady on the helpline, who had probably been treasuring hopes of a quiet evening before we phoned, eventually clarified that this information was not entirely accurate. The seven days in question had actually started three working days before the payment showed up on the website. So, the funds should be available for transfer by tomorrow morning. In which case, one phone call from me should get it sorted out tomorrow (since I'm not sure how secure the work computers are as far as financial information goes).

If not - oh, well. Sufficient unto the day, and all that. Meanwhile, tomorrow I also have to deal with my appraisal, which is now nearly a year late (good going on an annual appraisal) and without the correct documents, since the ones I'm supposed to have are currently somewhere in storage hundreds of miles from here. And with a PDP that consists of a few words scribbled in biro on a scraggy piece of paper. Think my appraiser will get the message that I'm really not too bothered about appraisals?