Going Home – You can take the girl out of Glasgow…

We’ve sold our house. In an area of the country where houses sit on the market for months, if not years, our house sold within three weeks of officially going on the market. I’m pleased, obviously, but I’m also…winded. The speed of the sale has totally taken my breath away and I feel like the first fallen leaf of an early autumn, twirling and swirling, buffeted by the unexpected gust.

it also leaves us homeless in just 8 weeks if we don’t find somewhere to move to.

In Scotland, most houses are put on the market with an invite to submit an offer over a specified amount. Vendors have to pay an independent surveyor to conduct a Home Report which points out any possible problems with the property and assigns a value to the house. So, for the purchaser, there are two figures to consider: The market value of the house and the amount the vendor expects to achieve. In times when the market is buoyant, purchasers have to pay way over the market value. In recent times, it has been more common to receive less. So we now have to not only find somewhere we want to live, we have to decide how much we need to pay for it in order to make it ours.

It’s a stressful time.

We have debated long and hard where to look for our new house. We need somewhere where there is a toilet on the same level as the bedroom as I’m increasingly wobbly going down stairs. It would also be handy to live closer to where most of my medical appointments seems to be. At first, I was adamant that I wanted to live in a rural area but the areas we were considering weren’t what we hoped they’d be when we looked more closely at them. I have had to give in and look at properties in the city and I was more than a bit sad about this. I love the ocean, the wildlife, the birds in my garden.

Then I realised I’d be going back to Glasgow: a city with a rich culture, museums, galleries, parks, cinema (oh, how I’ve missed the cinema), supermarkets, chain stores, quirky independents, theatre and great public transport; a city with the friendliest people I’ve met anywhere; a city with a culturally diverse population; a city I love so much that almost every character I write about is Weegie, if only on the inside.

I’m going home and know what? I’m really excited!