Well there’s been the Brexit thing and I find myself utterly rivetted by the excitement across the water.
Then, we sold our old house. We had been renting it out but when we were no longer in negative equity, we felt it would be advisable to sell up and repay some of our current mortgage [sale closed on the day of the Brexit vote which is probably good in retrospect but utterly coincidental]. Mr. Waffle did all the heavy lifting including dealing with the estate agent and the solicitor.
We decided to sell through Felicity Fox because I liked the look of their ads (I have been looking at house for sale ads since I was a small child, I’m a connoisseuse) and because I liked the idea of supporting a woman who had gone out on her own in the rather masculine-led world of Dublin estate agents*. We had no contact with Felicity herself but it all passed off peacefully and speedily. After we sold the house, the estate agent turned up with a thank you card and a bottle of prosecco which I thought was pretty good. I am easily impressed. My solicitor said, “That’s what you get, if you go with a fancy South side estate agent.” I am not entirely sure that this is true.
The day before the sale closed, I got a call from the solicitor who is a friend of mine from college. In the course of the conversation, I realised just how much of the work my loving husband had done. The conversation went as follows.
Her: This is a bit awkward, but just checking that you know that you’re due to close on the sale of your old house tomorrow.
Me: Yes, of course.
Her: It’s just that I haven’t spoken to you or had anything in writing from you throughout the transaction [we witnessed the documents at home in front of another solicitor because I couldn’t get in to her office during the day] and I wanted to check that you weren’t buried under the patio slabs.
*No favours etc were given for this endorsement. Unfortunately.
Buying under the Scottish system has been blissfully straightforward, even with Brexit occurring right in the middle of it. And we still haven’t signed anything! Apparently the lawyers just sort it out between themselves
Civil law has much to recommend it. We might as well grow to love it as post-Brexit I can’t imagine anyone in the EU will care even slightly about common law. In this brave new world Ireland will be the only member state with a common law system even if Scotland joins subsequently. Small sigh.