We sat up far too late last night, drinking good wine and listening to Number Two Daughter telling us stories of her thrilling travels in far-away lands.
I went to bed half dreaming of the howling of wolves and the heavy scratching of bears in the garden.
It is lovely to think of my children exploring the world: she has been in Dubai and Japan and Canada and Europe and Thailand over the last few years, which is brilliant, imagine doing all of that on your own.
Coincidentally enough, whilst we were talking, Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law were also having international adventures. They are in Madrid, where they were being entertained by my uncle and aunt, who have always known how to have a good party, before Number One Daughter starts her exciting competition tomorrow.
I am trying not to think about this, because it is terrifying and makes me feel a bit sick with the hugeness of it. She is competing against lots of people who only do fitness and don’t bother about jobs and children, which must make it a bit easier although I don’t think that I would like it. If I am feeling anxious about it here on a taxi rank in Windermere she must be feeling ghastly. How glad I am that my life is dull.
Today has, in fact, excelled itself for confusing dullness.
I am having one of my periodic reviews of our finances. Over the last week or two I have filled in my tax return, organised 0% interest on Mark’s credit card, changed the tariff on the gas and electricity, negotiated our mobile phone bills down and now I am trying to arrange a remortgage with a better interest rate.
Our mortgage is expensive. When we got it we were very broke and if we had been Americans we would probably have been sub primates, which is the technical term for a poor person who can’t afford to repay their mortgage.
When you are one of these they charge you more. We were these people because we had got nothing except optimism and too many children, and so our mortgage started off having as many numbers in it as the salesman could fit in the space on the application form.
Over the intervening years we have mostly managed to pay up the huge sums involved, and once or twice we have talked them into reducing them. However we are now in a position where we are no longer sub primates and can get a mortgage at a very sensible interest rate designed to make rich people think that they would like to borrow money from such an obliging lender.
In consequence of having more money, it turns out that we can get a new mortgage which is almost three hundred pounds a month cheaper, how marvellous not to be desperately, miserably poor any more, people are so much kinder when they know that you can afford them.
All we had got to do was decide which kind friendly mortgage lender it would be whose generosity we would like to accept.
As a result the mortgage was my project for the day, partly because I fancied a change from grubbing about in the camper van at the farm getting covered in black mould and mouse poo. Mark went off there this morning to finish fixing my car, and I made more coffee and sat sighing in front of the computer in the same way as I recall sighing in algebra lessons many years ago.
It was not a very different feeling really. The whole thing was unnecessarily complicated, my sums never seemed to work out the same as anybody else’s and there was always some rule that I had forgotten to take into account which meant that it was plain to all concerned that I had not got the first idea what I was doing.
I spent the day comparing tracker rates and fixed rates and interest rates and fees and repayment terms.
The Internet is the most magnificent of brilliant inventions, fancy being able to sit in my own home and fill in mortgage applications and soft credit checks and get quotes from people whom I knew would send me irritating junk emails for the rest of my life: all without leaving my chair.
By teatime I had a headache and a confused feeling.
After spending the entire day pondering on the subject and thinking about it in careful detail, you will be pleased to know that in the end I think we will probably arrange a remortgage with our own bank in the village.
As far as I could tell they were pretty much the cheapest, but also it is because they are just across the road, and I like going in to gossip to Helen and Ailsa behind the counter. It has the advantage that I will not need to tell fibs or be creative with my accounting because the manager knows exactly how much I drink and has banned the staff from going out with me during the working week, so it is pointless trying to pretend to be any more respectable than I actually am because it will be a waste of time.
No matter how hard I try I can’t really make decisions about the benefits of a five year fixed rate as opposed to a tracker in the light of the current economic climate, and so in the end I am going to choose the one that I can walk round the corner to and never need to worry about finding a parking space.
I shall pop in and see them next week.
The picture is a sheep at the farm which got stuck on a wall yesterday. It was very upset and was bleating its head off. When we went to rescue it it panicked and fell off. I included it just so that you know that we all have our little problems from time to time.
