Mark did not have to install rural broadband this morning, but we got up early anyway.
This was because we had set today aside as a special day of Financial Negotiation.
As you are doubtless aware, the various recent machinations of our beloved leaders have led to our great nation becoming embroiled in all sorts of fiscal misadventures.
Of all the jobs I am very glad I do not have, Rishi Sunak’s is possibly the least enviable, although I dare say I could have a jolly good go at it, given my years of expertise in running a taxi and an overdraft. Trying to fund HS2 with a wheelbarrow full of quantitive easing can’t be all that different.
Last week saw the day of the budget, where he tried to explain what he wanted us all to do about it, and to persuade us that it was in all of our best interests not to have disposable income any more. Ever since then we have been watching the financial pages with some interest and a growing sense of alarm.
This was because banks have started raising mortgage interest rates with the devoted enthusiasm of union members having a show of hands for a strike, and our Fixed Rate mortgage was due to come to an end in February. We all remember the nineteen seventies, and have been anxiously contemplating the likelihood of interest rate increases.
I have been having middle-of-the-night anxieties about this for a while, and a couple of months ago I telephoned our mortgage company, only to be told that the earliest possible date upon which I could renegotiate our mortgage was the first of November.
This is, of course, today.
We have been waiting for this date with absolutely everything crossed.
When all of the major banks put their interest rates up after last week’s budget, the excitement grew to almost breaking point as we examined the news every day to see if ours was amongst them, which I am very happy to announce that it was not.
We were not taking any chances.
Today was the first of November, and the phone lines opened at eight.
At five past eight we were on the telephone to a mortgage advisor, assuring her untruthfully that we would be able to pay our mortgage no matter what financial disasters Boris manages to create before we retire. By five past nine we were in possession of a fixed rate mortgage that is actually rather less than we have been paying up until now.
It will last for the next five years.
We might be dead by then anyway, it is ages off.
We did not realise how worried about it we have been until we hung up and sighed with relief. A single percentage point on a mortgage makes a difference of thousands of pounds, and of all of the things I want to spend thousands of pounds on, handing it to the bank in an cornucopia of interest is nowhere near the top five.
We finished our coffee in relieved silence, and I realised that I had been so worried about the mortgage that I had not even thought about what I was going to do for the rest of the day.
I settled on the ironing for a happy start, whilst Mark went to have another go at nuclear fusion in his shed.
He can get his water-burning machine to work but it takes more energy than it produces, so he is not going to solve the world’s energy crisis any time soon. He is not even going to solve our own energy crisis, although he brought in some firewood as well, which was helpful. We needed the firewood because of drying the washing, it went outside for a little while but I do not think that this helped very much.
Mark said that probably the Weather Gods had not known we were in the south of the country last week, otherwise they would hardly have ignored the opportunity for amusement provided by a camper van that would not start until somebody lay down in the road and hit the starter motor with a hammer. They must have got the dates wrong and imagined we were still in Windermere.
He has called Autoparts about the new starter motor. It does not work, and he is going to have to take it out and send it back and exchange it for a new one.
He is philosophical about this. We do not have to drive a thousand miles this week, and so it can sit in the road and not start as much as it likes.
We are going to stay at home.
We can even afford to.
