I’ve been bulldozed on to the property ladder
Last weekend I was awakened by what I thought was an earthquake. The trembling walls and a noise that sounded as if it came from the bowels of the earth had me ready to leap under the bed, before I looked out of the bedroom window and saw a giant yellow metal behemoth making its arduous journey up our usually quiet little street.
This was not a natural disaster taking place; this heralded the start of a man-made one. The lovely 1950s bungalow next door to us was about to be demolished. And with it, any chance of a lie-in, a peaceful weekend or a lung full of air without brick dust. Then it stopped.
The silence that followed was rather eerie, like the calm before the storm, and LB and I sat and waited until the sound of our doorbell ringing had us jumping out of our skin. I opened the door to find the driver of the big yellow monster who asked me if I would mind moving our car out of next door’s driveway as he was unable to proceed with the demolition work. I told him our car was outside our house and the car he was referring to belonged to the old lady across the road.
“But I’ve just been there,” he said. “She told me it was your car.” Thinking I may be going daft and that for all these years I had in fact been driving a Nissan Sunny and not a Honda Civic as I thought, I went to the bedroom to check with LB. Nope, it definitely wasn’t ours, and it definitely was hers.
Seems the old girl had put up one last valiant stand against the work taking place and thought that by leaving her car there and denying all knowledge of it, the house would have a stay of execution. It had belonged to her until she gave it to her daughter and son-in-law. She had lived in the adjoining granny flat quite happily until they decided one day to sell it to developers who are building ‘luxury flats’ (are there any other kind these days?).
They moved into a new house in Strovolos that didn’t have enough room for her, so rented the house across the street for her to live out her twilight years. Sadly, her brave effort didn’t work, and within fifteen minutes the fence of the house had been flattened, the lemon trees destroyed and the giant demolishing machine was making its ominous presence known in the driveway.
We had known that this was going to happen sooner or later but had hoped that the Cypriot ‘siga siga’ attitude might extend to construction work. Silly us.
And, as much as we love the house we are renting and are willing to forfeit lie-ins and tranquillity for the pleasure of living here, sadly, it too is to meet the same fate. We are living here on borrowed time.
With that in mind, we had made small mutterings about perhaps looking for somewhere to buy one day so that we would have a bit of stability. These ‘small mutterings’ have escalated somewhat and the ‘one day’ seems to have become more of the immediate future. It’s amazing how it can all snowball so quickly. What started out as casually looking at a place two weeks ago to get an idea of what is on the market has turned into a full-on crusade of military proportions.
The fact that I look at everything through rose-tinted spectacles has not helped our campaign one bit, as I am ready to buy practically anything we have seen. I could walk into a Portakabin and still be convinced that with a lick of paint and a scattering of cushions it would be a home worthy of gracing Elle Decor. I also have delusions about our flair for handiwork and fail to see a lack of walls, roofs or plumbing systems as posing any problem. “We can do it ourselves,” seems to be my optimistic answer to everything.
Fortunately it looks as though our evening classes on electrical wiring may not be necessary after all, as we have found somewhere that not only has four walls and a roof, but also has been recently renovated and is ready to move into. Now all we need is to find the money.
Yet again, my half-full glass attitude has gone into overdrive. With some robbing of Peter to pay Paul, some rather creative accounting and a tightening of purse strings of biblical proportions, it almost looks feasible.
“We won’t be able to go out anymore,” said my more sensible other half.
“Och but with a house as lovely as this, we won’t be wanting to go out.”
“There’ll be no trips abroad for the foreseeable future,” he added,
“We keep saying we want to explore Cyprus more,” I replied.
“No more clothes shopping,” was his final attempt at getting me to see reason and I’ll admit he almost had me with that one. Almost…
But suffice it to say, if the bank is actually daft enough to go ahead with our proposition, in a matter of weeks we’ll be on the bottom rung of the property ladder and about to start a new life of eating pulses and staring at our, admittedly lovely, four walls. I can’t wait!
