October 10, 2006
The glitch
There's always a settlement story isn't there?
Settlment for us was scheduled at 2.30pm Monday and I had optimistically arranged for the removalists and the deliveries of the furniture and appliances we'd bought to arrive from 8.30am the next morning in the firm belief that optimism WILL prevail even if brute force is required.
At about 3.00pm Ron and I set off towards Brunswick anticipating the the agent's imminent call to announce that we could go and pick up the key for the house. We decided to take a few things with us in readiness for the move the next day and so found ourselves heading up Hoddle St with a car laden to the rooftop with boxes and bags full of absolutely-essential things we have quite happily lived without for the past six years.
The only thing spoiling the anticipation was the nagging thought that things until now had gone very smoothly and where was the glitch? There is always a glitch and neither of us had seen even a hint of one yet so WHERE was it and what would it be? The Law-of-Glitches does say that the longer the glitch takes to surface the bigger it usually is, doesn't it?
At about 3.25 I thought the agent was taking rather a long time to call and left a message on his mobile. At about 4.00 our conveyancer rang to say that there had been some huge mistake with our money and that more-money-than-we-care-to-think-about had vanished into cyber space and settlement had been cancelled. This was patently ridiculous and I burst out laughing, said "Yeah, right Nick" and thought I bet he does this to all his clients. What a wag!
It took a while but he finally managed to convince me that he wasn't joking. Due to some computer crash our credit union had made the money over to the solicitors trust account but it had never arrived, leaving the solicitor's unable to disburse funds and finalise settlement. Don't worry though, Nick said, I've rescheduled it for tomorrow afternoon and as soon as the credit union's systems are back online and the funds go through we'll settle and it will all be okey-dokey.
Except, I said, EXCEPT, I have seven large trucks arriving in a cul-de-sac tomorrow morning all of whom will be wanting to unload things into a house that not only will I not have a key for but that I won't even technically own! We spent the next half hour circling Brunsick in ever-declining circles amid a mountain of boxes and a flurry of phone calls while the credit union, the agent, Nick, the vendor's coneyancer and the vendor got together and arranged to release the keys to the house to us anyway so that we could still move in as planned.
And so it was that we finally arrived at our new home armed with the key, warm champagne and the glitch, safely tucked away.
Posted by Faith