So anyway ...

So last Monday, I pitch up in sunny Splott to start my new contract. I'm working on some code for remote monitoring of fetal heart monitors, of the kind currently being used in a delivery suite near you. The code, it turns out, is shockingly bad, but that's what I'm here for.

The evening I phone Nattle. She's had the baby group round, so the house has been full of mums'n'kidz, with the added excitment of Ziggy's, purveyors of funky kiddy-clothing, also being up for their semi-annual buy-stuff-from-us house party. Normally she's that leaves her completely knackered, but she was really excited.

Let's back up again. We've seen a house in King's Heath, for which final bids had to be in on Friday. On Saturday, no decision being forthcoming, we went to look at another place smack in the middle of Moseley. It was top. Good size, cracking attic (very important), smallish garden (bit of a shame), top location. All in all a complete winner, and we both liked it much more than the King's Heath place. At the time, I was a bit annoyed we'd been to see it, because now I didn't want to move to the King's Heath place, but there was a real chance we'd win the brown-envelope competition, making us look a bit like bastards if we backed out. What a long sentence that was.

Monday again. We haven't won the bidding war for the King's Heath place. Nat phones the estate agent for the Moseley house and offers slightly under. The vendor accepts immediately, but the estate agents won't do anything until we have a firm offer of a sale. Nat calls Mario. The end result of Mario's house party is we have a crazy bidding war and a new offer, above our asking price.

Wackily, it's not from someone who came to Mario's do, it's from a woman who lives up the road. She'd actually wanted to buy the house back when we moved in, but hadn't had the money needed to fix the roof. Now she does. She'd dropped a note through the door earlier in the week, and come to have a look round. Apparently she'd been knocked out by the work we'd had done, and was really keen. She offered 315 on the spot. Later in the week, she'd come back again with an estate agent friend of hers. This friend obviously gave her a bit of a nudge, because after that she upped to 325 thou. Following Mario and his show'n'tell, she ups again to 335. We put her out of her misery and accept.

Sold. Bought. Hurrah!

In between time she sold our massive dining table, bought the Bean some new trousers, organised some more sellers for the NCT Nearly New, and made everybody a cup of tea

Not bad.