Who put the mort in mortgage?

Welp, it didn't take until 2021 for the Devil to turn up after all. Here he is this morning. How about that? Big ugly pink-headed crouching bird-footed gargoyle that he is. Holding his torch like a caveman brute clutching a club. Giving us a split-fingered salute forming the Hebrew letter 'shin', which means both teeth and fire. Yay.

'Devil is in the details' springs to mind here.  I've certainly had a lot of details on my mind lately. Remember my birthday reading? I predicted 'changes in love, family and friends, wealth, means and ends', and saw house-buying as something that might happen this year. We've started the process of looking for a mortgage adviser and I've signed up at rightmove and zoopla. Yesterday we walked about 3 miles round trip to go out and take a look at a house, just to walk past it (and see how I might feel about a 3 mile round-trip walk every day, plus to time how long it takes). This would give us an idea of whether a house search that is 1.5 mile radius from the train station is viable. Maybe, is the answer. But under 1 mile would certainly be better, and half mile better still. Trouble is, as you get closer to the town centre, the houses in our price range get smaller and pokier, and are restricted to on-street parking. So it's a choice of walking a lot and having a bit of space to park the car (and a more 'generous' feel to the neighborhood) or live conveniently close to town amenities but be crowded in. And on top of these choices, all this information gathering. Devil in the details, indeed. So today is phone calls to IFAs to arrange initial chats, and we have booked our first actual viewing for next Monday evening.

The wheels have started turning!