We’re now flat out for school applications.

I’ve rather glossed over in these posts just how many emails and phone calls were involved and how many times we chose to do something even though there was a small risk it might have to be done again.

What is clear is that we’ve been lucky. Lucky to be able to buy before selling, lucky to find the right house within days, lucky to have missed the wrong house and lucky that the following players performed so admirably, professionally and quickly.

• The One Account (Virgin branded, owned by RBS) who continue to exceed expectations as they have done for the last 12 years. They make everything easy.
• Our solicitor, Leigh Young of Stroud. They are simply outstanding and not just in this most recent task. They never send a bit of paper that can be replaced with an email!
• Cotswold District Council who completed the local searches faster than anyone could reasonably hope.
• The Cirencester branch of Perry Bishop who, as the vendor’s agents were, as their tag line suggests informative at every stage and sympathetic to our urgency.
• The surveyors whom I can’t recall at the moment who did surveys on our current and new  houses and had the results back to our lender in 1 working day.

Kudos to them all. Quite remarkable considering the scorn (often justified) poured on the wider population of all the above professions.

My solicitors, being of frankly infinite patience are open to questions from me. It turns out the memorandum of sale simply states who the vendor’s solicitors are, how they can be contacted by my solicitors and how much we are buying the house for.  My solicitor is very good but they like all solicitors are used to following a prescribed order for conveyancing and there doesn’t seem to be much attention paid as to whether any of the steps in the process could run concurrently and so speed the process.

I ask my solicitor ‘What does the Memorandum of Sale let you do? why must you wait for it?’. The answer is that this is how they get the vendor’s solicitor’s details. They then contact them to get the ball rolling. I probe a little further thinking that I may be powerless to hurry this first step so what is the next step? can the next step be done while waiting for the first?

Step 2 is that the vendor’s solicitor sends my solicitor a copy of the land registry plan detailing the exact location of the property and the boundaries etc. that are included in the sale. This information then allows my solicitor to request the searches of the local council to find out whether someone has got planing permission to build an airport nearby. I’m a bit confused at this. I know for sure that I can buy a title plan of any property in the UK from the lend registry website for £14. I can find out what YOU own for £14.  I get the plan within a few minutes and email it to my solictor. My solicitor explains that she could order the searches based on that plan but if I’ve got the wrong plan or there is other land not shown on that plan (some properties straddle two or more ‘plans’ apparently) then the searches could be invalid. This is a house that is only 22 years old. It’s surrounded by other houses on the same estate and the plan looks identical to the property we looked at and is exactly what we were expecting. I shall take the risk that my £14 is wasted. I shall also take the risk that the £150 on local searches is wasted. I don’t consider either to be at great risk. My solicitor complies and orders the local searches. Whatever happens now, I just got the searches ordered a day earlier than would have been possible otherwise. And bear in mind, while we have already checked what the backlog is with the council on local searches (none, thankfully) that could be different tomorrow. Waiting until tomorrow to order a search could mean other buyers of other properties get in the queue before us. A day is not to be underestimated!

Conveyancing lessons learnt today:

• No one cares about this purchase and the timescale like we do.
• Do not accept a schedule because ‘that’s how it’s done’. How it’s normally done is a robust, belt and braces, works for every kind of property, process. It’s not a process optimised for any individual property so question it and assess the risks yourself.

…they lingered too long. Within 24 hours of our offer we had viewed another property four houses up the street that is bigger  (smaller plot though) with a much more family friendly layout, is currently rented to students until the end of June, is on for the same price and has decor which is more 2010 that 1989.  So again no onward chain and, we would guess a landlord who would love to sell to a cash buyer who can and wants to exchange early June. We can hardly believe our luck – surely the perfect buyer/seller match?

We make an offer, and a second and today they have accepted. A narrow escape. It’s so much better than the first house. We realise the first would have been a compromise we may have regretted, had they ever actually made a decision.

Desired school for the boys has been visited and established that there are places in reception for the youngest two but Year 3 class is already at 30. We will apply, expecting to be rejected for the Y3 class and then we will appeal and hope that common sense prevails. In the event of a failed appeal our eldest will be home schooled for the few weeks until term ends and hopefully a space will open up by September since folks come and go occasionally.

The race is well and truly on. We cannot apply for school places for any of the boys until we have exchanged contracts. Deadline is still June 10th. It’s time to find out why conveyancing is usually so slow and see if we can change that…

Primary reason: Too much driving. School is a drive away. Grandparents a drive away. Swimming lessons, library, shopping all a drive away. Not far, but far enough to spend £400+ per month on fuel just ferrying the kids around. Not good for the kids either; after-school activities like swimming or their best friends or the library all require a drive ,adding a half hour each way and making for later nights and just too much of young lives being spent in the car.

Secondary reason: Schooling. The boys go to a lovely small school but it’s very small and our eldest is in a year group consisting of just him and one other. It means he’s stretched and able to work with much older children in the same class but long-term, he will see these classmates move on for the next 3 years and it’s not clear how it would be possible to continue stretching him with such a small school community. The impact is less severe for his younger brothers who are about to finish reception but for one of them at least, friendship groups are a challenge again because of such a small pool of peers.

So, our objectives are: To be able to walk to school, walk to a leisure centre, walk to shops, walk to see Grandma & Grampy. Oh, and a bigger house. Don’t really want to move and end up somewhere smaller if possible. These boys keep growing, they are only going to suck up more space. Only one location ticks all the boxes – we need to move to Cirencester.

Decision made, we’re going to move. Challenges ahead are ensuring we can get school places, finding a house, buying said house, actually moving and to try to ensure that this happens in time for the kids to attend new school for a week or two before summer break so some friendships can be initiated and nurtured over the holidays.

Today is May 23rd. We need to exchange contracts on a house by June 10th in order to be able to apply for school places and stand a chance of getting boys into school before end of term.

Time to get busy.

No madam, it is not. It is absolutely, NOT. It is YOUR job. Governments do not reproduce. The Government did not impregnate you. If you have been fortunate enough to decide on parenthood and succeed then you must accept that the responsibility for education your child is yours and yours alone. You are very fortunate to live in a country that provides free state schooling and because of this you and your offspring benefit from the privileged attention of trained and passionate professionals whose services few among us could otherwise afford. School is a place that fills in the gaps and broadens the scope of knowledge accessible to our children hopefully so that each generation has a wider knowledge of the world and greater access to it without being constricted by the cultural, emotional and financial limitations of their parents.

Your attitude is symptomatic of a wide ranging perception among parents today that the education of their children has little to do with them. So many seem happy to abdicate responsbility for their children to the education system. They could not be more wrong.

If your 5 year old begins school and cannot recognise and take a stab at writing his own name, it is you who has failed him. The School has not yet had a chance to fail. If you do not read books with your child, count things with your child, question and converse with him then you are failing him. You are are failing to equip him to take advantage of the opportunity that school offers. How often do you think your child can possibly be heard read in a class of 30 with one Teacher and a Teaching Assistant if you’re lucky? Do the maths (I assume you can) it’s not difficult. Your child will learn to read but he will waste time at school learning to read when he could be reading to learn. When is the last comment in your child’s home reading record that you share with School? yesterday? two days ago? a week? a month? If it’s not a few times a week (come on, it takes 10 minutes) then I say again, it is you who are failing your child, not the School.

Our education system is not perfect, far from it. But it doesn’t have to be. It is better than most. It provides you with free childcare from 9 to 3 5 days a week. It provides peace of mind that your child is with friends and in a safe place. For goodness sake, they even adopt a legal responsibility for your child during these times “In Loco Parentis“.

Come on people, wake up and smell the roses. They’re your kids. They deserve your time. Not one of them asked to be here. They are your creation, your legacy, your responsibility. Your Pupils.

It struck me later as I drove home that the difference between the beginning and the end of a swim like this is a metaphor for the differences in sex from your twenties to your forties. The early efforts are technically poor, too fast to be sustainable, poorly timed and not terribly satisfactory. The later ones slower, longer lasting and vastly more satisfying. No comments about the strokes are shorter at the end of the length for both exercises, please.

I’d like to thank my wife for making it possible for me to make this observation. She taught me to swim a few years ago and still goes to bed each night with me despite the risk of sex with a 40 something. When you look like I do you learn to be grateful.

The plan? Authorise every British consulate the world over to block book hotel rooms in the vicinity. Instruct them to block book coaches and despatch them to major cities the world over. Instruct stranded Britons to go to those cities and get on those coaches. Don’t send the coaches to Calais, send them to Holland and Germany to utilise ferries from there. Buy bulk places on ferries and pay whatever is necessary to get ferry companies to squeeze in more capacity. Use those hotel rooms to put up Britons while the coaches start to flow and the backlog starts to clear.

Tell the people not to worry. Tell them the government will recover hotel and food costs from the airlines when it’s all over. Let’s face it, the sooner this is done, the less liabilities for food and hotels the airlines will see. The airlines should cooperate with this.

Total cost? I’d bet less than 10 million. A lot of money for sure, but you will buy the vote of everyone you repatriate and everyone who is waiting for them. Buying votes is not exactly democratic but you can defend this position.

The opposition say “it’s wasteful, knee kerk”… you say “Tell that to the stranded people, may of whom on their one holiday of the year on a budget airline in jobs that won’t pay them when absent, with children missing school and running up debts that will take them years to pay off as they dwarf the cost of their hard saved for holiday”

What else can the opposition say? The worst they can say is that you delayed a rescue. That will be true so you can stand up and say “Yes, we delayed, we had to wait and see but enough’s enough now, we’re acting and we’re getting people home”.

The opposition will accuse you of buying votes, of course they will. They will accuse you of making political capital out of a less-than-end-of-the-world scenario. But you will be able to stand up in the next debate and say, “whatever you think of this government, whatever happens in the election I will sleep well knowing that I mobilised the power of our democracy for the benefit of people in need when the people needed it”.

Only good can come of this for the Government, if you act now, and act big. No more lame warship gestures with space for a few hundred people. Go in heavy and sort it out. This exercise will cost you less than one day’s War.

I commend it to the house!

Dear Mum,

Eating cheese before bed does not give you nightmares. Sometimes I eat cheese sandwiches before bed just to test that I’m still right on this and you are still wrong.

Apple skin does not “rest on your chest”. Unless you actually drop it before eating it.

My face will not “get stuck like that”. As I write this I’m pulling a very odd face indeed. I’ve also left a window open to ensure the wind is blowing past. I’ve been doing this for several minutes now and my face has not yet stuck in its contorted state. I’m pretty sure that it’s not going to.

Fear of an accident is no reason to wear clean underwear. It’s just good hygiene. In any event, during the worst accident I’ve had I thought I’d probably crapped myself but it turns out the only skid marks were from the tarmac. In either case, the cleanliness of my underwear prior to the accident was of no concern to me and of less concern to the hospital staff.

Watching TV does not make your eyes square. Anyway, TVs are wide-screen these days so if there are any ill effects it’s more likely to involve rectangles (16:9 ratio) than squares. We also have high definition these days so I think watching TV is actually likely to improve my eyesight.

I didn’t wear my glasses and I have 20:20 vision today. I told you I didn’t need them. My son though DOES need his. So Ollie, if you’re reading this just read the bits above and realise that your Dad was right about a lot and I’m right about you really needing to wear your glasses.

It doesn’t matter whether you slice the cheese on the long side or the short, it goes just as far. The volume does not vary depending on the cut.

Sitting on the radiator does not give you chilblains. It does however give you plumbing bills and the occasional need to re-plaster.

Eating the seeds of apples/oranges/grapes etc. will not result in a tree or vine sprouting from my bottom. Yes, I’ve checked.

Playing with it will not cause it to fall off. Though speaking as the father of three boys I understand why you were keen to make a point on this one.

Buying gifts at the airport isn’t in the same category as buying your wife flowers from the petrol station on the way home either. The gifts are tacky but kids like tacky. All they really want is something that has the name of the place you visited and is small enough to take into show-and-tell on monday. This type of souveneir isn’t sold in the massive shopping mall next to your hotel, it might be sold at some tourist spot but on a busy business trip generally you are not going to make it there. So, the airport is the place. The place you can rely on for the little things that get kids wonderign about the world and gives them something to look up on the globe, pin to a map, whatever.

This has worked very well in a recent spate of business travel. Wristbands from The Netherlands, Key Fobs from Paris, Red Sox plates from Boston (best not mention this last one since I bought three and only had two on unpacking in the UK…) but Malaysia? No. At Kuala Lumpur International Airport you cannot buy this stuff. You can buy Gucci, Dunhill, Perfume, Cigarettes, Cigars, Booze and Kids toys that you will find in Tescos all over the world. You can buy chocolates and you can buy Union Flag Key Fobs and little Beefeater figurines from the KLIA branch of Harrods but can you buy a T-Shirt “Someone who loves me went to KL and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”? No. Can you buy a key-fob, medal or indeed any piece of tat with “Kuala Lumpur” emblazoned upon it? No.

Fortunately, anticipating a certain lack of shopping ability on my part rather than cheesy-gift-free-zones my Wife makes plans for my failure to obtain appropriate gifts and has a certain stock of location agnostic giveaways that could be from anywhere and are at least something, rather than nothing.

I type this on a Malaysian Airlines Business Lounge PC, gazing onto a pristeen  taxi-way awaiting the flight home. The headache has almost gone, the Nausea already has and the “Kuala Lumps” (think Delhi Belly) seems to have, how shall I say, run their course.

Wait! Genius! I just notices a small pile of identical postcards. Pictures of a 747-400 at KL and on the back it says “Malaysia”.  They will do. Write a “Wish you were here” message on them and post through the door back home. Three delighted kids guaranteed. Thank you Malaysian Airlines!

“Flight MH4 now boarding at gate 4.” I have to go…

Lets examine the evidence..

First, there is more than a passing physical resemblence between Shrek and I. Anyone who knows me could attest.

Like me, Shrek has three offspring who confuse him with some invincible young person with boundless energy who is impervious to pain inflicted while ‘play’ fighting.

Like me, Shrek has a best friend who is annoyingly optimistic and has to be told quite clearly when his visit is over and it’s time to go home. Sorry Si – you know it’s true.

Like me, Shrek lives in a house that has too much stuff in for its size.

Like mine, Shrek’s house is in a swamp. Not literally of course. But I think of the swamp as a metaphor for living on a modern estate – despite this one being very pleasant by many measures.

There’s another similarity. Shrek likes his swamp too.

Shrek knows the only bastion of peace is the toilet. An Englishman’s home may be his castle but a Dad’s sanctuary is the loo.

Like me, Shrek has an appalling diet. This is because we both know that anything that lengthens the time we can plausibly remain in the throne room is a good thing.

When Shrek shouts, the family listen… then ignore him anyway.

Princess Fiona was a babe before he met her and now she’s an ogress. This is a statement of fact and unlike all the others above bears no resemblance to my life whatsoever.

Shrek is not at all scared of his wife.