When we said in the site description that this might turn out to be a guide to ruining your life, rather than a travel log, I think we may have been onto something.

Our date of departure looms ever closer, only 4 and a half weeks away, yet we’re no closer to selling the flat. Thanks to media scaremongering everyong is convinced we’re about to hit a recession and seems to be sitting tight on their property.

Weeks come and go with no viewers, then three will show up, interested, enthusiastic and full of promise, never to be seen again.

We’ve gone to fixed price, and then reduced fixed price.

We’ve forked out hundreds on new schedules, advertisements in the Scotsman property pages.

We rush to clean floors and surfaces, arrange flowers, open the windows and plump the cushions, only to sit for 2 hours every Thursday and Sunday, waiting for…. something.

Avoiding peering out of the windows. Avoiding biting nails.

Avoiding.

I want to give up, purely because the stress is taking its toll, but I can’t give up a once in a lifetime opportunity to achieve my only real ambition. Paul wont let me give up anyway, he says we’re going, and that’s that. We just might be a little delayed, is all. He’s determined.

I don’t remind him that a couple of weeks ago he was equally determined that we were going on the 14th of July, and that was that.

I don’t think it matters how determined he is, or I am.

What matters is that Paul no longer has a job.

What matters is that, in 2 weeks time, I no longer have a job, and no chance of getting one now, having missed the current round of interviews.

What matters is our mortgage, our debts, our ties.

Not our plans, or how determined we may be to achieve them.