There's a lot of this going on right now. Sitting in a cosy cafe with a cup of tea and a book, or the crossword, or with friends. 

We are trying to fend off our impatience that we still haven't moved house. Until Thursday, it was officially us causing the delay, and I was getting fed up with hectoring emails from our seller's estate agent, each one spelling my name wrong and containing more exclamation marks than any professional should use in their life, let alone one email. The main delay has been our mortgage - a combination of mistakes by the broker, inefficient communication by the lender, and us buying an unusual house (or rather an unusual number of fields). 

By Thursday this was all finally sorted, and we spent a happy hour and a half with the solicitor, going through the results of the searches (all fine, thank goodness) and signing all our documents. Hooray! 

Our celebration was short-lived. 

Less than twenty four hours later I received an email from our own estate agents, beginning 'Hate to tell you this but...'. Our buyers have put their house back on the market. Their buyers, first timers who had seemed nice enough, had waited until we were all just about ready, and had demanded a large price reduction. 

Our buyers (rightly) said no, and have re-advertised their house. 

Yesterday we were Very Grumpy Indeed. Not much work was done, and swear words were heard. We may have ended the evening (incidentally also our twelfth anniversary) on the sofa with a bottle of vodka.

But today we are more sanguine. The menaces who caused this trouble may change their minds over the weekend when they realise nobody will give in to their bullying tactics. If not, our buyers may find a new buyer very quickly (it only took them a few days the first time). 

We haven't told our sellers yet. This only happened yesterday, and we wanted to take a day or two to think clearly. We're going to measure up at our new house on Monday, so we'll explain then.

I hope they'll wait. They'd be daft not to. The house we're buying is rather rural, with an unwieldy amount of land and a fair bit of damp. It's been empty for six months, and the heating currently isn't working. The chances of them selling to someone else more quickly than our buyers can sell is very slim. 

All fingers are crossed that the pesky first time buyers come crawling back with their tails between their legs having learned a lesson, and we can all proceed as planned. If we have to start again with someone new at the top of the chain (who will need a new mortgage, and new searches), then it seems unlikely we'll be in by Christmas. 

We're trying to look on the bright side. If we lose the house we're trying to buy, yes we'll lose solicitor's fees and the cost of a survey, but we'll have a couple of extra months to save without a mortgage. If we need to find a new house, we can perhaps find one with slightly fewer fields, less damp, and a bigger kitchen (and perhaps a tiny bit cheaper and closer to work). 

In the meantime we're sitting in cafes and crossing our fingers, and I've been off to visit my sister and her brand new dog. Because a new cheery dog and a trip to the seaside make everything better. 

I haven't spent much time in the garden lately. Much of October felt soggy and grey, and not really the weather for sitting outside. 

As I walked past the garden to the car though, I did notice that there were still flowers. 

Quite a lot of flowers, actually. 

I've been out and done a bit of tidying up and yes, I did wrap up and have a cup of tea out there. I'll miss this little garden when we eventually move. It's changed a lot over the years, and while I curse about its smallness and lack of privacy, it's always surprised me just how many different corners you can have in such a tiny space. 

We still have no real house news. Apparently the building society now considers our new house to be 'acceptable' (an improvement on the 'not acceptable' status it's had for the last few weeks) and are now chewing their pens and drinking their tea for a few more days before they get round to giving us an offer on Wednesday. I'm not sure how many more stages they can invent, or how much more I can stand. 

Everyone else is ready, and it seems they are keen to inform me of this fact on a regular basis. I wish I had the influence over the building society that they seem to think I have. I'm told that once we have the mortgage offer, there isn't much else to do, so theoretically we could be moving this month. 

Again, I won't hold my breath. 

In the meantime, we are picking rosemary and lavender from the garden to put in with the reduced supermarket carnations and trying to live here for just a little bit longer.