Thinly Applied

This moving business is hard work! We've spent the last 3 days 'taking possession' of our Cambridge house. Presumably at the end of it all we'll need to be exorcised from it?

The taking possession bit is relatively quick and easy - collect the keys from the agency, go, open the front door, open all the other windows and doors to let the fresh air in, having been closed up for several months. Discover that the patio door just won't open. Check the inventory.

When I was a bit younger and I was renting student houses the inventory was a lot easier - a list of the furniture, cutlery etc, and a stern warning not to break anything. Five minutes to check it through. No longer is it so easy. Our inventory, for an unfurnished house ran to 22 sides of A4. Half a page just to deal with the front door - for example: brass door handle, tarnished, scratched; 5 lever lock with key hole cover, scratched, surrounding woodwork repainted in slightly different shade of paint.

22 pages of mind numbing tediousness that we had to pore our way through. A recurring theme was 'paint thinly applied' - looks OK, but when you examine it close up there's hints of the coat below showing through. But with nearly 40 doors and windows in the house I wouldn't blame the painter for wanting to get the job finished. I wonder how many people's faith is like that - on the surface it's all shiny and glossy, but when you look a bit closer there's underlying stuff showing through that hasn't been dealt with.

And with that it was teatime. We discovered our local chippy.