A few weeks ago I wrote a retirement blog about the difficulties I was having deciding whether to sell the Derbyshire cottage, aka my late mother’s house, in order, probably, to fund the building of our Colorado cabin*. This as opposed to using an Equity Release scheme about which I am becoming more and more uneasy.
Our equity release person seemed to have disappeared from the scene. I was quite relieved. This would be one way of making a decision. This kind of acceptance is of course fatal. So those are my goal posts, oh no, some bugger has moved them they’re over there now. Anyway she was back on the scene with a brand new, improved offer. So the picture, which for a short while had simplified itself, now complicated itself all over again.
But before this scheme landed back on the table my thinking had turned again to selling this property which is where I am writing this retirement blog. And, as I wrote then, it is a difficult decision to take.
A well-meaning friend suggested a method I might try in a situation where the decision was difficult and close. He said write down 10 things you like about the property and 10 things you don’t and compare the two lists then make your decision – simple.
So that’s what we started to do, this very morning, on this visit. In the plus column we had written – Shipley Park where we walk the dogs, a beautiful area based on what was originally, so I believe, about 200 acres of Shipley Park estate grounds and local pits that had closed and been reclaimed. You’d never know it, it’s a short drive away and looks great.
Second, closer to home, literally, is our back garden. It easily goes wild if left untended but my neighbour (another ‘item’ in the plus column) enjoys the challenge, or so he tells me. It’s by far the biggest garden we own and it stretches away down to the greenhouse and shed I wrote about a while ago.
In the house itself we like what we’ve done to the décor. To think back to what it looked like after my mother died and how much we disliked it and look at it now is quite uplifting. And we haven’t spent a whole lot of money on it giving it ideas above its station.
Then there’s the nostalgia associated with the house and the area. True neither are pretty and or romantic but they have their memories and some of those memories have a certain charm. When I was a boy it was a coal-mining area with all the associated heavy industry. All that’s gone of course but there are still reminders – the odd pithead wheels, old railway lines and bridges, converted factories, one of my old schools, Shipley Hall cricket ground where I spent much of my youth, etc. One of these days I’ll write a blog about DH Lawrence being born just up the road at Eastwood.
Still on the nostalgia kick there’s a pub just down the road in Langley Mill now called The Middle Inn. It was a rough old joint when I was younger, the kind you used to hurry past in case somebody with an eye patch and a tattoo reached out and dragged you in to the gates of hell. You can’t sit inside with the dogs which is a bit ironic in some ways.
So you sit out the back in what used to be the yard of the stables. It has the kind of brickwork I associate with Peaky Blinders only not quite as grimy. But it’s definitely unchanged since those days because the surrounding houses, to which I used to deliver milk (until I fell off the milk-float and knocked myself unconscious), are still the same. We call it ‘the swearing pub’ but that’s another story. Now, like much of the nostalgia industry, it’s in our asset column although it wouldn’t understand why. Not sure I do either.
What very definitely and understandably are in the positive column are our other Derbyshire pubs. And, as an extension of this positive, Derbyshire itself. Though I’m biased, I believe Derbyshire is a very beautiful county with The Peak District, the Derbyshire Dales and attractive towns like Matlock, Bakewell and Buxton to name just three. Not to mention its industrial history – Arkwright Mills and so on.
So that’s not a list of 10 but you will get the idea of what our trips here have ‘going for them’. Which brings us to the negatives for comparison. First and foremost is the parking outside the house – there isn’t any, on account of our neighbours who are of course here all the time and so have the jump on us and it drives me nuts. This is by far the biggest negative for me although it never seems to bother Mrs Summerhouse.
Associated with which I suppose is the drive here and back to Leeds. It’s only an hour and a half but it gets more tedious the older we get. Throw into this pot the demands maintenance-wise (I’m just paying my neighbour to do some work on the outside painting) which of course means expense. Is it really sensible to spend one’s pension income on maintaining this and other properties? Just think of it as a hobby and, as we know, we retired people are quite happy to spend money on our hobbies. So what’s the problem?
I think that’s about all and, as can be seen, the plus list is significantly longer than the minus one. So does that then mean we don’t sell which, if it does, means we’re back to Equity Release about which I’ve already been unenthusiastic. And round in circles we go.
*Just to keep you in the loop, work on the Colorado cabin begins next Monday. Just the driveway and the foundations but that’s further than I’ve got in the last 25 years. So once again watch this space.