Day 97

Again and again, I copy/paste the same variations of a message into contact pages and message boxes. I am looking for a fencing contractor. We have been talking about replacing our fence with my partner for months but still haven’t done it.

We have been waiting for summer we said, for warmer days with less wind battering our neighbourhood. The pandemic began, our income was reduced, and we kept finding excuses not to replace the fence. We know it’s going to be a costly job, one neither of us want to pay for but it is necessary.

The wind has blown strongly in the last few days our fence wobbling dangerously at the edge of our garden, most of the posts held on by strings and strong pegs. It needs to be replaced. It probably needed to be replaced when we first visited the house just over a year ago but we didn’t think to look at it. We have never needed to consider such jobs in the past, landlords taking care of our problems and making them disappear with more or less nagging on our parts. We do not have this option any longer, any issue with the property is ours whether we want it or not.

‘We’ll know for next time,’ I tell my partner. ‘Maybe ask for a lower price.’

‘Definitely. Although, I don’t think we’d have gotten the house if we’d offered less than they asked.’

‘True.’

We both think of the first house we put an offer on, the one by the river Avon that had me dreaming of breakfast by the water, evening walk along its banks, and endless days watching it flow. We didn’t get it.

‘The bathroom needed redoing, remember.’

‘Yes, it was bad wasn’t it? And there would have been the comings and goings of cars all the time by the garden fence.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And the kitchen was small.’

‘Quite small.’

We nod to each other. We cannot help ourselves. Every time we mention that first house we both liked, we have to list all the reasons why it was good we didn’t get it. There are more that we have found. Neither of us truly regrets not getting it. The issues we find with that house by the river Avon are real but I sometimes wonder if the emphasis we put on them is to make us feel happier in the house we did buy. We both like it, this home of ours.

‘Do you ever regret not getting that house by the river,’ I ask my partner, voicing our thoughts.

‘No,’ she answers. She hesitates for a second and adds, ‘no. I don’t.’

‘Me neither.’