{"id":738,"date":"2012-08-16T02:34:38","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T00:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=738"},"modified":"2012-08-16T02:34:38","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T00:34:38","slug":"hardly-home-at-boggy-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=738","title":{"rendered":"Hardly Home at Boggy Pond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday 15<\/strong>th<\/sup><\/strong> August 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

It has been more than a month since I last posted to this Blog \u2013 for the simple reason that I’ve hardly had a moment to spare. Since Christa flew down for a few days of meetings in Cape Town I’ve only managed to spend three days a week at Boggy Pond.<\/p>\n

Usually on a Thursday, I’m in the studio in Cape Town, auditioning actors for one of the several projects we’re juggling. I’ve had an extra two and a half days \u201cat home\u201d because all the projects have taken a deep breath at the same time!<\/p>\n

I head back to Cape Town this afternoon for a day of auditions on Friday. The gap in the schedule will have to be made up, so I’ll be in the studio again on Monday. This will have to be a very quick catch-up then…<\/p>\n

The biggest news is that our exploratory house-hunting rapidly became a house-buying expedition! Much as we liked the idea of living in \u201cHampton Court\u201d, we both decided that an apartment in Green Point didn’t appeal. That was Friday lunch-time. We dashed off to a meeting in Muizenberg with the owners of the Studio we would be using, which placed us near a \u201cTerrace House\u201d we had arranged to look at afterwards…<\/p>\n

\u201cOh Dear!!!…\u201d I said as I opened the 100 year-old front door…<\/p>\n

Isabella, the delightful estate agent, looked quizzically at the spotless empty living room with it’s restored antique fireplace reflected in gleaming Oregon pine floors running through to the open-plan kitchen. Instead of pointing out the matching period Pewter light-switch escutcheons, she asked: \u201cWhat’s the problem?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like it wa-a-y too much!\u201d, I replied, and stood aside for Christa, who stopped exactly where I had, and gaped.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my word!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

The house had been used as an office by a businessman who lovingly restored all the woodwork between deals. Where locks had been installed and removed over the past century, he meticulously repaired the holes with matching wood patches and fitted period brass door-handles. The minuscule back-garden and patio is simple and neat. There’s no garage and parking on the narrow, secluded street is limited, but that’s Cape Town for you.<\/p>\n

Of course we kept an appointment to look at a Claremont apartment on Saturday morning. Very neat, very secure, and much closer to the Studio, but really just any other \u201cFlat\u201d. We also looked at an apartment in a modern block on the sea front in Muizenberg. Splendid sea view. Very neat, very secure, very modern, very… very not anything, really. The levy alone on all the apartments was two to three times the Rates on the Holland Road house.<\/p>\n

We phoned Isabella and arranged to sign an Offer to Purchase in the house on Saturday afternoon…<\/p>\n

Done!<\/p>\n

There was just one problem…<\/p>\n

…we hadn’t begun to put our Johannesburg home on the Market!<\/p>\n

Christa flew back to Johannesburg on Sunday morning, while I nursed an overheating, very sick motor-car through the rain back to Boggy Pond to take it all in…<\/p>\n

Several people in Christa’s Parish in Johannesburg have had their houses on the market for between three and nine months… They must have been tempted to utter some rather un-Christian language when we sold our home in about a day and a half! By the weirdest co-incidence, the buyers attend the same Church!<\/p>\n

The intervening four or five weeks have been nerve – wracking, largely because of the astonishing level of incompetence \u2013 sorry,\u00a0 \u201cLack of Capacity\u201d is apparently the preferred term \u2013 behind the front desk of the Home Loan departments of the major Banks. In the seven or eight years since we last applied for a Bond, the level of bureaucracy has also increased, which makes the \u201cCapacity\u201d issue an even bigger problem.<\/p>\n

We’ve at last heard that our small bridging loan has been approved, so once the paper-sludge oozes down from Gauteng to our Conveyancers in the Cape, the race is on! I have to dash back over a weekend at the end of August, dispose of unwanted \u201clegacy\u201d equipment, move Edit back into the Studio, create a flatlet where Edit has been for years and move some of our furniture into storage at the Studio.<\/p>\n

The first weekend of September we’ll pack the essentials of Christa’s office onto the pickup and drive back to Cape Town to service two large productions. Some time before mid October at least one of us will have to be back in Johannesburg to supervise the major move…<\/p>\n

Pheww!!! I’m tired already!<\/p>\n

We took some pictures inside Holland Road on Christa’s phone, but in the rush I didn’t download them before she left, so this one from Google Earth will have to do.<\/p>\n

\"3<\/a>

Our new home in Cape Town. Very cute, very small, but beautiful inside.<\/p><\/div>\n

I haven’t even mentioned the deluge of rain and the washed-away road at Boggy Pond which has kept me busy in between times, but I’ll fill in the gaps some time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Christa flew down for a few days of meetings in Cape Town I’ve only managed to spend three days a week at Boggy Pond. Work, and the bureaucracy of buying a house has kept me busy. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":741,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}