WCGW

Well, here we go.  The acronym WCGW is used in one of our tools at work to document "what could go wrong."  We've seen plenty at this point.  Today we went out again with Ellen to look at additional properties with the hopes that last night's offer would make the trip irrelevant.  Unfortunately, there were not very many new properties added to the market and a few of the most promising ones were let before we had the chance to see them.  So we started the day with a short list of only 6 stops, but with hopes that it wouldn't matter. 

The first couple near West Ham were terrible.  About that time we learned that we had lost our fourth flat we offered on.  The landlord accepted a revised offer from the people who had seen it before us.  With this background, we saw our third flat of the day, which had a great location a few blocks from Islington Upper Street but required a lot of work.  After seeing that garden apartment, we headed to lunch at a pub in Islington and considered whether that flat was our best option and worth settling on even though it was over our planned budget.  While it probably goes without saying, we found ourselves quite dejected and had to have a pint with our meals.

During lunch we saw a light at the end of the tunnel.  Ellen stopped by the agent's office for our after lunch viewing and, through a personal friend at the agency, learned of another flat in Islington, right off of Upper Street and not even on the market yet.  With a stroke of luck we were able to get a showing after lunch.  The place was awesome, primarily because of the location.  The actual flat isn't as great as the one that had the person fall through the ceiling, but it was more than acceptable (we'll call it #5 going forward). 

We saw another flat near Clerkenwell (just south of Islington) with the same agent, that had a pretty awesome kitchen and was off of a cute garden square, but didn't have the location or the space of #5.  So we put in our fifth offer (ridiculous) on #5.  Of course we couldn't get a quick response.  While we are at the asking price and our relocation team thinks we have a 99% shot at it since no one else has been able to see it and it isn't even really "on the market," until we have a signed contract we will continue to sweat it out.  This place exceeds our planned budget by a fair amount, but the location is exactly what we wanted and it's a cute flat.  We will have no complaints if this goes through.

After the flat searching, we stopped by the Borough Market on the way home.  It's a not quite open air market with a fantastic variety of butchers, fishmongers, produce stands, and just about everything else.  On Whit's recommendation, we picked up fresh pasta, wild boar tortellini that was made earlier in the day, and brought it home.  Quite tasty to say the least and it was comforting to have another home cooked meal rather than a restaurant stop.  Jenny and I finally watched District 9 after starting it with Jason months ago.  Good, unique flick and worth the watch.  All in all, it was an enjoyable evening.

We're off to bed soon with hopes that tomorrow will bring confirmation on our offer and the chance to put to rest all of this madness.  Hope you're all doing well.  Have a great holiday weekend in the States.

Cheers!