I am still alive

Well, what a year 2013 was! It went something like this:

January: new job, house move (someone's daughter's bedroom: decidedly temporary).
February: can't remember.
March: ditto, then moved out of that room. Went to France for a week.
April: came back from France. Moved house again.
May: enjoyed being in new house.
June: had to leave new house. Moved house again.
July: enjoyed being in new house. Found the weather to be surprisingly warm.
August: ditto, with a festival and a wedding or two.
September: coasted a bit and had fun. Bought some new tools. Started to look for a house of my own.
October: more or less the same.
November: ditto, but with a lot less light. Tried to fix someone else's housing crisis. Wrote a novel (best so far - it had a beginning, a middle, and an end).
December: decided to make Christmas presents for everyone because I have no money. Failed because I also have no time. Had present-wrapping crises. Stayed with the parents for Christmas.

Re-reading my 2011 resolutions, though, I can now say that I lost two of the three stones I was supposed to lose. I'm not sure how I feel about the final one - I think that half of it will certainly be allowed to stay, and won't be too disgruntled if none of it goes.

It's time to come back here. I'm going to buy a house, you see, and I want to talk about it. I had one in mind, actually: a complete wreck of a thing just down the road from here. It was a steal in terms of initial price, but I dread to think how much work it will need to get it into a habitable state. It had ever so much space. It would have had space for me and two whole lodgers, with a bedroom to spare. I would not have been able to get a mortgage on it, apparently. And now it's gone, leaving me with more vague regrets than the sense of relief I should have.

Still, there are always more wrecks, and these might have less interesting stains on the walls. Re-wiring sounds fair enough, but a new roof isn't the easiest start. This is because it is more expensive than some cabling, a wrecking bar and some time, followed by a visit from a qualified inspector. And possibly also a new central heating system. And new redecoration throughout. Although the vital back porch reconstruction might not be all that cheap. And fitting an entire new kitchen (and a huge one at that) would probably be very expensive.

Let's see how this goes. It might be interesting to look back on this in a few years time, and remember when I still had my sanity.