Make me an offer...

It worked! Unexpectedly, the holiday has indeed refreshed us and put a fresh perspective on things. I am open to looking at new lots, without feeling ill with disappointment. Stef is getting an actual estimate from the blasting company as to how much the ‘scary’ lot would cost us. And we have arranged to meet with a geotechnical engineer (Phil Diamond) to look at the sites and check them out. He reassures me simply by not implying that we are crazy to think about buying this lot. We scratch at the gravel with our toes (you can now see the gravel, since the snow has melted), and speculate about what lies beneath… The lot is full of rocky debris, presumably the result of what happened when the next-door-neighbours blasted their own lot to build and needed somewhere to dump the fill. They have been using the resulting flat gravel field as a second yard – a place for their sons’ trampoline. Occasionally I think I catch a glimpse of a worried faces pressed up against the glass looking out at us, wondering what we are doing on their ‘yard’. Phil thinks we’ll have to dig all this rubble up (the development company, Sabre, confirms it is in fact just rubble rather than any kind of structurally stable ‘fill’). But that’s okay, he says, someone will pay us to take it away. Someone always wants rubble, he says. There, that guy walking his dog – I know him, he’ll buy your rubble. Really? Oh yeah, the council is always constructing stuff on the levees, and they always need rubble. Over coffee and cookies at the local bakery (where there is vodka on the baking shelves, apparently for the truffles but maybe also for the chef) I am convinced. We will put in an offer for this one! The view is astounding.