First stop was Swindon on Monday to visit Anne and John who were staying with their son Martin. As the weather was nice we decided to have lunch at the Red [...]]]> Taking advantage of the fact that our friends Anne and John were in the country last weekend, we decided to take a break.

First stop was Swindon on Monday to visit Anne and John who were staying with their son Martin. As the weather was nice we decided to have lunch at the Red Lion, Avebury. This pub has the distinction of being inside a stone circle.

We had a wander around the standing stones, the nearby village and over to, but not up, Silbury Hill.

John had work on in Zurich so was whisked away shortly before 5pm. Helen and I spent the evening with Anne before and stayed the night.

The next morning we were off to Yate to visit Ben, Sarah’s father. Sarah is Helen’s cousin who looked after us last year.

Another pub dinner was in order for evening meal. We drove over to the Severn River and watched the sun setting over Wales from the vantage point offered by the mount on which St Arida Church was built. This time final destination was The Anchor Inn at Oldbury-on-Severn.

The next day our destination was Penzance, Cornwall, to visit Helen’s sister and her husband, Robin. To break the trip, we stopped off at Launceton to visit the old castle there. The weather had now turned cold and it started to rain while we were there so the castle visit was brief.

For now, here’s a few pics, including some from Henley-on-Thames.

First it was big because we had seven viewings today, four in Henley-on-Thames and three in Marlow. By number seven we were pretty burned out but no regrets.

Today the weather was perfect. Blue skies and temps in the low 20s allowed us to see these two towns outside of [...]]]> In so many ways.

First it was big because we had seven viewings today, four in Henley-on-Thames and three in Marlow. By number seven we were pretty burned out but no regrets.

Today the weather was perfect. Blue skies and temps in the low 20s allowed us to see these two towns outside of winter. And it was glorious. Walking around Henley, particularly down by the river, brought on a real happy state.

The Henley houses we viewed were an interesting mix which we visited in the following order :

http://zoop.la/18cxa3y
http://zoop.la/11VFReZ
http://zoop.la/103e9Kc
http://zoop.la/12mEX8P

The first was delightful. It was on a busy road but close to the center of Henley. It had a divine back garden, no grass, just stone, patio, tree, bamboo, quite the oasis of tranquility. It hit all our buttons bar it not having two upstairs bathrooms. This maybe a comprise we can make but it’s not enough to push us into an offer right now. This is a definite maybe.

The second property was only on the list as it was listed by the same agent as the first. It turned out to be quite a surprise. It was in a fantastic location and while not having the number of bedrooms we want it scored on many points. Even being on the second floor was sort of mitigated by being right by a major supermarket so just in time provisioning would mitigate having to lug large supplies up the stairs. The main problem is the long term view where we’d like somewhere we could live in when we fall apart (as if we haven’t already).

The third property was also very well located. It comes with a commercial lease generating income from a hairdressers below. There are some complications which we believe are the reason this property has been on the market for a while. But for those willing to face the complications it represents a possible fine deal.

The last property was quaint and the interior attractive. But the combination of size, location and orientation to North was not positive so this ones off.

After the mornings burst of activity we explored the town, had lunch down by the river and even had a stroll along the river. This blew us away as the perfect weather showed the town in it’s glory. We can really see ourselves living here.

In the afternoon we headed over to Marlow. We had over an hour to spare before our first appointment so we had another walk around town. Marlow is also a beautiful town on the river but had the sense of a Henley-lite. We can imagine walking the 7 or 8 miles along the river from Henley to Marlow to experience the town. But when we imagined walking the other direction we could only see ourselves asking why we never started in Henley.

But we had three properties to see.

http://zoop.la/VJUflH
http://zoop.la/ZzgwrR
http://zoop.la/12lgIb4

The first was right on the high street. There was no assigned parking but despite having all the character we love, it wasn’t quite big enough. An eye opener but it’s not on our short list.

Our first thoughts about the second property was that it was just too far out of town and along an uninspiring road. Walking up the garden to the property we were bowled over. Inside the property was equally impressive. Despite all this, it didn’t have the right balance of room types and the location was too far from town to meet our needs and too high a price to compensate for this. We passed.

The last property was the home of an airport architect (we’re talking major airports here). This resulted in a modern home that was pretty unique and incredibly appealing. The distance from center of town was a bit too far for us so this remains a property to keep an eye on.

So that’s the detailed house by house view on the day. But a bigger picture emerged for both of us. With the fine spring weather, the river and the town character we’ve now very much settled on Henley and, to a lesser extent, Marlow as an ideal location. Doesn’t mean to say this is where we’ll end up but it’s now the benchmark against which we now feel we must measure everything else. We saw enough prospects in each area to allow us to believe finding something where, even if we have to compromise, we can be happy. So it’s a good time to have our Cornwall break as this new perspective needs time to settle in. One thing we do realize is that the third Henley properties raised a lot of questions and things to learn so that can start now even though we feel a long way from committing.

All this comes with one big caveat. We know that a lot of this makes a lot less sense if my health takes a turn for the worst during this high risk period. What helps is that I now have my next MRI and consultancy with the Prof booked for the 7th/11th of June. We’re hoping for a new betting forecast from the Prof which could well influence things. For now we’ve decided to plan for heads rather than tails and deal with tails if it happens. But we’ve also decide not to commit to anything until we get the June form book.

http://zoop.la/18bY63j http://zoop.la/VmC88G

The first had all the character we’d like of a character home but was too small for us. The second was big enough but had had a lot of the character spoiled prior [...]]]> We saw two pairs of properties this morning. The first pair were each side of a semi detached home.

http://zoop.la/18bY63j
http://zoop.la/VmC88G

The first had all the character we’d like of a character home but was too small for us.
The second was big enough but had had a lot of the character spoiled prior to the building being listed.

Just round the corner were a 1st floor and loft flat conversion of an old manor house.

http://zoop.la/Yludfj
http://zoop.la/18bYfUy

The first was enticing and fit the bill of allowing us to imagine we could live there. While we are on the fence with the area, it is now on our maybe list. The loft conversion was quite different. It had a lot going for it but planning constraints meant windows could not be placed to look out over The Green.

So nothing yet that makes us want to break out the wallet and buy something because it is so right. But this is all totally within expectations. Now to rest before tomorrows viewing marathon.

http://zoop.la/ZQWCrT http://zoop.la/ViLP4H

Helen’s sister, Betty, joined us for the first visit. This was the first home we could truly visualize ourselves living in. The price was good but it didn’t hit all the bells. It was in Chesham which, although quaint, is a little small and lacks [...]]]> Yesterday we saw two more properties :

http://zoop.la/ZQWCrT
http://zoop.la/ViLP4H

Helen’s sister, Betty, joined us for the first visit. This was the first home we could truly visualize ourselves living in. The price was good but it didn’t hit all the bells. It was in Chesham which, although quaint, is a little small and lacks the charm, depth and character of other towns nearby. It definitely stays on the list as a maybe as sooner or later we’ll reach the point where we’ll probably have to compromise somewhere.

The second property had a lot of charm but didn’t quite make it for us. Helen and I had a slightly different perspective on how good the location was. (Right by Tescos versus being next to a busy commuter road which has to be crossed to get to the Old Town).

By now, we’ve ironed out many of the wrinkles of our process and have geared up for the rest of the week. Today we have four more properties lined up and tomorrow we have another seven. Unlike the US where buying agents line up all the house visits, here there are only selling agents. The leg work of organising all the visits with vendors is down to us. It’s more effort but being organised and developing a good process around it makes it simpler and allows us to team up.

Using the technology we have makes things simpler too. By ensuring we have addresses set up against our calendar appointments, one swipe of a finger accross my phone followed by one tap and I have the road directions to our next appointment. Another couple of clicks takes us to the data we have gathered on each property and a wealth of data from the web. It’s pretty empowering to us as buyers and allows us to really scale up our activity.

Next week we’re taking a break from house hunting. We’re visiting a number of friends and family in a line between here and Cornwall. We haven’t decided on a return date yet.

zoop.la/16ggxEG zoop.la/18d3yQA zoop.la/18d3tN0

It was good to get out and see a few more homes but none of them grabbed us to the extent we were tempted to go for a second viewing.

On Thursday we’re [...]]]> This morning we went to see three more houses, two in Old Amersham and one in (New) Amersham.

zoop.la/16ggxEG
zoop.la/18d3yQA
zoop.la/18d3tN0

It was good to get out and see a few more homes but none of them grabbed us to the extent we were tempted to go for a second viewing.

On Thursday we’re targeting Marlow or Henley-on-Thames. These are probably out of our price range but it’s worth a look. And it’s a bit of a change from the last two. Both Great Missenden and Amersham are in Buckinghamshire which is still in the old grammar school system. This is good if you have a school age family but if not, it simply adds to the prices of homes here. So looking outside Buckinghamshire has it’s appeal.

Now, for a complete aside. If you haven’t figure it out yet, I am a tech geek. One things I like to do is to future gaze. ie, to develop ideas about where I think technology, and those who are leading the industry, is taking us. When I came out of my mental fugue last year (and perhaps influenced by the steroids I was on) it became more and more clear to me we are heading towards a driverless future, ie. where all cars will be automated. This is not a new idea as a number of companies are publicly working on autonomous vehicles. But where I see this going will be transformational to many areas of society. What I see is more or less the end of private car ownership. The more we let our cars drive for us, the less we’ll be ourselves skilled enough to takeover. Driverless cars will essentially become taxis arriving to pick us up just in time, travelling at very high speeds (computers will be safer) we’ll arrive at our destinations, also just in time, with no need to park. It will work for everyone as traffic and routes will be optimized centrally. There will be enough vehicles in any region to handle peak demand plus a haircut for failures, maintenance, etc. leading to far fewer vehicles being built (very ecological). Intelligent pricing for road journeys may flatten out peak travel too. Vehicles become bubbles of our home/work giving individuals greater work/life balance. Traffic will be centrally managed avoiding jams. Vehicle types will evolve to new needs: travelling offices, small scale sharing, sleeping, who knows. Urban use will transform. Parking, as we currently understand it, will more or less be eliminated providing new opportunities to use saved space (and a need for new jobs for wardens). I suspect road networks will transform and simplify over time freeing up public spending for other purposes. House values will shift as demand for proximity to mass transit reduces and costs of individual short distance travel falls. LIVES WILL BE SAVED. It goes on.

There will a be a lot of resistance to this sort of change. You’d think so at least. But the easiest sort of change to accept are those that creep up on us bit by bit. We now have radar assisted parking / cruise control. Some cars can now even park themselves. All major car companies are aiming for the end of this decade for their autonomous cars. Some navigation solutions are already centrally managed. Journey anticipation is already built into some smartphones. The changes that will take us to that future are already happening and I believe some of the big vision companies are already positioning themselves for this future.

How does this all help us? I’m not all sure. I suspect autonomous cars will only get on the road in a big way in the 20s. It will take a decade before ageing manual only vehicles will come off the roads. So it won’t happen until the 30s. But it will happen. And economics will respond ahead of time, as it always does. The long view on this would suggest that the average house bought near a station today won’t be as sound an investment as an average house away from a station. But we’ve got to live there before the change happens and at the end of the day it will be our kids (and the tax man) who will benefit or lose from this. So it’s not much of a consideration for us but it does trickle along in the back of my mind.

Just to make sure I’m not having pipe dreams I did a bit of googling and I’m not the only one seeing this future :

Here is a small collection of articles I found

http://complaintsincorporated.com/2013/04/06/autonomous-cars-and-the-end-of-ownership-not-if-but-when/
http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/
http://www.popsci.com/taxonomy/term/55646/all
http://www.gm.com/vision/design_technology/emerging_technology.html

Looking at these again, I’m now wondering if the forward reaching impact of this transformation is going to take as long as I thought.

We continue to run into ‘having been away for years’ [...]]]> Tuesday and Wednesday were stay at home days playing catch with all the stuff we let overtake us during our ‘Bao’ period. This included my obeying Helen’s demands (actually, she’s doing most of the work) to do some ‘minor’ kitchen remodeling in the flat.

We continue to run into ‘having been away for years’ issues. The big one this week was car insurance. We ended up going through an ex-pat insurance specialist which should get our no-claims back on the rails within a year. In retrospect I am left feeling a little worried as the covernote doesn’t reflect the conversation we had. I called them back and the broker I used has been off sick since. Hopefully this is something we can resolve but it’s been a pain and remains one for now.

On Thursday we had our first serious run at looking at a possible future home / home town. Our target was Great Missenden and, by extension, the neighbouring village of Prestwood. We had two properties we wanted to see, one in each area. The first, in Prestwood, was recently renovated in front of the TV cameras. An interesting back story but when we looked closely, the workmanship was not at the level we’d expect for a modern renovation. On the plus side it is right in the heart of the village but that leads to the another downside in that the village is a bit too small. Small is ok and even being out of the way is not completely written off but this house simply didn’t sing out to us.

We had a good walk around Great Missenden (including a pub lunch) which has a lot more character. We could more easily visualize ourselves living there. There are a lot more worries there about the building of a nearby high speed rail link (HS2) which may or may not be a good thing for potential buyers.

The property we wanted to visit turned out to have been sold that morning so we went to see another one in an over 55′s residence very close to town. (One of us is over 55 but I’m too much of a gentleman to point out who she is). It turned out a second home in the complex was up for sale, by the manager. He saw us walking around, caught our attention, and showed us around this second home. We could much more easily see ourselves in the property and the gardens were wonderfully kept. It had character, being a farmhouse conversion, and was ideally located. But the complex had the feel of an old peoples’ home (without frail care) and I, representing a younger demographic so to speak, am not ready for it. It’s not off the list but as it is early days, we have plenty more places to look.

On Friday I visited Amersham hospital to have my knees X-Ray’d. Won’t know results for a couple of weeks so nothing further to say. Being near a big Tesco’s, Helen was drawn in as if on an invisible stiff bungee leaving me to fathom out the new fangled recycling machine.

In the evening we visited our old Karate friends (Rob and Erin). Rob has recently won his own battle with his prostate so we had much to talk about, including, sadly, a mutual friend who was not so lucky. Being good friends we have seen each other from time to time since we left the UK but being back in their home with the conversation (ok – and the beer and wine) freely flowing the thirteen and a half years that have since passed melted away. Good times.

In the morning, Stanley, their newish dog took us all out for a walk to rid those of us suffering from hangovers of those same hang overs. It worked. During our worked we experienced the full lash of Blighty April weather experience sun, rain, hail, sleet and finally a smattering of snow. Six miles of (starting dry, ending up mud) following the dog left us feeling quite exhausted.

Back in the flat we spent the afternoon with John. He helped us put up another kitchen cabinet (flat pack assembled earlier in the day) and chatted to Helen while I had an early afternoon snooze after the morning’s dog and mud fencing.

Today we’re going to watch Iron Man 3 at the cinema with a detour on the way to the hardware store to satisfy Helen’s lust for cabinet doors, handles and shelves. We will of course be having some fun tonight. With the doors. What were you thinking?

We took the underground line into central London playing catch up on the use of things like ‘Oyster’ cards to simplify and reduce the cost of travel. We keep running into things which everyone has [...]]]> Monday was a big day. We had a day trip to London where we had three very different rendezvous.

We took the underground line into central London playing catch up on the use of things like ‘Oyster’ cards to simplify and reduce the cost of travel. We keep running into things which everyone has been using for years but are essentially new for us. Our experience so far is that people are very helpful to fill us in when we tell them we’ve been away for 14 years.

Our first meeting was with a firm specializing in UK/US hybrids like ourselves who need to work through and manage the risks/potential pitfalls/opportunities of their dual obligations. There are plenty of pitfalls for the unwary and we feel we need the support of firm who specializes in such matters. The morning meeting was positive and both Helen and I agreed to take the next small steps to feel our way in.

We had two to three spare hours between this meeting and the one with Professor Linch scheduled for 3pm. We had a brief lunch over which we discussed our views on how the morning went before taking a long and winding walk to Euston. By this I mean we played inner London Ingress. This took us through the legal heart of London – the Temple area and the law courts. We walked pathways and gardens we never knew existed and even saw what we were sure was a Dan Brown tour still running near the Temple Church.

Even more importantly we diverted off the straight line far enough to reach Chinatown where Helen bought some hard to find ingredients for her renowned chili ‘boost’ and I snagged a trio of steamed buns which hit the spot.

We arrived at University College Hospital with plenty of time to spare which we ended up needing as it took us a while to find the right place to go. We knew we had to go to the top floor but the lifts (elevators) listed the top floor as ‘The Gardens’ and the floor below as hematology. Turned out the private hospital was cunningly unlisted and the floor we went to was the not so proactive NHS layer. By the time we had been sent around a few reception desks and even another building we finally found the right place. They were completely fine with the delay.

After filling in a registration form we were soon in the room with Professor Linch and his assistant to begin the second ‘period’ of responding to my lymphoma, ie. monitoring and assessment. We talked through the history of my disease, my residual symptoms from the treatment and he gave me an examination. All appeared well and as normal as can be expected.

He has decided that due to the masking effects of the radiotherapy, it is better to wait until June for the next MRI. Based on what we’ve learned, particularly with the experience of the last MRI, we support this decision. Between now and then, any response will have to be based on symptoms reappearing. We were assured we have more or less instant access to Prof Linch at any time which was very reassuring. He also said that were we to need to fall back to the NHS, things would more or less run the same way but contact would be more likely with his team rather than with him directly and not as flexible. He also confirmed our understanding that the first two years post CR are the highest risk of relapse with the five year milestone representing the time when one can really feel in the clear. He did caution, though, that nothing can ever be 100%. But we knew that.

He felt that during the next two months, the biopsies taken in Australia can be bought to the UK (I thought they had been) and that examining those and the 5/6 month post CR MRI he’ll be in a position to at least shoot from the hip in terms of prognosis. He confirmed that while CNS lymphoma is merely rare, having the angiocentric T-Cell variety puts us in the realm of there being little data of similar cases to build a more formal prognosis.

So the result of yesterday’s first contact is that there was no cause for immediate alarm and a need to wait for more information. The confirmation that we have anytime and more or less immediate access to the top man was very reassuring.

While we had hoped to be a little more informed after this first visit, we both felt what we did learn was bang on what expected of this first contact.

Our third rendezvous was with Sam’s Godfather, Dick, who has been an acquaintance / family friend since my teenage years. We last met up with him early last year when we were in the UK and shared a very pleasant Xmas Day with him, his wife and three children in NZ at the end of 2010. He showed how his business was architecturally evolving (involving climbing out of a window and standing on the roof for the view of London) followed by a trip to a nearby pub for drinks and a meal.

After that it was a two hour plus trip back home. We were quite exhausted after the day’s efforts but very content. Sleep overcame us rapidly.