tease

The removal people arrived around eightish, as expected. As proposed but as initially slightly doubted, they had all our stackable crates of stuff in the small van by half nine and then all the furniture in the larger van by about half eleven, shortly after which they disappeared, though only to the other end of the road. Shortly after that, we heard from our buyers that their stage of the deal had completed and that they were on their way to our solicitors for what were now their keys; meanwhile, their delivery van arrived and parked outside. As we still had the garage keys from our sellers we trundled over (literally in my case, as my guitar, camera, laptop and lenses were travelling with me) and out a few more things in the garage. Hearing nothing more for a few minutes, it was deemed prudent to cycle up to our sellers' solicitor, there to await confirmation of the hopefully inevitable closure of the deal at the top of the chain, which was surely only a formality away seeing as our buyers had now bought. The office was real, but after waiting outside for an hour or so when there was no answer you do start to wonder if the solicitor inside was fully real, or that the sellers had really agreed to a deal. Eventually, twenty-odd minutes after the time stated on the door as the start of the afternoon session, he appeared on the stairwell as I was trying the door for the fifth or sixth time, opened the office, verified my identity and handed me the keys.