We have just celebrated 11 years here in Redwood. Let me say it seems like only yesterday, and at the same time, it seems like we’ve been here forever!
Photo from the sales brochure
Of course thoughts drifted back to that moving day – 10th October 2003 – what a day it was.
Have any of you ever moved house? It is a nightmare.
We’d been packing boxes in Dublin from July. Anything we didn’t use regularly was packed and carefully labelled. As the ‘moving’ day drew closer the packing grew more frenetic.
Our original day to move was 18th October, but with about 2 weeks to go, we were asked could we bring the date forward. For the life of me I cannot remember why.
I called our solicitor and asked could we do this? She spoke to the solicitor for this house who agreed.
Then, wait for it…. on the afternoon of 9th October – THE DAY BEFORE WE MOVE – the solicitor at this end, decides it doesn’t suit to ‘close’ the house the next day! At this stage all our worldly goods were already on board the removal truck. I am standing in an empty house on the verge of tears.
Thank goodness, I had a decent solicitor at my end who worked tirelessly to get it sorted…. and an hour later we are back on track.
We had a relaxing and pleasant evening at my sister’s house. Early meeting with my solicitor next morning, sign papers and by mid-day we were on the road to Tipperary.
We got to Birr at 2 pm, as arranged, to collect keys from the vendor’s solicitor.
This is where the fun starts.
He refused point blank to give me the keys! Said the money wouldn’t be in the bank til Monday, so I could not have keys til then.
I will never ever forget the rudeness of that man. We spent the afternoon pacing the streets of Birr, not knowing a single person in the town, making frantic calls back to Dublin to our own solicitor.
The ignorant solicitor finally agreed to meet with me for handover of keys at 5 p.m., then changed his mind again! This is where I totally lost the plot!
There were other people in the reception area of his office. I was polite to them and apologised to them for the scene I was about to cause, but I completely lost the rag with this ignorant man!
I had now been waiting to meet with him for a simple hand-over of keys for 3 hours, I was justified in ranting.
He gave me the keys eventually – almost threw them at me, and made some very nasty remarks in the process.
By the time we got to the house – the poor removal guys had been sitting here for 4 hours waiting to unload! And they still had to do the return drive to Dublin. It was easily 7 o’clock before they were able to head off.
We had also had our dog, Buddy, cooped up in the car with us for all this time (with occasional walks around the streets of Birr)…. what does he do when we bring him into the house…. you’re right he immediately did what boy dogs do…. a good way to christen our new house!!!!
Thankfully, I have never come across that man again, nor would I wish to, as I’m not sure I could be polite.
A Year In Redwood 
Ha ha! Laughing at your exploits (but sympathetically – sounds like a small but perfectly formed nightmare). Ours was more recent (Dec 2011) and had its moments but nothing to compare with yours. You do get stressed though, don’t you. Our chain was held up for a while when an auld wan (90 or so) had to attend a daughter’s funeral and Liz had a right old rant when we found out, about how unreasonable that was. We laughed about it afterwards, of course.
Matt I don’t ever want to meet such ignorance again. This man (and his staff) were just so appalling. Thank God for our good solicitors in Dublin who kept me sane during the 3 hours, and worked tirelessly to get the situation resolved.
Wow, Margaret and Alfie, you fought hard for Oldfarm, hindsight is 20/20 vision, I always think. Your home is a wonderful welcoming place for family and friends to visit, long may that continue. See you both soon xx
I know Colette, when I was righting this I thought…. it is a wonder we didn’t think we’d made a terrible mistake! But neither of us did, we knew we loved the place, and could not let this ignoramus deter us.
Oh, I feel your pain, Margaret! Something very similar happened to us when we were moving into an apartment in Dublin. We’d vacated our house in Drogheda and were ready to move in on Friday. I took the afternoon off work to go to the management office and pay the deposit. Because I paid by cheque (which wouldn’t clear until Monday) she refused to give us the keys. I asked how many people walked into the office with €3000 in cash! She was the rudest person I’d ever met, but she’d met her match! I’m not sure if I had to get some cash from an ATM but I know I left with the keys. I got my own back when we moved out – I refused to give back the keys until the deposit had hit my account! (I genuinely didn’t trust them – I suspected I would have had to wait weeks for my deposit.)
I love your tactics June! These folks must go to a special school to learn to be so rude!
M