I seem to be collecting pointless conversations at the moment. Here’s a couple, just so you can share in their pointlessness (well, it is the season of sharing):

The house selling saga continues (the buying part has taken on a life of its own and would take eleventh billion posts to update on, so we’ll leave that alone for a while) and today I was told I need to pay £60 in case there was an outstanding balance on a charge I pay every month for maintenance on the communal areas of the road. The exact charge wouldn’t be identified for another 18 months though, so it would need to be done through my legal people at a cost of an additional £150 so it could be ‘held’. I called up the people requesting this payment explaining that every other service I pay for would be paid in full before I left, so why couldn’t this one?

Them: because we won’t know how much it is until at least December 2017.

Me: This year it was £20. I am not paying £210 because you can’t get yourselves organised.

Them: You have to.

Me: ok. I will pay you £60 direct when I leave to cover it, if it is a legal requirement, but I’m not paying £150 do do it through a solicitor.

Them: We don’t have the ability to hold money.  Could you just hold on? I’m going to talk to my supervisor

< hold music>

Them: So it turns out, it’s not a legal requirement. You don’t have to pay it.

Me: At all?

Them: Well no.

Me: Right.

Them: we would like a forwarding address for you though, just in case there is an outstanding amount and we’ll contact you then…

So that saved me £210, which is good, but this is the second time since selling the house that I’ve been asked for additional payments that a few phone calls revealed were entirely unnecessary. (The other one, should you be in the same position, was a request for retrospective planning persimission – around £150 – on a conservatory that never needed planning permission in the first place!)

The other conversation was on finding a washer had fallen out of my loo seat into the back of the loo base, only to discover after further inspection that the washer was in fact a sleeping catterpillar.

Me: Norman! Why is there a catterpillar on the back of my loo seat?

Norman:

I don’t think he was bothered. Neither was the catterpillar though – he’s now munching his way through the front garden :o)