Friday, May 23, 2025

This ole house

The way we buy and sell houses in Scotland is very sensible.

I am seeing an estate agent today about the sale of a property I used to live in before I moved where I am now. I’ve lived in three houses in the village. If I shouted really loudly, we could all communicate- like the way folk yodel through the Alps. The yodelling could be useful as the mobile phone signal here is useless. I have to hang out the window to use the moby. And we only have internet at the front of the house.

The back of the house, with the spire of the church peeking through the trees.
This tree didn't fall on the roof during the storm.
There's a gap like a missing tooth on the other side of the garden.

Huge fireplace.

That's a big chair so really high ceilings.

I've a book called how to play chess in 20 minutes.
I've had it for 40 years and still can't play.


A lovely old Singer sewing machine.

Writing room anybody?

Reading corner

Suntrap...!!

I used to sit on this window ledge. The window opens like a door so you can almost sit on the roof and look over the village.
It's not only people who get photoshopped.....

Here he is in real life....too much whiskey, too much fine wine...


Spanky the ring leader... 



So, here’s how we sell houses.

The internet says that ‘the house buying process follows a system to designed to provide ‘efficiency and transparency’. I’d say that used to be the case, once the deal had been agreed, even verbally – that was that’  - no gazumping as they do down south, but things are changing a little.

When I bought the house I am in now, all the interested parties had to get individual surveys. Now, the vendor gets a Home Report, which is like a state of health report on the house, plus an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)  and a Property Questionnaire with additional information, such as council tax band and any alterations made to the property, any burdens on the property, and for my village… any mining underneath.

 While the vendor is doing that, the buyer gets a mortgage in principle. In the bad old days, before 2008, it was possible (but not sensible) to get a loan for 6x or 7x their annual salary. Much tighter controls exist now.

We must appoint a solicitor early in the process; they do all the work, the estate agent really just sells the property.

The estate agent will advise me, and we decide on an ‘offers over ‘ price. If we get lots of viewers and there are lots of ‘notes of interest’  (when one solicitor says to the other ‘my client is very interested so keep me posted on any developments’ ) we will then ‘go to closing’. The solicitor says all bids should be in by 12 noon Friday.  At 11.59 bids are emailed in. In the old days it was the opening of envelopes. The solicitor advises the vendor of the monies offered and the position of that purchaser. I didn’t make the highest bid when I bought this house, the vendor was a writer and knew me, and that I was ‘chain free’.  Other potential buyers wanted to turn the house into flats, ( that would need planning permission which is very expensive) and others found out about Agnes the poltergeist and withdrew. I knew about her in advance so I was okay with that.

If there is little interest, the property can be put on at a fixed price which can be useful for those who have bid many times, and ran up big bills with the solicitor, but keep getting pipped at the post. First secure offer of X gets the property.

The missives are concluded and the transaction becomes legally binding, reducing the risk of gazumping. In my previous experience, missives get exchanged quite early on so you can go round and measure up for curtains and carpets before the move in date. Now, I believe missives are exchanged minutes before the keys get handed over so the risk of a vendor accepting a higher bid, or a purchaser pulling out is greater than it used to be,

Once missives are exchanged, the title deeds are transferred and everybody moves. Or as we call it, ‘flitting’.

The house I’m selling is quite unusual as you see in the pictures, not everybody’s cup of tea. It’s called Kirklea East, as it lies in the lea of the kirk – the shadow of the church. It was the house of the main estate worker so it has lovely high ceilings and big fireplaces, all rather grand. The upper floor of the house is the size of the living room.

 And the church bells do ring at 11 am  every Sunday.

 And William Wallace was born at the bottom of the garden.

 What more could you want?

Thursday, May 22, 2025

Ramaphosa and Trump

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays


The big news in South Africa today is, of course, the meeting between Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, and Donald Trump. International diplomacy on live TV is an initiative of the new Trump administration, and afterwards words like “ambushed” were bandied around and comparisons were made to the disastrous meeting between President Zelenskyy and the US president. But Ramaphosa seems to have held his ground as well as his temper.

A number of issues have led to the low in relations between the two countries. South Africa's close ties with Russia and China through the BRICS initiative is one, although Trump seems to have better relations with Vladimir Putin than Ramaphosa does anyway.

The outspoken, and, frankly, inappropriate comments of the South African ambassador to a South African group about the Trump administration led to friction and his expulsion from the US. Ambassadors have a job. Comments like that should be reserved for their memoirs written after they’ve retired.

South Africa’s challenge to Israel at the international court was another unpopular move with the US and no doubt sparked the counter accusation of South Africa’s alleged genocide against white Afrikaner farmers that seems to have caught Trump’s fancy. Ramaphosa took with him a white support group consisting of two of Trump’s golf heroes – Retief Goosen and Ernie Els, billionaire investor Johann Rupert, and the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, John Steenhuisen. Steenhausen is now Minister of Agriculture in the Government of National Unity. Exactly the right person, one would think, to address Trump’s concerns.

In the end, what did Trump’s ambush come down to? A collection of song clips of Julius Malema singing racist songs. Ramaphosa pointed out that Malema is a firebrand opposition politician, not a “government official” as Trump described him.

Graveyard along the highway. Not.

Then there was the field of crosses – a grave yard of murdered white farmers extending for miles, we were told. Actually, it was a protest at the murders of Glen and Vida Rafferty on their farm. There were no actual graves. There was no intension of a correlation between the number of crosses and dead farmers of any racial group.

Finally, there was a gory murder scene. This was from the DRC, nowhere near South Africa at all.

This was the evidence of genocide in South Africa. Certainly the number of murders and other crimes is appalling. Steenhuisen emphasized that South Africa has a serious crime problem. And that most of the victims are black. But that there is no evidence of a campaign to murder white farmers or drive them from their land.

Ramaphosa asked only, in Nelson Mandela’s words, that when there is a problem we sit down together and work it through from the beginning. South Africa can only hope that once the curtain came down on the White House's theatre for television, that is what happened.

Monday, May 19, 2025

Growing Pangs, Changing Pains

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

Crimefest was wonderful--as always. But now that's it's over (for now even if--hopefully--not forever) there's a bit of a let down, of course.

The trouble with the wondeful high of meeting and hanging out with auld acquaintances (thanks to the wonderful Cathy Ace for drumming that into us at the gala dinner!) new friends and encountering literary heroes is that you've got to return to real life after!

I'm in London for a week, catching up with business and meeting people and though I'm still 'on holiday' it's hard not to think about the 50k words of outline/rough draft back home waiting to be worked on and, more importantly, where the writing is going next--given how things are today, is writing traditional mysteries 'enough'?

I don't know. But (for me, anyway) if Heaven is really a place on earth, it might just be somewhere in Bristol!

Sunday, May 18, 2025

The Literary Value of Crime Fiction


Annamaria on Monday

The title above comes from a collection of essays that I found among my souvenirs. My dear, departed and sorely missed friend, Barbara Fass Leavy, PhD was one of the first and still very rare literature scholars who saw crime fiction as literature.  I introduced Barbara to MIE a coupe of years ago.  You can find that post here

Today, I am again taking up the question of the literary merits of crime fiction, but from a slightly different angle, based on an article I found in Dr. Leary's scholarly collection.  This one is from 1944 by a critic described by Wikipedia as:


Edmund Wilson Jr. was an American writer, literary critic, and journalist. He is widely regarded as one of the most important literary critics of the 20th century. Wilson began his career as a journalist, writing for publications such as Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

Unlike Dr. Leavy's curious and open-minded approach, Wilson - in his essay, titled "Why Do People Read Detective Stories?" - begins by expressing enormous doubt about  the worth of crime fiction.  His critique begins:

"For years, I have been hearing about detective stories. Almost everybody I know seems to read them, and they have long conversations about them in which I am unable to take part. I am always being reminded that the most serious public figures of our time, from Woodrow Wilson to W. B. Yates, have been addicts of the form."


 
Wilson admits that he had been "enchanted" with Sherlock Holmes, but brags that he gave up his pre-snob enthusiasm when he was 12 years old.

He begins the critique in question by rejecting the Nero Wolf stories as "sketchy and skimpy"  and "dim and distant copies of a fairytale poetry of handsome cabs, gloomy London,  and lonely country estates that Rex Stout could hardly duplicate with his backgrounds of a modern New York..."



He goes on to pillory just about all the popular mystery writers of his time: Agatha, Christie, Dashiell Hammett, James Cane, etc., etc.  Not even T. S. Elliot and Graham Green escape his snobby wrath. In his final paragraph, he compares the work of the popular crime writers of the 30's and 40's to the works of Charles Dickens. A yardstick I think is stretching the point.  At least he didn't compare The Maltese Falcon to Macbeth or Dante's Inferno.


What Dr. Barbara Leavy did was much more sensible and scholarly. Since she understood that writers are influenced by the times they live in, Dr. Leavy compared the crime writers of the 1970s (when she began her work about crime fiction) with other writers of "literary" fiction of the period. Barbara's conclusion was that the best crime writers were, and she believed this until the day she died, writing some of the best current literature being published.

RIP Dr. Leavy

Saturday, May 17, 2025

The End Of an Era.


Jeff––Saturday

Following up on Caro's post yesterday on the passing of CrimeFest, here are photos of how some current and alumni members (and friends) of MIE paid homage to an annual get-together that will be dearly missed.  The photos are in no particular order--the same as was our behavior.:)

 Thank you for many wonderful years, dear Adrian and Donna.

 











 

 





 








The end

––Jeff

Friday, May 16, 2025

The Last Crimefest

 This weekend we say good bye to the Bristol Crimefest.

Here's a flaneur around Thursday.....

Some reprobates on a panel- best avoided.


A little bit of soft voiced panellists and microphone issues - so all is normal at the festival

A panellist refusing the answer the questions about how many red jumpers he owns.

Waterstones had books - and other delights.

Bristol on Wednesday late afternoon.
We'd been up since 5 am.
Nice to see the city quiet.

Alan looked up the price of this boat. It was £5K less than my house.
And I have a ghost and big driveway.

I think these scene looks very European.

Water everywhere and none of it from the sky
and landing on our heads.


A lovely view


A old statue that replaced a newer statue that might be in the bottom of the river, which if you think about it is exactly where Neptune should be.

The canal in the sun.

We nibbled at a avocado flatbread.
Jonathon Livingston here got nothing.