In which we have a house, then we have no house, then we have a flat!

After passing the one-week mark in our flat without actually burning it down, killing each other, or being late for work, I think it's safe to say that we'll like it here. I wasn't kidding when I said that this is the nicest place I have ever lived - the other people in our building are comprised of 1 Alfa Romeo driver, 2 BMW drivers, 1 Mercedes-Benz driver, 2 Mini drivers, a Fiat and two Fords. Oh, and six VWs of varying models. We're definitely the poor cousins here! We've got two bedrooms as well as a combined kitchen/living room thingy which is just begging for a kitchen table right now, along with about a million other small and annoying things that you don't think about until you don't have them, like a spatula. And bedside tables (my glasses and alarm clock live on the cat carrier at night, which might explain why our cat, Poo, is never seen on my side of the bed).
The view out of the living room and kitchen windows is some commercial-industrial stuff in the middle distance, then the A630 Parkway about a kilometer away (distant swoosh), and then lots of green hills, and stars. I was satisfied once I realized that stars can be seen from our window. Also to be seen from the kitchen side is the gutting of several houses which sit on land about 2 yards lower than ours, which were flooded with contaminated water in the June floods. There's nothing like seeing a family of 4 living in a caravan on what used to be their front garden, while a mini backhoe digs out their former dining room to make you consider your circumstances very closely.
The whole moving into this place has turned out to be very lucky on a few levels - we had a place to live lined up, deposits paid, before I got here, and the woman kept delaying sending us the lettings contract. First it was in the mail tomorrow, then Tuesday, then Friday, then DEFINITELY on Monday...and when we finally got the contract, 3 days before we were due to move in, it was complete and utter bullshit. It was the type of contract housing advisors at Universities should show students and say, "Never sign something that looks like this. The landlord will spend your money on drugs, change the terms of the lease when you're not looking, and then pretend not to recognize you when the kitchen floor rots out." Which isn't exactly what happened, but close enough. So in truly litigious North American fashion, we are suing the fomer landlord-to-be for the return of the entire sum which we paid her...plus interest. It seems only fair, given that she wanted us to be content with an email address as her legal point of contact.
Enter John's coworker, whose sister had been trying to let the flat where we live now through an agency for nearly 3 months. When John first heard about it, he dismissed it out hand because the posh agency charges you £160 for the privelege of considering your application for tenancy, and he'd heard horror stories about people trying to get their deposits back. Acts of nature (terrible flooding which devastated Catcliffe, because of the proximity both to the River Rother and a major marshland, which equals very flat surrounding land) conspired to keep the apartment empty, and when he mentioned his housing woes at work the day after we got the lunatic contract...well, six hours later he'd seen the place and informed me in no uncertain terms that I'd be crazy not to love it, and I'd better love it, because the lease on the shared room where we were living expired a day before we could move in here! Our village has a pharmacy, a pub (with a second one under renovation after the floods), and a chinese takeaway, as well as a WoolWorths and a major supermarket chain. Oh, and a nature preserve a five minute walk away. And a bus to each of our workplaces every half hour. For those of you at home in the colonies who might be worried that I've changed a lot since moving here...some things are always the same. I still ride the short bus.