Well I have been missing a couple of days and have not been able to do much posting or writing. I will try to do some catching up today. I had car problems,  hospital visits that involved trips up and down to Dublin and then I have been unwell for a few days, probably after picking up something in the hospital no doubt.  To top it all, I have had little or no internet access for the last two days. Why, you might ask? Who knows? For reasons unbeknownst to myself, I could not get the connection to last any longer than about five seconds. I spent the guts of two days constantly rebooting the modem.  This is Ireland, and compared to a lot of other countries in the world, our so-called ‘broadband’ is extremely ‘narrow and tight’ at the best of times, that is unless you live in the big cities. Of course you still pay the same charges regardless of how poorly your rural service performs in comparison to theirs. 

So it has been a frustrating week and my fingers itched to get to my keyboard. It has also been  a week of disappointing news, but let me stress, not entirely unexpected.

If you have been following my Blogs, you will know that my partner Billy had recently received a top-up mortgage approval from his building society so that he could buy a little house in a most beautiful place in South-West Ireland, Dingle , County Kerry.  We had been monitoring the events surrounding this venture via his Daily Two Card Reading. Being his partner and having an obvious interest in him securing his little abode, we monitored my Daily Cards too.  

The Survey of the house was due to be carried out by a local engineer. This man requested certain documents and certification from the vendor. These documents were sent through to my email address, and being the nosy person I am, I had a read through them. Something was not right and I relayed my feelings to my partner who thought I was just being my overly analytical self. We forwarded them on to both Billy’s solicitor who is handling the conveyancing and to the survey engineer. 

The next morning I drew my Cards – The Page of Swords Reversed and the Queen of Swords. Oh! 

Straight Away, I knew I was going to hear something that I would not going to be happy about when I saw the Reversed Page of Swords. It would be to do with legalities, contracts or documents.  The Queen of Swords sitting beside him I knew was me, and the more I looked at her, the sterner her face became. I knew she could go into a terrible rant if she wanted to. I showed them to my partner and started putting the pressure on him to ring the surveyor as soon as he could.  He told me that he would wait another day and then contact him. He must have been mad to think that I would sit around on my throne for another day without knowing what was going on.  I persisted with him all day, constantly surmising about the survey and wondering if the report was done yet. What harm would a simple phone call make just to find out? However, my partner who has a lot more patience than I, felt we should wait another day. I wanted the facts now. ‘Hand them over right away’!!!!

We didn’t have to ring anyone as it turns out because the engineer got to us before we could get to him. He had only done a certain amount of the report but the reason he was ringing us was that there was something amiss with the documents we had forwarded him. These were the documents the vendor had sent to us certifying that all building and extensions had been carried out in accordance with planning regulations.  There was a problem, they were the wrong documents. Wrong by about five years and belonged to a much earlier work carried out on the property.  My partner said he would get on to the vendor immediately and get the matter sorted.  

He rang, but the vendor was away. We checked the name of the original engineer and rang him but he was on holidays. We were going to ring Billy’s solicitor to inform him but Billy quickly remembered that he too would be away for the week.  It looked like we had to wait for two weeks for this guy to come back from his holidays before the correct documents could be forwarded. I was uneasy.

Well, you can guess how mad I was and how much I went on and on about it.  Neither of us could believe that a professional person would sign their name to such an important document without checking the important details such as dates and relevancy.  I got a bad feeling and so did Billy.  Now we had to sit on it.  

Two days later, just before we were due to head off to our singing lessons, we pulled our Daily Cards.  Billy got Justice and The Ace of Swords

He showed them to me and I explained their significance under the circumstances.  We wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  We needed facts now and to cut to the heart of the matter.  It didn’t matter about the house. If it didn’t work out there would be other houses. We didn’t want to be wasting our time and effort on something that would not stand up to close inspection. We discussed it and decided that we couldn’t wait two weeks, and maybe  more, to know our fate. We had to find a way to get the information our engineer was looking for.  Our engineer is a straight talking man. Upfront, forthright and honest. He calls a spade a spade and is meticulously thorough in his work.  Justice told me that he would miss nothing, and if there was anything not quite right, this was the guy who would point it out.  We decided we would start making some phone calls ourselves later that day after our singing lessons.  

So with Billy’s Cards sorted, I pulled my two just as we were going out the door, late as usual. They were The High Priestess and The Three of Swords.

Well, she certainly does show up a lot for me in recent times.  Again I could hear her coolly saying ‘what are you asking me for when you already know yourself. Look to the Three of Swords beside me, what do you think? Good news, celebrations, happiness and joy? ‘. I know, I know thought I, I have had a bad feeling about this ever since I read that document, and why we had to wait so long for something that should have been readily at hand? To my forensic mind, it didn’t add up. There was a blatant inefficiency about the whole thing that I didn’t like at all. The High Priestess was trying to break the news mildly by suggesting that you don’t get ‘too upset’ when you get the bad news. She reminded me that I already had my reservations and she was merely turning up to confirm them.  Her presence told me that there was certainly information that was being concealed and possible secrecy involved. She was also telling me to trust my gut instincts more because they would rarely let me down. 

And so we headed off to Dublin and our singing lesson. Later as we sat outside in the sunshine eating our shop bought sandwiches, I suggested to Billy that he might ring the surveyor to check if he had done any more with regards reporting on the house. Maybe he had managed to get the missing documents himself. Billy picked up his phone, it was still on silent after the singing lesson. He had forgotten to put it back to normal setting.  He had a missed call from the survey engineer. We rang back and thankfully got him.  Without going into detail, the news was not good. He had a long list of problems.  I am not sure if everyone is familiar with this saying but the house was ‘all fur coat and no knickers’ . What that means is that on the outside and to the inexpert eye, everything looks wonderful, amazing and fantastic, but start digging deeper, lifting things, looking under and behind things then you will begin to see the flaws. It is amazing what a good make-up artist can do to when they want to hide imperfections. He told us that he knew we wanted to hear it straight up and with no hesitation.  He certainly was ripping our rose-tinted glasses off and it was just what we needed.  He reassured us that we would find a lovely home and that it wouldn’t take us long. 

After the phone call, we headed home, feeling lighter and less stressed.  Internally, I was angry and gave out the whole way home about this and that, and about how careful we must be the next time round.  It had cost Billy money to be given this bad news, he will have to pay again for the next house he has surveyed. I was annoyed because in my belief, the vendor knew about all the issues, yet said nothing. The vendor had let Billy pay considerably for a survey he must have known would fail.  We talked it to death over dinner. The thing is we both agreed that we were not upset at all by the report, annoyed by the waste of time yes, but not upset. We had sensed something was wrong, had hoped our gut instinct was wrong, but when it wasn’t, we were neither shocked nor surprised.  Neither of us wanted to live in a house that would sprout nasty surprises on us in the coming months and years.

And so the search  continues. However, I must remember to tell you all about how we came upon that house in the first place. How my Dowsing Bobber lead us to it, and how now in hindsight, I had forgotten to ask all the relevant questions about it instead of just the limited few I did. The success of any dowsing activity depends on the effort put in.  You only get back the answers to the questions you ask.  It is often the questions you don’t ask that are the most important. It is quite an amazing story and totally true. 

I will be posting a new Daily Card Reading tomorrow, and later in the week will be going back on some of the previous ones to add another couple of Cards so that we might expand on their stories.