I know it’s not Christmas yet, nor have I seen any ghosts this morning, but I have been stomping around yelling 'Bah! Humbug' all day, thanks to bureaucracy. For example ‘I’m sorry, but the account details you have just entered don’t match our records. If you enter it wrongly a third time, luvvie, we’ll blow up your computer and steal your dog.’ Urgggh, did I want to kick computer arse. So I took a breather and went out to the shop for chocolate for a breath of fresh air and a calming moment. And bumped into one of my neighbours.

He and his wife have been trying to move house for two years. They need to downsize from a house to a bungalow for health reasons. They hardly got any interest in year 1, but they admit this was their fault. They chose the estate agent who priced their house at £50k above everyone else, just to get it on his books. Why they do this, I have no idea, since no sale = no income.

Earlier this year they tried again and managed to get a buyer within a couple of months. The drawback was that this was May and their buyer wanted to delay the move until October. But they agreed, and found a property, offered, and started paying out a fortune in various fees. In the meantime, they were bombarded with dozens of questions about their house – obscure questions, like ‘were there any covenants that permitted people to drive cattle through their garden??’

On the day they were due to sign papers for the property they were buying, the owner suddenly decided to withdraw it from sale. No reason, no demand for extra money. This was in September, and my neighbours were, unsurprisingly, upset and a little panicky. Luckily, they found a similar property in the same area, whose owners had also just been let down, so paperwork was exchanged quickly and smoothly, and the October move was on.

And yesterday they were due to move house. Everything was packed up, the vans arranged, their post redirected. But the night before, as they camped amongst the boxes, the person buying their house rang in a panic. His buyers could not get their money together, so the sale/purchase/move might take a couple more weeks. Two weeks?? Everything was packed, so it was either squatting in their own home or unpacking stuff again. They've taken it surprizingly well, unlike me.

How can this be allowed to happen? I thought once you signed, you were committed to complete. It would be bad enough roughing it for a night if you were young and fit, but elderly and ill and a couple of weeks? Bah!

So my kick arse mood is now extended to insurance agents, estate agents and the person responsible for property laws in this country – and I haven’t even started on today’s tax and accountancy work yet.