In the end I decided to buy the small stone cottage, as I was adamant to leave city life behind me. If I had any doubts, the George traffic convinced me!
One afternoon, just as the schools closed, I had the misfortune of driving up Meade road, which ran parallel with the school, and where also the school gates were situated. I don't know in other countries, but in South Africa, if you buy a silver four by four monster, you of course buy the right to do on the roads as you wish! In any case, that is how the owners of this gas gulping monsters behave, and most of them are a menace on our roads. But the women are worst! Maybe not when driving on an open road, but definitely when picking up their wee darlings, who are usually the school bullies, maybe seeing getting that trait from experiencing their parents's behaviour on the roads.
This day it was the same, as I forgot that on a friday the schools dimiss an hour earlier, and the silly, forgetful, and unsuspecting me turned happily into said Meade road, just to be confronted by two rows of this monsters, blocking the road from both sides in front of the school, the Mummies sitting ever so comfortably in their air conditioned monsters, while us poor people, who do not own any road, neither do we own an airconditioner, sat swearing and sweating, while they have a good look at their hairdo's, inspect their nails, one by one, squinting seriously to see if the salon had done a good job!

I sat there in my sweaty clothes, and thought of the traffic in Haarlem, where the only traffic was the bull and his harem, two pigs, a few donkeys, and a few chickens, and as my temper rose, my will to escape to the country rose, and when I eventually got home, I phoned the agent, and told her that I am buying the plot with the stone house.
Within two days I had sign the papers, the attorney looking at me if I was quite mad, wondering why a woman with a comfy flat wanted to live out in the wilds, in a dilapadated house.
I couldn't do anything until the house was legally mine, so I sat in the flat kicking my heels, and then, just before I had to leave for Scotland, the attorney phoned and gave me the good news that I was now the owner of 3, Constitition road, Haarlem.
Must say, the moment he told me, I got a bitty scared, as I would be living away from my own people, and the house was about four hundred meters from my closest neigbours!
But at seeing it once again, not the inside, as the agent was still struggling to get the keys from the old lady whose propety it was, as she had been taken to her children in Capetown after having been attacked by two younsters in the house next doors, which was also hers! This fact was of course only told me after I came back from Scotland by Bush, a neigbour, otherwise I might not have taken this step, of which my kids heartily disapproved!
But I left for Scotland in a very happy mood, looking forward to coming back and start renovating! If only I knew!
But at least it was a new beginning, just me and my wee house, and I didn't feel quite so left out anymore! My empty nest was going to keep me too busy for feeling too sorry for myself, and in the meantime I still had my work to go to!