Why does it all have to happen at Christmas?

Ah, the joys of the festive season. Cold, dark nights that start at four o'clock; works parties that tread the careful line between carefree enjoyment and not insulting the people with whom you are going to be working all next year; delivery firms that refuse to do what they're paid for; credit card bills that would make the GNP of some countries look small; consultancy work drying up as clients put everything off 'until the new year'...

I love it all.

Then there's the small matter of family. This year we're not allowed to be boring and stay at home, just the two of us (and three dogs and one cat). No. it's Barbara's mum's sixty-fifth birthday so we have to go north. Once up there it would be considered rude not to go and see my brother and his three small (noisy) children. Christmas dinner without sprouts? Where's the fun in that?

But this isn't the main thrust of my rant today. No, what really gets me going is the way that important matters requiring quick responses always come up at this time of year, when nothing is going to happen in a hurry.

Last week, I got a phone call from a local farmer of my sometime acquaintance. I had approached Mog, for that is his name, at the beginning of the year with a view to buying some land from him and thereby being able to build a house. Now, nothing in Ceredigion is ever straightforward, so the next four months were spent in conversation with our local councillor and various other luminaries to ascertain whether or not the plot in question would receive planning permission. There were questions about access, questions about drainage, questions about great crested newts and questions about any number of other things. Finally, when all these questions had been answered in an almost satisfactory manner, Mog's daughter announced that she was getting married and she wanted the plot in order to build her marital home.

Naturally, after having put a great deal of effort into the whole answering of questions game, I was a bit pissed off about this. But being a good-natured soul, I didn't firebomb the farmhouse or rustle any sheep. Instead I quietly shelved my plans of ever being able to afford a property in Wales and got on with my life.

And so back to the phone call. Mog has been pottering around in his field and come to the conclusion that there is room for three plots there. He has offered me one of them. Twenty metres by forty - call it a quarter acre in the old money. For this he would like the King's Ransom of fifty thousand pounds. Eeek.

Actually, that's cheap around here (although it's still a scary amount of money in my book) and the plot is mine if I want it - no competing with anyone else for it. Now all I have to do is work out whether I can afford to buy it and build a house on it. Which means I have to find out how much it is likely to cost to build a house. Whch means phoning around people, emailing and waiting for the christmas post to deliver estimates. It means making mortgage applications at the time of year when most mortgage advisers and intermediaries are on their annual holiday to Australia or skiing in the Alps. It means I want things to happen quickly and they're not happening at all.

Aaargghhhh.

So the great house building saga, which has been on again, off again for the best part of two years looks like it is lurching back to life once more. Time to dust off those sketches I did a while back and see if they'll fit into a postage stamp plot. Oh joy.