Our Own 90's Sports Movie
I love the Mighty Ducks. Growing up I watched The Mighty Ducks 2 probably over 50 times, all of those times with my friend Beau. He was the one who introduced me to it and he had the VHS copy. I am not sure what percentage of our friendship was based on the fact he had the only copy of the movie that I was addicted to but I am sure that doesn't matter. Right? I am not a shallow person... right?
What I loved about the Mighty Ducks movie is spoiler alert... they win at the end. Now this may sound obvious as it was a kids sports movie, but shortly after The Mighty Ducks something changed. There was a phase of kids sports movies where they did something strange. They lost at the end. But they had some sort of revelation that winning isn't everything blah blah blah. These movies frustrated me because seeing they were fictional (I had grace for movies like Cool Runnings which was based on a true story), I believed the story would have been even better with them winning. Don't give me some story about becoming better people, just show me them winning the 5th divisional invitational shuttlecock throwing championship of Lower East Kentucky!
This whole thing changed my movie-watching experience because I now had no idea if a movie would finish with a win or with them losing with a life lesson.
And that is the exact same position I am putting you in because the end of our story could go either way. Let's jump in.
If you've read my previous blogs you would know that we are trying to buy a flat in London and it's so very very hard and it takes forever. We had already struggled through so many battles to get to the point where we had the money, we had the plan, and the flat we were buying was now empty. We had our montage moment of things slowly getting better day by day, and winning game after game getting us to the championship match. We were convinced that it was all going to go through and we would move in that Saturday. In fact we had some friends who were also trying to buy a place and found out they were in the same position. They were trying to buy a place and believing that everything would fall together for them to move in on Saturday. Ours had no reason it wouldn't work someone just had to give us paperwork, theirs was a lot more complicated and a lot more on the line as if they didn't move in on Saturday they were homeless. They were the underdogs to win their match, we were the favourites to win ours.
We saw each other on Sunday. Against all odds they had won their match and got their breakthrough. We had got our breakthrough too, but it was one of those personal growth breakthroughs as we were learning to wait. They got to have their Mighty Ducks 2 moment, whilst we were stuck in a crashed bobsled.
But our movie had a sequel and as we patiently waited for another two weeks, the start of this week felt different. We were having a lot of trouble on the sellers side because of the part exchange (see last blog) and we were now buying off a developer who most likely didn't care much about the sale. They were in no rush to complete as evidenced by the fact that their response rate was one email every 10 days. The flat was sitting there vacant for weeks and we were saying everyday 'TAKE MY MONEY'. Also their solicitors seemed to have issued this case to their most junior lawyer's brother's sister's cousin's trainee nail salon specialist because when it came to our case they seemed to be confused about..... everything. So this week we had a meeting with our solicitors and said 'let's stop asking and start telling'.
This turned out to be my Coach Bombay moment as things started falling in place together. I gave them a crazy goal: let's complete this Friday.
We had zero indication that this would be possible but we started to put everything into place to make a way for it. On Thursday I jumped on a train to go see the property back in London as it had been vacant for 3 weeks now so I needed to check it was ok. The agent who showed me told me he hates these viewings because UK property law is so insane, I could have looked at it and said 'nah, I don't want to buy it' and wasted everyone's time for the last 3 months. He told me it's not rare.
I got back late Thursday as it's a 4 hour return trip to where we are staying and chatted to my teammate - the beauty of this movie and my life. It didn't make any sense but the next day were were going to try and buy this flat.
Friday morning we worked on approving and signed all paperwork, but there was a catch: they needed the originals before they could complete. They said they could probably exchange today and get a date for next week to complete without the originals, but this didn't sit right. It would make sense as we could drop off the paperwork on Sunday when we usually travel up, and we actually wouldn't need to move in until next week anyway... but everything felt like we needed to go for it. I called our solicitor and said that that option would be the silver medal, but let's go for gold. He told me he was going away on leave next week and he would like nothing more than to get the gold today too. So we were aligned and we went for it.
We still needed two items, the math of how much we owe (the exact number is not obvious as we need to refund the owner for anything they have prepaid for such as the service charge) and approval of an undertaking because there will be a delay in the transfer title. We were told there was no guarantee this would go through today.
We waited until 2pm for an indication that this would go through and I would start the drive back to London to deliver the original copies of the signed documents. We didn't have this yet, but out of faith I started the drive. I heard nothing till I was about 20 mins away and then I got the call that the undertaking was approved. I arrived at 4:31pm with the documents and they sent the funds to the other side to finalise the purchase by 4:45pm. At 4:55pm we called the other side but they had not received the funds. The system they used can be quick but also can take a number of hours. They told us they were going home at 5pm but would check and call before they left. With my solicitor standing by the phone I left again on another faith drive to the real estate agent to pick up the keys, which was 45 mins away and closed by 6pm.
5pm came, no call.
5:05pm no call
5:08pm a call comes through. Someone wanted to check if I was happy with my phone service and to tell me I could get an iPhone 14 pro max for £59 a month.
This didn't happen but it would have been funny.
5:11pm I got a call. The money had arrived, the sale complete, the flat was ours and we had just won the Junior Goodwill Games.
Cue 'We are the Champions' by Queen.