My heart is racing as we head back onto Bodmin Moor to see the cottage again. The weather is filthy – no sign of that view but the enormity of the sky gives a real feeling of being there. You just don’t experience weather properly when you live in a town. There is rain, mist and cloud but it still looks wonderful.

Alan and Dee have already arrived at the cottage before we get there and Alan has done some investigating to discover an urgent need to re-roof, a similarly urgent need to rewire but proclaims the windows in excellent order. He is full of ideas about how to reclaim the garden by building steps or a bridge from the house.

The upshot is they both love it and now so does David.

We adjourn to the pub – this time The London in St Neots. (Another Good Pub Guide entry). What a lovely welcoming place this is especially as between the four of us we have three dogs in tow. Still, Maddie is a babe magnet as all puppies are and soon a gaggle of women are cooing over her while Rosie sulks under the table. She’s still my little girl but pales alongside Maddie’s attractions!! We discuss the house and Alan says ‘if it was my money I’d buy it’. That’s good enough for us!

After saying ‘cheerio’ to Alan, Dee and Maddie we agree that we love this little house so much we want to buy it. We make our way to Liskeard to the estate agents and place our cards on the table. I am particularly keen that we don’t get gazumped (have someone outbid us after the owner has accepted an offer from us) so give the agent a bit of grief about making sure the house is no longer marketed. We also have a few questions and he agrees to find out the answers for us from the owner. He promises to ring us back this afternoon to tell us whether or not our offer has been accepted.

In English Law an ‘offer’ to buy and an ‘acceptance’ are not legally binding. They are what is known as ‘an invitation to treat’ in effect (I studied law briefly for a Business Studies course). The contract only becomes legally binding when contracts are ‘exchanged’ which happens after a legal process including the solicitors making sure we have the funds to buy, a survey and an analysis of the deeds to determine the current legal ownership and any ‘rights of way’ over the land.

We go home and wait for the phone to ring. It is dismally silent.

We go out to see Stuart and Hanne in St Austell in the evening and again I am struck by the fact that two sets of our close friends have made Cornwall their home. Stuart is one of David’s oldest friends – they were at school together. I have known no-one that long. Stuart and Hanne have a newly founded business in Mevagissy, Useful Art. They sell high quality (mainly) Scandinavian designed household goods such as clocks, coffee pots, lights and wine racks. They take us to see the shop and it’s beautiful. It’s an old butcher’s shop and is tiled with really old white and black tiles with cracked glaze and chips and somehow this is the perfect foil for their contemporary designs. If you are ever in Mevagissy, pop in and say hello – tell them we sent you!

Funnily enough, when David moved in with me, he was poking around in one of the cupboards and found a salt and pepper pot set that had actually been designed by Stuart in his first design job. What a coincidence. It was bought for me by my buddy, Claire, years ago.

After a look at their shop and a wander around the harbour in the mist, we went back to their house for supper. Yum, thanks to you both. It was only on the way home that I realised the phone still hadn’t rung…….