Source - a Co op Legal Services email
Who could resist that call to action?
Making a will is on my mind from time to time and only last night I was thinking that I must get round to it. I was also idly thinking that I was slipping into that state where you know there are things that should be done and you go and make a cup of tea and turn on the telly to avoid thinking about it.
I did try not to badger my mum too much when she was elderly, although I couldn't help asking from time to time as I surveyed the geological strata of possessions in her house, "Mum, what are you going to do when you're old?" (She was old, I meant older).
At different times, we looked at what could and might be done to her house, and sometimes I called on help from other family members to stop rain coming in the kitchen or to re-connect the shower. She happily came with me to look at houses and flats (ostensibly, and sometimes really, for me) but she was as skittish as a teenager in love.
We did see one near the Park, I would guess a 1950s house, with a lovely open hall (rather than a dark narrow passage) and a beautiful staircase with shallow steps and stained glass in the window on the landing. There was a cosy lounge at the front, the kitchen and dining room had been knocked into one at the back with large patio doors to the garden and a utility room off.
I don't remember much about the bedrooms: probably a big one, a middle-sized one and a small one, nothing horrible or they would have stuck in my memory. The same for the bathroom. The large front bedroom had a covered balcony along its length, and I liked that.
I could tell that she wasn't impressed with the garden, laid to lawn with borders around, enough room for some garden chairs and table and a line for drying laundry, with a garage at the back.
Nothing like her garden, actually the gardens of two houses merged into one, a huge square with banks of flowers, a fish pond, containers for runner beans, a tree or two, plenty of room for a barbecue and access at the back where a family member often unloaded spoil from various building jobs, much to her annoyance. Actually, I seem to remember that we found a car buried in it when she first moved there. It never struck me as odd at the time, but now I wonder why anyone would be burying a car in a suburban garden?
She did surprise me by talking about the house near the Park, how she would be able to go across with the dogs, there was somewhere convenient to park her car, unlike her present house, and everything worked. But it was a long walk to the town and even longer to the beach and, truth be told, it just wasn't eccentric enough.
I laugh now, because my half-finished house with the main construction completed but no carpet on the concrete floors and decoration that's best described as gently-decaying-french-chateau, bears a remarkable resemblance to her house (only without the multitude of stuff), including rain still coming in the roof, in spite of all my repairs.
But for all that, she had made a will, so who I am to talk.
Then this morning, up pops an email for Co Op Legal Services, with a £50 discount if you book before 28 February, with its catchy title including the magic words "quickly and easily".
I did try making a will once before, tempted by an advert offering a fixed price in one of those neighbourhood ad magazines that come through your door from time to time. Well, I got flummoxed straightaway with questions like, "what are your wishes for your funeral arrangements?" which, of course, I had never considered. Somehow, it got lost in the ether.
But I feel reassured with Co Op Legal Services, owned by its members.
I've filled in the online form and booked my appointment. They've promised to send me a plethora of information (I can feel myself wavering at the thought of wading through it). An hour and a half online meeting, they say, I must remember to get an early night.
And I've made a careful note of the £50 discount code in my diary.