We’re Moving To The Country

For some of you this is old news. Others may be wondering why Alien Wally allowed his music collection to be boxed up over the weekend. ‘Tis true… after many months of searching, Alien Wally and Mags found themselves a hoose, as well as a solicitor patient enough to answer their many queries regarding the Scottish property system, and a bank willing to throw money at them in the midst of a credit crisis.

Along with said hoose comes a garden for the MacNoodle and adjoining farm fields (not for the MacNoodle per se, but which she will appropriate as hers in due course as is Madam’s wont). Yes, folks, Alien Wally and Mags are moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches drink a lot of whisky. Did they mention yet that Glenkinchie Distillery is a neighbour?

Another neighbour is the Local Laird, to whom Alien Wally and Mags thought they had pledged their serfdom under the Scottish feudal system when they read the following single sentence gem of legalese in the title deeds:

“CONSIDERING that we are about to feu off the said subjects in separate lots for erection of dwellinghouses and relative offices or other buildings and that we are about to execute in favour of feuars feu Charters or Feu Dispositions and that it is proper and expedient to set forth and declare the various reservations, real burdens, conditions, prohibitions, declarations, obligations and stipulations incumbent respectively upon the proprietors and prospective purchasers, and that in order to avoid repetition ad longum of all such reservations, real burdens, conditions and others in each of the feu rights, conveyances or other writs to be granted by us or our successors we have resolved in terms of the powers conferred by Section Thirty Two of the Conveyancing (Scotland) Act Eighteen hundred and seventy four to execute these presents so that the said reservations, real burdens, conditions and others may (in so far as applicable) be imported by reference to these presents into all feu rights, conveyances or other writs to be hereafter granted by us as aforesaid or our foresaids as well as into all conveyances or investitures to be hereafter granted of or relating to the same by a reference or otherwise to these presents Do therefore and in virtue of the said Act Hereby PROVIDE, SET FORTH, and DECLARE but that without prejudice to the addition in specific cases of further reservations, real burdens, conditions and others or to the real burdens and conditions, if any, already affecting the said subjects…”

Stop! Stop that! Did you get that? Alien Wally and Mags didn’t. Luckily, before they had purchased their pitchforks, sackcloths and ashes, their solicitor informed them that the feudal system had been abolished a few years ago and their dwellinghouse was indeed theirs to, um, dwell in, without any conditions. Well, apart from a lifetime of slavery to the MacNoodle, that is.