waiting

Today I am waiting to hear if the very reasonable offer I put in on my first sole owned house will be accepted and to be frank I am kacking myself!
The buying and selling of houses in England is a very scary affair. Unlike Scotland, when you offer on a house down here, even if it is accepted you have no legal contractual rights to that property until the money's in the bank and you have the keys in your sticky little mitts. The same goes for selling. I sold my house 3 weeks ago and contracts have been drawn up and will be exchanged shortly, but even when contracts have been exchanged I could still quite legitimately change my mind and take my house off the market,thus screwing up the moving plans of the people I'd agreed wholeheartedly to sell to, so that contract's really not worth the paper it's written on.
And then there's 'The Chain'.
To those of you who don't already know, this is the sequence of house sales and purchases which lead up to your own sale and purchase, and obviously the fewer people involved in the sequence the better as there is less chance of the whole thing going pear shaped.
Now thanks to the other problem, namely Estate Agents, we were told from the start that the people we were selling to were a pretty good bet because we were told 'there's a small chain so you won't have any problems Mr and Mrs Phoenix'.
Now a small chain usually means two or three other people below you in the chain, maybe four at a push, but to my annoyance this week I found out that there are actually EIGHT other house sales and purchases below ours!! This means that despite all their reassurances, there is a much much much higher chance of someone somewhere down the line either not being able to get a mortgage and pulling out or simply thinking 'don't think we'll bother moving this year dear it's just too much hassle and I can't be bothered getting off my fat arse to do it' thus breaking the chain and house sales collapsing round our ears. Oh how i wish they were sensible and took on the Scottish system of 'don't fuck us about with this or we'll take you to court and take what you agreed you lying basturds!'
So needless to say my stress levels at the moment are through the roof (if I have one), coupled with the fact my estranged husband keeps saying, don't worry I'll get the finances sorted out this week (for the last two weeks!) so if my posts over the next few weeks are erratic it may be because I'm sitting rocking in a corner somewhere with several bald patches and handfuls of hair.