Ever felt you had no control over a project?

Its now 6 weeks since we agreed terms for buying 5 acres of land from a local farmer to start a nursery.   We passed everything into the hands of the solicitors to find the deeds and draft the contracts. Sounds simple doesnt it? After 2 weeks I chased to find out what was going on and was told that the deeds needed to be found from the vaults somewhere as they were old and not in the 'system'.  This sounded reasonable so I thought I'd be patient and give them a little longer.

I chased again this week (week 5) only to find that the seller solicitor had been away for three weeks and the person meant to take action in his absence had done absolutely nothing, zilch, nada, to progress things.

This delay combined with the 4 weeks it took to get the farmer to read the terms and agree them, now mean that the project plan has slipped 2 months.  This means that we now will not get planning permission till well after xmas and be very unlikely  to get construction completed in time to get any value out of the growing season.

I am beginning to see my dreams of being up and running in 2011 drifting away.............. depressing.