I know MNers always like to know "what happened next" after a thread, so thought I would give a little update for anyone who remembers my "gazumped" thread some time ago.
Well it's good news... a few (depressing) weeks after that happened, we got a call to say that the people who gazumped us could no longer go ahead as the sale of their house had fallen through, and would we still like the house for the original price? So as we hadn't seen anything else we liked as much, we said yes, although still a little nervous about whether it would go wrong again.
Since then it has taken a while waiting for exchange of contracts and then completion, and not a little worry about whether we would hit problems again - but now we have finally completed and we have our new house, yippee! So I guess that means there IS hope after being gazumped and thanks to everyone who sent good wishes!