Everyone Knows My Name - Friday

‘You buying again?’ Asks the pretty barmaid who will doubtless be moving on to something more challenging before long.

We’re in the pub, for the Friday drinks session. My team, as always, a few paces behind me at the bar. Within hailing distance to confirm drink requests but out of contactless payment reach.

‘It’s sort of an end of the week tradition.’ I say, as I confirm the beverage requests and try not to stare as the barmaid heaves, alluringly, on the real ale pump, in a low-cut top.

‘Cheers boss.’ Calls out trainee F, as he necks some hideously sweet flavoured cider concoction with ice in the pint glass.

‘Yes, thanks.’ Confirms negotiator S, as she accepts her gin and tonic and appears to scowl, at the barmaid. Surely she’s not jealous, of the slight attention I’ve received? Almost, certainly not.

Buying the team a drink in the pub, is a tradition I inherited when I first started in the business, all those years ago. I keep it up, almost out of nostalgia, as nobody stays for more than a couple any longer with the drink drive laws as they are. The days when the old surveyor and our commercial agency man used to down three pints of a lunchtime, then go on to down-value a competitor’s house sale and let a tertiary-positioned shop unit to Blockbuster, have long gone.

‘Do they ever buy you one back?’ Asks the barmaid, as the others circle round a table, like Red Indians at a wagon train.

‘Not really.’ I say, with a hint of melancholy.

‘You probably put it all down on expenses and claim it back.’ Posits the girl.

‘You’ve not met my bean-counter boss.’ I say sourly.

‘Which one is he?’ She asks, nodding toward my tribe.

‘I wouldn’t be here if he was.’ I say, abruptly.

‘Got the hots for the barmaid boss?’ Asks F, when I join my staff.

‘Eugh.’ Cries S. ‘He’s old enough to be her father.’

I frown at S.

‘Anyway he’s not like that.’ She adds hurriedly.

‘They all are.’ Says lettings lush B, with feeling.

Time to change the subject.

‘Good week guys.’ I pronounce, drawing deeply on my pint and wishing I could stay all evening.

‘Make sure you say that loudly, when  the dirtbags from up the road come in.’ Says assistant manager T.

‘Yes, because they’ll be lying about the week they’ve had, at maximum volume.’ Says S.

And as if on cue, in walk the competitors, all loud suits and lairy attitude. I can feel my skin crawl.

It always amazes me when there is a furore about agents, illegally, colluding over fees in a town and forming a cartel. Every patch I’ve always worked the estate agents are at each others throats, each trying to steal the others’ business and undercut their fees. There’s not a lot of love lost.

‘Alright guys?’ Calls out the manager of our rivals. He’s a good twenty years younger than me with not a hint of grey hair. I dislike him intensely.

‘Yes.’ I answer loudly. ‘Had a cracking week, market is going crazy.’

He looks momentarily annoyed, then recovers his equilibrium.

‘Yes, we’ve smashed it again.’ He crows. ‘Surprised we’ve left any business for you lot.’

He’s a liar, whereas I have obviously just been a little creative with my market report.

‘Arsehole.’ Hisses T.

‘If they are doing that well, why do they have to keep touting our instructions and upsetting our vendors?’ Snarls S.

‘They are all arseholes.’ Says B, gloomily.

‘That lot, or men in general?’ Ask S, with a chuckle.

‘You work it out.’ Growls B, downing her wine in one hit.

I watch as the rival group all get drinks and encamp to the opposite side of the pub. At least with the on-line agents you don’t actually have to see them and chances are they won’t answer the phone….

‘Another drink anyone?’ I eventually ask, after people have been nursing almost empty glasses for an uncomfortable length of time. Suddenly people are downing fluids faster than camels at an oasis.

‘In the chair again?’ Asks the barmaid.

Yes. An orthopaedic one. 

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Expletives Deleted - Wednesday

The rain is travelling horizontally into my face as I battle towards the car park. Sometimes I wish I could jettison my man of the people credentials and not be compelled to, occasionally, do the crappy unwanted jobs. A viewing with a time-waster in a monsoon didn’t get many volunteers, so magnanimously I volunteered, just to prove I’m not above these things. I’m an idiot.

‘Nice day for it.’ I say to a young girl forlornly shoving a pushchair through the puddles. She looks like she should be at school, but clearly bunked-off the lesson on contraception. And they wonder why there’s not enough affordable housing - try finishing the Girl Guides’ badges before giving birth, maybe?

The drenched teenage mum just scowls at me suspiciously. It clearly wasn’t the charm school she periodically attended.

‘I meant the rain.’ I say as she passes me, wheels on the buggy veering away from my path. I get a soggy scowl in return. Perhaps she knows I’m an estate agent? Either that or has me pinned as a weirdo, loser type - about the same now I come to think of it…

As I wait, kerbside, to cross the road to the bleak-looking park I hear an engine revving. Instinctively I step back just as a sign-written Mini, sweeps towards some standing water. The cascade of oily airborne puddle, rises like a surfer’s wave and dumps several gallons at my feet.

‘Bastard!’ I yell as the car sweeps past, a smarmy-looking face at the condensation streaked window, grinning malevolently. I’ll pull a couple of his For Sale boards down later. Probably… 

Halfway across the park I loose my footing and slide like a geriatric Bambi towards a park bench. My back wrenches audibly and a sharp stinging pain radiates down one leg. I should have pulled rank and sent trainee F.

‘F***ing shoes.’ I shout angrily, just as an old lady, bent double, shuffles in to my peripheral vision.

‘What was that love?’ She asks, rain dripping from her whiskery chin.

‘Just cursing the weather.’ I say with a sheepish grin. Fortunately she appears half deaf, so the actual curse seems to have passed her by, which is what I do before she decides to stop and talk. Thats the supermarket checkout operator’s job.

Another malicious gust of wind whips up spent leaves and possibly the odd syringe, as I pass the bleak toilets block with those unhelpful ultraviolet lights that might make it difficult to find an unblown vein to shoot-up, but also guarantee you’ll miss the urinal and piss on your already soggy shoes.

I can feel the milk of human kindness curdling by the time I reach the car park and start searching vainly for where I left the motor. Water is trickling down my neck, the clipboard in one hand is as slippery as an A4 eel, and the leather soles on my favourite brogues are drawing up moisture as eagerly as a desiccated dromedary at an oasis. Then my mobile rings.

‘What the f**k now?’ I bellow into the storm clouds, another swear box penalty despatched cheaply into the ether. The office number is flashing insistently at me. If those tosspots have cancelled the viewing I might actually combust - it it wasn’t for the unfavourable ignition conditions…

I stab a damp digit at the screen and get negotiator S’s dulcet tones. My blood pressure falls slightly.

‘Are you at your car yet?’ She asks softly. I stare around the rainswept tarmac, spaces too tight together for half of the lumbering Chelsea tractors sat there, while the yummy-mummies shop. The only chance of the four-wheel drive ever being engaged on 95% of the vehicles, will be if this weather lasts for another month

‘I’m just about to find it.’ I say, irritation rising. My hand instinctively goes for my trouser pocket as I imagine another forlorn walk round the pride of Germany’s motor industry, blipping the remote angrily while trying to spot some hazard lights winking in recognition. Last time it was the wrong car park.

‘You’ll need your keys - that are in my hand.’ Says S apologetically.

F**k. F**k. F**k.

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The Song Remains The Same - Sunday

We go, with friends, to a late summer festival in a field. Now there was a time, when the prospect of loud music, loose women and not washing for several days held an allure. Reading 1977 with a porous tent springs to mind. A weekend of mud, mayhem and a ruptured ear drum seemed an adventure at the time. Now my hearing is buzzing naturally, and if I want to have a shower I favour the en-suite, rather that a leaky fly-sheet giving a constant dripping even my bean counter boss can’t match.

‘It’ll be fun, stop moaning.’ Says my wife as we bump the car through a rutted field and the clouds darken, even as I swipe madly at her wretched smart phone I still can’t master, endeavouring to get the latest BBC weather forecast.

‘I see enough people living in squalor at work.’ I tell her cussedly. ‘If I want drug addicts lying in their own filth I’ll just go on the next Letting Department’s eviction.’

‘Is he always this negative?’ Asks my wife’s friend from Fat Club - or keep fit as they like to call it.

‘He didn’t used to be.’ Replies my wife, slightly morosely.

Possibly not, but when I was wearing straight jeans with a 32 inch waist and Graham Parker and The Rumour, Thin Lizzy plus Aerosmith, nearly deafened me, I hadn’t been flogging homes for coming up for three decades. Somewhere along the line the fun went out of it. 

‘Thank God we’re not staying overnight.’ I tell our motley crew - pretty sure they hadn't been formed in ’77’ and it’s a different spelling entirely - as we pass the tented village. A rainbow coloured forest of cheap nylon, and fluorescent guide ropes, flutter in the gathering breeze as I spot the schoolboy error many have made by pitching at the bottom of a dip. Waterside views might fetch a premium in the housing market but when it’s flushing through your sleeping bag with turds bobbing past your head, I’m suspecting the surveyor’s damp meter might not be the only thing to blow a fuse.

We erect our collapsable chairs towards the back. I’m not repeating the mistake I made at the Oasis concert that time. Not much worse than  aching for a piss, unable to move backwards or forwards, while a bunch of neo-Nazis try to start fights while opposing groups lob plastic bottle full of urine at each others' heads. Liam wasn’t happy - but then he never is.

‘See, this is fine,’ says my wife soothingly, as she opens out the picnic blanket and unfurls a coolbox full of Marks and Spencer ready foods which probably cost more than my entire 1977 weekend did. ’It won’t be too loud  and we can watch the bands on the big screen.’ She smiles and starts chatting aimlessly to her friend. I look at her partner, a man I barely know. He’s something big in the City.

‘Beer tent?’ I ask him. ‘I’m more of a wine man.’ He replies. Of course you are.

Several pints in, stodgy portion of couscous consumed and I’m fighting the bladder alarm. The ruddy-cheeked man is joining in with the ladies’ conversations having decided he really has nothing in common with beer-swilling estate agents - except when he wants notice of a cheap investment property to add to his portfolio. I’ve taken a stomach churning dislike to the man which might, in truth, be partially as a result of the durum wheat rehydrating in my guts courtesy of two quarts of London Pride, but also because he’s basically another odious bean counter.

Finally I break the seal, realising I’m condemning myself to regular bog-trots between now and the headliner’s first engineered encore. The row of regimented portable toilets look like shit attempts at low-cost first-time buyers’ properties. Appropriately enough, queues of mostly young women are lined-up outside them. Sitting room only.

‘Eh-up, it’s the estate agent!’ Slurs a familiar-looking man as I stand at the rank-smelling urinals. Gentle heat haze rising from the gurgling gutter. My heart sinks.

Time to face the music.

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