Seasons In The Sun - Wednesday

‘You feeling alright?’ Asks assistant manager T as he becomes the first staff member to arrive at the office - twenty minutes after me.

He doesn’t often sense moods that acutely, until I shout at him or thump the desk in frustration, but I’m guessing he’s noticed my washed out appearance. I’ve been awake, coughing and sneezing since about 4.00am. My eyes are red-raw from rubbing and crustier than a bakery floor.

‘I’m okay.’ I lie wearily.

‘Only it looks like you’ve been crying.’

Terrific. I’ve three valuations today and the sympathy sales pitch never lasts past the moment you tell them how much their home is really worth. The fee discussion is not to be sneezed at either.

‘It’s the pollen count.’ I tell T with an unpleasant sniffing sound resembling a badly blocked drain clearing.

‘Hay fever?’ Asks T with head to one side.

No, another survey the bean counter boss wants to do, I feel like saying sarcastically. Similar to a board count but with more bronchial mulch.

‘I never used to get all these allergies as bad.’ I tell T mournfully. The whole office knows about my reaction to dog and cat hair, never a good ailment when you are constantly entering homes where delusional pet owners think their house doesn’t smell and it’s okay to have felines on the kitchen work surfaces, and canines lying on the bed.

‘Maybe it’s an age thing.’ Muses T, sitting at his desk with a thump and firing up his flatscreen. No chance of making me another cuppa, I think tetchily? The half-full mug beside me has gone cold and I don’t fancy swigging the slightly bitter, grainy dregs of another tepid LemSip  I wonder if you can overdose on over-the-counter snot-busters? There must be cheaper ways.

‘You’d think you’d build up an immunity after half a lifetime of animal hair and tree pollen ingestion.’ I tell T, who doesn’t appear to be listening any more. I thought you could check your Facebook on your phone.

‘Says here the pollen forecast is very high today.’ Announces T. I’ve maligned him unnecessarily. Luckily it wasn’t out loud this time and in any case I’m beyond blushing now - coughing, sneezing and choking yes, but beyond blushing.

I walk across to glance over T’s shoulder just as fat finance fiddler M waddles in to the office, clutching another grease-flecked Greggs bag.

‘Someone died?’ Asks M stopping in front of me.

I raise a quizzical eyebrow and a tear spills down my cheek.

‘He’s got hay fever.’ Enlightens T, as I reach for my last tissue and trumpet a runny venting. Unlike my erstwhile drinking buddy, I refuse to use a linen handkerchief. He’ll happily blow his nose, then dip straight into the communal bag of crisps we’re sharing. I should widen my circle of friends but it’s not easy, being an estate agent.

‘That’s alright then.’ Says M moving away. ‘As long as it’s not one of my policyholders. Reams of paperwork if they croak and I don’t get any renewal commission.’

The property industry took a turn for worse the day insurance companies, banks and building societies started buying up estate agency firms.

‘God, you look awful.’ Says negotiator S, as she comes through the door and glances at me.

‘It’s hay fever.’ Shouts M from his office. ‘He’s not sobbing about the office sales figures.’

‘Have you tied anti-histamine tablets?’  Asks S, waking her computer and also showing no sign of making drinks.

‘I positively rattle with them.’ I tell her grumpily. ‘They are expensive and don’t really work that well.’

‘Like solar roof panels.’ Says T with a hearty chuckle.

Everyone’s a comedian. We’ll see if they’re still laughing when I arrange a leaflet drop for this afternoon. T’s right about the ugly solar slabs though. Not many people want to buy a house with those monstrosities ruining the roofline. Built in obsolescence, in a cloudy country with more rain than the forests we’re supposed to be saving. I sense another mis-selling scandal.

Back at my desk, I check my emails. 

I’m going to need another box of tissues.

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Here I Am Again On My Own - Monday

Another bleak January arrives and once again I feel as if I’ve been plunged into some dystopian nightmare, peopled by scores of malicious little figure-fiddlers constantly increasing targets and cutting costs. Well, it is a General Election year…

The park looks the same as I cross it wearily. The familiar winos are stirring from their benches and the Bulgarian Big Issue seller is just ahead of me, heading for the high street. His body language is guttural at best, as he slopes towards his draughty kerbside pitch. I wonder if his boss has upped the number of units he has to flog before he gets a bonus?

I sidestep the carcass of what might have been a deep-fried Kentucky bird of some description, or a particularly skinny cannibalised-rough-sleeper, and familiarly start to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, only without the mildly successful back catalogue and cult following.

No sign of the street cleaners yet, or the downtrodden gardeners who battle against the fast food fly-tipping while trying to maintain some colour in the borders that isn’t corporate-branded packaging. I hope they have their sharp-proof gloves on, because I spot at least three discarded syringes where you might have hoped for a winter flowering pansy.

I look up at the office fascia as I arrive outside. Terrific, one of the fluorescent tubes is flickering forlornly. The last time I tried to save some money and brought my stepladder in from home there was nearly a very nasty accident to put in the book. I should climb up myself next time, although it was almost an inventive way of getting rid of F, the hapless trainee. But the paperwork would have been endless, and there’s already a bloodstain on the pavement.

I should call the maintenance firm head office have retained but I know it will take weeks before they eventually send some bozo with English as a third language, and the wrong type of screwdriver. Then the bill, when it hits my profit and loss account, would be most unwelcome this early in the year. I need contracts to exchange and some solicitors won’t be back from the Caribbean for another fortnight.

As I punch in the alarm code and the beeping eventually falls silent, I look at the reverse of the window display. This is where the photogenic sold homes reside until the sun fades them too much - and the over-priced duff stock sits, until the owner swops agents or withdraws from the market. “We’re not giving our house away, you know.”

In the kitchen, as cold as the grave until the heating cuts in, I fill the kettle and line up the slightly stained mugs. The tub of Celebration is still open by the coffee jar and even the aptly named Polish cleaners haven’t eaten any of the mini Bounty bars.

Here we go again, I think, as I stare at the newly inked office and individual targets pinned next to the Office and Factories Act poster nobody understands, particularly the bit about Railways. There is so much legislation swirling round running a business that you can see why the board man, the leaflet dropper and the locksmith all decided not to employ anyone alongside themselves. And as the kettle rolls to the boil, it seems I might as well be a sole trader, because nobody else has arrived yet. Then the phone rings.

Five fractious minutes later I’m still alone, and minus one sale for the first week. It’s not as If I haven’t heard the words, “We can’t find anything as nice as our home so we’re withdrawing from the sale and taking it off the market,” before. But is still hurts like a knee in the groin. Every time.

Computer screen coaxed to life, I watch the emails scroll down relentlessly. It was a much gentler, kinder pace when you had to wait for the postman to deliver bad news. The bean counter boss has been busy over the holiday period, his name appears on several curt missives I’ll be depositing in the virtual waste basket.

Feel a bit rubbish.

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On A Jet Plane - Saturday

Rain is lashing against the bedroom window. I’ve been awake forever despite the fact we’ll still be at the airport several hours before the flight crew. My mind has moved from fretting about contracts, offers and weekly statistics to the unconvincing laws of aeronautics. Laws that allow several hundred tons of metal, stuffed full of pasty Britons, to leave terra firma and break through the blanket of grey drizzle swamping this green and pleasant land to finally see some f***ing sunshine.

‘Get off that computer.’ Urges my wife. ‘Surely nobody wants to read your Blog that badly?’ She has a point, but then you don’t write for anybody else and you certainly don’t write for the money now that everyone wants free content.

‘Have you seen my list?’ She continues, hint of panic in her voice. I want to ask which one? She’s been compiling them for weeks now and they are probably more extensive than the pilots’ pre take-off one. There’s the things to check checklist, the clothes list, the wash kit list, the electronics and accessories list, the items to unplug in the house list and there’s a master list somewhere, in case she forgets one of the lists. I’m just listless.

‘I’m sure we’ve forgotten something.’ She frets as I pull into the airport car park. ‘All we really need are tickets, passports and cash.’ I tell her. And even the Euros I kept waiting for a better rate on, might be superfluous by the time we land the other end. I’ve kept a few Drachma somewhere in the back of my clothes drawer. I spotted them when I was searching for those flight socks that are supposed to restrict deep vein thrombosis but I’m guessing won’t be a lot of help if we fly into a mountain.

‘How can they justify that much for a weeks parking?’ I grumble as we stand in the snaking check-in queue and I scan our fellow travellers, trying to guess who’ll end up on our hotel coach and whom I’d actually want to speak to. ‘It’s a captive audience.’ Says my wife, moving forward two feet and setting her bag down again. ‘Yes but I only want to park there for seven days not buy the bloody freehold.’ I tell her loudly. Several people in the queue look at me sternly and decide they don’t want to be on my airport transport either.

‘Did you pack the bag yourself? Quizzes the woman at the check-in gracelessly. I want to spew some sarcasm. It’s taken forty minutes already and my back is aching even before I’m crammed into a seat with legroom that would challenge Snow White’s seven travelling companions. But I know not to rile officials after that run in with the Trading Standards Office.

Travel has become an ordeal that leaves you needing another holiday. All thanks to a few extremists who use their chosen god - one that has kept a pretty low profile for the last two thousand years despite those superpowers you’d want to show off - to justify terrorism. I hate playground bullies even after all these years.

The fact is I didn’t pack my bag, my wife did. But I lie like every other bloke in the line. I really find it hard to touch my toes nowadays and bending over to the snap of a latex glove, while some officious oddball with an attitude - and a tube of lube - isn’t going to make four hours on a saggy seat squab any more comfortable.

‘Priority boarders to the gate now.’ Announces the tannoy as I sit reeking of several different after shaves, none of which I bought. I smell like the camp barman pulling over-priced pints for nervous flyers in the mock English pub. Even I won’t drink before lunchtime. I’m not a chartered surveyor.

‘How come they go before us?’ I gripe to my wife. I’ve already seen the disabled passengers pass and suspect some are just too fat and lazy to walk.

‘They pay more to get what they want.’ She answers.

It’s the same in the property market. Time to go.

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Machine Rage - Wednesday

I’m in Tesco Express again, against my better judgement. The Misdescription Act regulates outlandish marketing claims in property, with draconian punishment by the Trading Standards drones if you transgress. So I’m wondering, just how they get away with the Express bit?

‘Come on.’ I mutter gracelessly as a crumbly woman fiddles with her purse when she finally makes the one living staff member behind an actual till.  I’ve purposely avoided the bank of flashing self-scan positions on rapidly dwindling principles, but I’m already regretting my stubborn Luddism. ‘Oh get on with it.’ I grumble as the OAP with time to kill and a resistance to lung cancer, decides to ask for ten of some obscure cut-price cigarette brand, then thinks it would be a good idea to chat to the woman serving.

I’ve only come in to pick up tea and coffee for the office. We’ve run out again because nobody had the foresight to mention the bottom of the tin was winking at them when they spooned out the last granules. Gallingly, I’ll be subsidising the office caffeine and tannin intake for the next month or so, as since the bean counter boss cut the petty cash float to pennies, I’m expected to fund sundries at my expense. He’ll doubtless quibble over the receipts when he finally deigns to sign them off.

‘You gonna use the self-serve?’ Asks a thirty-something woman behind me with a basket of goods in her hand.

‘No,’ I answer. ‘You go ahead, I don’t get on with them.’

She pushes past me with a cursory nod and begins the un-edifying procedure of obeying a computer and packing your own goods to the tune of an automated voice. A voice I just know would be admonishing me by now with an, unexpected item in bagging area report.

‘This is rubbish isn’t it?’ Says a male voice behind me. Now I’m never that keen to engage in conversation with members of the public unless there’s a fee at the end of it, but something in this man’s tone makes me recognise a kindred spirit, so I turn.

A greying-at-the-temples man with a cheap suit and a sour demeanour is looking back at me. I’m hoping he’s older and less successful than me but it’s a close call.

‘They should just put a couple more minimum wage checkout people on.’ I say tersely as the queue behind us builds to about ten dour-faced shoppers, all looking at their watches and slowly marinating in their own frustration. I notice the elderly woman monopolising the one living and visible staff member has now fished a lottery ticket from her handbag and is asking for that to be entered separately. Ring the f**ing bell, I ache to scream. Just get some more help.

‘I tell you, if I ran my business like this I’d go bust inside a month.’ Says my new best friend, as I wonder idly what he does for a living? I’m not about to ask or I’ll have to confess my own profession and a fight is already a distinct possibility amongst the angry shoppers. And now, as I wish I’d succumbed and tried the self-scan, I notice the woman who went ahead of me has come up against a problem and the light on top of the station she’s at, is flashing for help. Finally, as the OAP oblivious to the fact that a jar of Nescafe to the skull might finish her off where a sixty year nicotine habit has failed, asks for a strip of scratch-and-win Instants, the staff member rings for assistance.

‘Watch this.’ Predicts the man behind me with a world-weary tone I thought I’d patented. And a spotty youth with an Every Little Helps badge appears and goes straight to the rescue of the woman who has jammed the self-scan till.

‘You got the coffee?’ Asks portly mortgage man M when I enter the office, ears buzzing with anger.

‘It’s in the shop, on the floor next to the queue this way sign.’ I tell him before adding. ‘And no, I didn’t get any biscuits either.’

Not sure I belong here any more.

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