Bedtime Blues - Wednesday

I'm looking at the bedside clock again and it doesn’t seem to have moved from the last five times I’ve rolled over, hoping it might be morning.

I’m contemplating a trip to the bathroom just to break the pattern of tossing and turning and to let the covers cool, but I’m conscious of not waking my wife. Although her steady breathing is starting to become mildly irritating after I’ve huffed and puffed, searching for the comfort of dreamless sleep, for the last two hours.

They say moving house is the third most stressful life event, after death and divorce. I’m beginning to wonder if living those three crisis points, albeit vicariously through third parties’ fractious house sales, is taking its collective toll? I can’t remember the last time I had a blissful, undisturbed night’s sleep.

As my stomach churns and my sciatic nerve throbs, I try to chase some unhealthy anger against a solicitor who is holding up a protracted chain I’ve been fretting over for six weeks, from my mind. I’m betting the virtual call-centre, on-line agents, with their cheap fees and even cheaper service don’t suffer so many disturbed nights.

And now the bladder alarm has gone off, a good three hours before the actual bedside clock is due to pipe inane local radio into my head, doubtless about ten minutes after I finally fall into an exhausted sleep.

‘What time is it?’ Mumbles my wife, as I hobble towards the en-suite, obviously not as mouse-like as intended.

‘Go back to sleep.’ I urge her. No point in two of us being grumpy for the rest of the day. Some rest-deprived area of my mind imagines the solicitor’s grinning features at the bottom of the darkened toilet bowl, as I try to urinate quietly. I don’t actually know the dilatory fool; he’s faceless and not exactly taking the piss - although with the speed he dispatches half-formed sales’ contracts, he actually is….

After a bit of fuzzy-headed confusion and a hint of some collateral splash damage on the floor, I push what I think is the short-flush button. The bowl empties like the Hoover Dam’s sluice gates opening. Not the economy, water-saving bowl evacuation then. That won’t please my wife, or the environmentalists who foisted the hapless Energy Performance Certificates on everyone who wants to sell their home.

Half way back to bed, hands still dripping as I couldn’t find a towel without putting on the light and sending the extractor fan in to full Rolls Royce jet engines spooling up to maximum thrust mode, I halt. Perhaps I won’t be able to shake the problem sale from my head by just clambering back under the over-heated duvet? Particularly as another difficult deal has crept into my consciousness. I decide to do what Englishmen the world over have done for decades, when a problem won’t go away. Make a cup of tea.

Brew cooling alongside me, I tap at my computer keyboard as dawn rises apologetically in the east. Soft light creeping through the curtains as a pre-cursor to what might be another dark day. Not for the first time I curse that inept careers advisor at school. That and my casual approach to studying anything other than the unobtainable girl who sat in front of me in class. I wonder where she is now. I sometimes ponder if I’ll get her matrimonial home to sell, in the inevitable divorce.

As the room brightens further and I send an inane tweet to anyone who is stupid enough to be awake and wanting UK property news, I start to feel sleepy. Thank you God.

Slipping quietly back into, the now soothingly cool covers I close my eyes.

‘Could you make any more noise?’ Asks a cranky voice, hardly brimming with human kindness. Not that quietly then.

‘Go back to sleep.’ I urge her, again. And annoyingly she does, Steady breathing returning in seconds. That’s night-time feeding two children in their infancy for you. 

Just as I pass a hopeful note to the girl in the desk ahead of me, a nasally intrusive voice announces:

‘It’s Wednesday morning and here’s Taylor Swift.’

Shake It Off.

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Hot To Trot - Tuesday

‘Looks like it’s going to be another warm one.’ Says my wife, tugging back the curtains to let an unaccustomed cascade of light into the bedroom. I wince at the brightness and in preparation for the long-running dispute that I can sense is about to recommence.

After decades of selling homes, in all markets and all weathers, I still can’t quite get use to the few short months when the bedside alarm ushers in the local radio retards, in daylight. Incidentally, it’s probably just me, but it seems you need to have some sort of speech impediment to get into broadcasting now - and a name with no vowels in it.

‘What are you wearing today?’ Asks my wife. This would seem like a perfectly innocent question to a bystander - although why anyone would be standing in my bedroom unannounced I can’t imagine. Move along, nothing to see here. But I know there’s a barely hidden agenda.

‘I’m not going through that again.’ I tell her as I stumble towards the shower.

‘I’ve ironed a couple.’ Counters my wife artfully.

‘I’ve told you a hundred times,’ I say wearily. ‘I’d look like an Australian bank manger in a short-sleeve shirt.’

‘I’m not suggesting you wear the shorts and knee-length socks.’ Counters my wife, eyes heavenwards.

She just doesn’t get it.

The UK weather doesn’t present too many occasions for this sort of marital dispute, but over the course of my stubborn career I’ve had this running argument, every few days our summer doesn’t resemble an Indian rainy season.

‘You’ll be much more comfortable.’ Says my wife as I arrive back five minutes later, soggy and still groggy. She’s holding up a flimsy piece of clothing enticingly, but not in a good way. Short-sleeves just don’t look professional in my opinion. I strive for that Barack Obama level of cool, roll up the long sleeves if you have to, but don’t resemble a barman in a Spanish cocktail bar. The item she’s presenting was an unwise purchase for a Greek holiday and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even wear it then. Although after several glasses of post-prandial Ouzo I can barely remember my own name, let alone which dodgy Marks and Spencer summer shirt I was wearing when I danced on the table.

‘Are you even doing anything?’ I shout at my car dashboard, as the traffic slows and I try to calculate if I’ll still be the first in the office - almost certainly. My arms are warming like a couple of kebabs on a barbecue, and I’m more hot under the collar than usual. I spin the dial on the fan and all I get is more noise and a higher velocity of warm air. The air conditioning in my ageing company car, needs topping up again. I just can’t face the customer service hell hole the local main dealer provides. There are only so many molten-plastic-laced cups of vending machine coffee you can endure, only to be told: ‘The parts for that ain’t in stock mate. You’ll have to come back next wednesday.’

‘Morning.’ Says negotiator S warmly, as she breezes through the door and I sit at the main desk, sweat dripping down my back unpleasantly. S looks hot too, but in a much less sweaty way - although….

I watch as she walks to the kitchen area, puts the kettle on then returns to her desk. Demure just about covers it. She’s in a skirt and sleeveless blouse combo. The top must be man made, as the fibres are under almost as much pressure as I am.

Then the door opens again and the contrast couldn’t be more dramatic. B our loose lettings lush click-clacks in on those vertiginous heels. She’s rocking the slutty teacher look. Skirt shorter than S’s by a good three inches, dark lacy bra showing conspicuously through a white top. More make-up than a circus act. And stockings.

Finally M, the man-mountain mortgage peddler arrives. He’s perspiring like a cook at a Chinese take-away. Deep damp patches under his arms and a moist line down his dark blue shirt, tracing his vertebrae. No sign of a jacket.

Not cool.

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Let's Do The Timewarp - Wedneday

Stuck in traffic again. If I’m not gridlocked I’m dodging aggressive traffic wardens, determined to not rest until every town is a wasteland of boarded up units interspersed by charity shops and coffee outlets. I have idiot trainee F alongside me so there’s not a lot of intellectual stimulus and the local radio presenter – only allowed as an auditory intruder in case he can pre-warn me of any further traffic blockages – is vainly trying to plug some absurd competition to guess three celebrities from a trio of nano-second clips. The hook is tens of thousands of ‘life changing’ pounds that won’t even buy you a studio flat round here. God, I despair of humanity.

‘Who do you reckon they are then?’ Enthuses F, nodding at the radio. ‘We could ring in.’

‘You might as well try and guess the lottery numbers.’ I tell F wearily, spotting an opposition for sale board and bristling uncomfortably - even after all this time.

‘Yes but it’s a huge amount of money.’ Continues F. It’s not. I point out the cost of housing stock and then remind the fool that to call in you need to ring some pumped-up price phone number that is in all probability funding the ‘giveaway’. F looks crestfallen. He has to learn sooner or later.

Finally we move and I take a rabbit-run short cut through some 1930s housing stock. The roof tiles have been replaced, on some, with unsightly concrete interlocking pieces that will be throwing up survey problems in years to come, as they’ll be too heavy for the existing struts and purlins.

What sort of vintage do you think these are? I say, nodding towards the spec-development semis, while squinting at the unaccustomed sun and tugging out my sunglasses.

F frowns. I wait, then bump over several sleeping policeman. My back winces ahead of F’s pearl of wisdom. He hasn’t a clue.

‘It’s hard to tell.’ He eventually ventures.

‘Look for styling cues.’ I tell him, seeing, through my tinted vision, bay windows, tile hung elevations and cast iron guttering.

‘Uhm, are they like original Ray-Bans?’ F finally asks.

Think I’ve mentioned no minimum qualification for estate agents before...

‘That development.’ I say to F as we pass a mock Tudor cul-de-sac of identikit executive homes, all with double garages but still not enough parking for the two teenagers, four car families, now living there.

‘They’re kind of modern’ Ventures F timidly. They were when I first started in estate agency, I think gloomily. Now the Energy Performance Certificate assessor will pick holes in the loft insulation levels, the lack of cavity wall filling, then condemn the wheezing boilers with crappy energy ratings and no condensers.

‘They’re 1980s.’ I tell F, as I swing back out on to the main road then use my local knowledge to dodge more road works, darting down a road containing some rare 1950s bungalows.

‘These.’ I say to F, as we exit past the temporary traffic lights and I get a rare shiver of pleasure as I spot the van we had been following still stuck on red, some three hundred yards back. No sign of any workmen, needless to say.

‘Well these are old.’ Posits F staring at the last bungalow on a corner plot that might just take a planning application for in-fill, if it wasn’t for the tricky access back on to the main road.

‘How old?’ I press. ‘Pre or post war?’

F shrugs then asks.

‘Is that the Falklands war?’

‘Here we are.’ I tell F as we turn onto a sprawling housing development with virtually no architectural merit. The gardens are open-plan as will be the downstairs accommodation. Crazy paving paths and matching chimneybreasts are hardly complemented by huge, single-glazed, picture windows that drip with condensation nine months of the year.

‘These are cool.’ Enthuses F as I take a sideways glance at the imbecile and almost mount the kerb.

‘The energy assessor might think so, but that’s for a different reason.’ I carp.

‘1960s like Mad Men, you mean?’ Asks F after I’ve tired of waiting. I nod and he looks at me hesitantly. Eventually he speaks.

‘Is that, like when you were born?’

I preferred it when he was wrong.

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