Ladies And Gentlemen

I’m in a client’s house, keys in my hand, looking at Bomber the local surveyor. He’s earned the nickname, as every sale he gets involved in tends to explode horribly.

Now I understand property purchase is an adversarial business. Buyer pitched against seller, surveyor set against estate agent. But Bomber seems to revel in picking holes in every property he inspects for purchaser and lender. There’s a certain type of surveyor - and every town has one - who is so afraid of making a mistake, so petrified of being sued for negligence that they point out every defect, real or imagined. Rumour has it that Bomber is so scared of his own shadow he won’t be spotted on sunny days.

‘Do you like to watch then?’ Asks Bomber incongruously. I’m brought back from my internal reverie to see him looking at me curiously. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising and I’m starting to feel unnerved. It’s a given that he’ll rubbish this well-maintained semi-detached house. A guarantee, that he’ll tell the buyers the home isn’t worth as much as they’ve agreed to pay - find out the sale price then subtract 5-10% seems to be his rule of thumb. But much as I’ve studied Bomber, with a mixture of distaste and almost pathological hatred, I’ve never noticed he wears lipstick.

‘The vendors have had problems with estate agents before.’ I answer, mind spinning around a tale of closet transvestites with folding ladders - and stocking ladders.

‘Who hasn’t?’ Replies Bomber, with a rictus grin. One that confirms, via his vermillion smudged incisors, that he’s wearing some mouth-enhancing lady product. Unless it’s blood? I think woozily. It would explain why he can’t come out unless it’s cloudy.

Yes, everyone likes to rubbish an estate agent. It’s a national sport only challenged by hatred of politicians and paedophiles. In this case my client had tried an cheap fee agent in the past, and entrusted their house keys to the muppets. Several items had gone missing on a supposed accompanied viewing. My pledge to them, to win the instruction to sell, was to ensure I monitored every visitor obsessively. Surveyors are usually handed home keys to carry out inspections alone, as a trusted professional. But my clients are fastidious about security and I’m guessing a cross-dresser with an obsession with damp proof courses - and now it seems ladies’ corsets - isn’t going to be welcome rummaging through their drawers unobserved. And that’s before he down-values the sale price by £15,000.

‘The price seems a bit full.’ Mutters Bomber as he stoops towards his bag, that now I look at it, seems a little effeminate.

He’s setting me up for the hit, flagging up the fact that he’ll be telling the prospective buyers they’ve agreed to pay over the odds, and that’s before he writes a report so shot full of caveats that it won’t be the worth the paper it’s printed on.

‘Not at all,’ I counter. ‘We had two other couples after this one. If your clients prevaricate I’ll have another buyer lined up with just one phone call.’ It’s bit of poetic licence but I’m guessing Bomber likes an Ombudsman about as much as the next guy - or girl…

Bomber throws me an odd look, the sort of unsettling, holding the gaze too long, stare that desperate divorcee used to give me every time I conducted a viewing at her house. Turned out she wanted a slice off the fee, rather than a piece of me, which made things even more uncomfortable.

As the slippery surveyor lifts an instrument from his increasingly girly bag - is that a pink lining I can see? - he grins stomach-churningly. He’s either going to deploy a damp meter or a dildo, I think absurdly. It’s fortunately the former, but still involves batteries and pleasure for just one person.

This will mean time-wasting third-party reports by specialist treatment companies who rumour has it pay back-handers - or in Bomber’s case backless dresses - to intoducers. I want to scream.

‘Are you alright?’ Asks my wife anxiously. ‘You just cried out.’

Bad dream.

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Reanimator - Monday

  

‘Can you do a viewing on number 21?’ Asks negotiator S as I come through the office door.

‘The dead man’s house?’ I ask, plonking my briefcase down and glancing at the message book.

‘Ugh, I wish you wouldn’t call it that.’ Chides S, pretty face frowning.

‘It’s just a fact.’ I tell her seeing with sinking heart that ‘Bomber’ the surveyor will be valuing a sale we agreed ten days ago. Might as well stick the For Sale board back up, I think glumly. Bomber’s idea of valuing is to find out the agreed price and subtract 10%, to arrive at his valuation.

‘Yes but it’s so creepy to think about what happened there.’ Continues S, as I fantasise about catching Bomber in a loft carrying out a Home Buyer’s Report and snatching away his step-ladder.

‘It’s Bomber’s office on the line boss, has anyone seen him since he surveyed London Road? Only he’s been missing for two days.’

‘Tell them I can’t discuss that over the phone, they’ll have to wait for my written report….’

‘Don’t even think about all that nonsense.’ I tell S coming back to reality. ‘It’s just bricks and mortar and anyway the dead vendors aren’t so fussy about the sale price.’

‘Beneficiaries are though.’ Retorts S. She has a point – two quite prominent ones.

‘Can’t T or F do the viewing anyway?’ I grumble, looking at the office diary and then scanning my inbox. God I yearn for a time, pre-email, when the only disappointment was daily when the postman came, or when you trudged to the Document Exchange box in the nearby lawyer’s office. I see the bean counter boss has sent me three missives in the space of an hour. There’s a man who has never stood on a damp doorstep waiting for viewers who aren’t going to show. He doesn’t even need to push a pen any more – just the Return key.

‘F has the dentist.’ Replies S as a fleeting fantasy involving a large drill and no pain relief for the idiot trainee, flashes through my mind. ‘And T has to visit his Grandmother in hospital later.’

‘I’m sure he’s been to two funerals for dead Grandmothers already.’ I gripe ungraciously.

‘He hasn’t.’ Replies S curtly.

‘What time? I ask throwing in the towel. You need to be resilient in sales but you also need to know when you’re beaten, or you’ll take a lot of unnecessary punishment.

‘Erm, it’s a late one, sorry.’ Says S with a shrug. Not much chance of the owner doing the viewing, short of an unlikely resurrection – particularly as they cremated him.

‘It’s a bit chilly in here.’ Says the woman as I try not to glance at my watch and imagine how incinerated my supper is going to be. Not as toasted as the outgoing owner, but even so…

‘I’ll shut some windows.’ I say, smiling at her and receiving a scowl from her boyfriend in return. Calm down mate, I think, I might want to shaft her but I don’t want sex with the woman.

All the windows I opened on arrival ten minutes before the viewing time, pulled in, smell still lingering in my nostrils, I turn back to the couple. He’s younger than her. Second time round for the lady, divorce proceeds to spend. She is some sort of Cougar; he’s some sort of parasite, suggests the little voice unhelpfully. Don’t judge, just get them to buy it, I answer internally – and stop talking to yourself

‘The sofa set would fit in here easily.’ Says the woman to the sponger, flagging up an Olympic-sized buying signal. The supper can wait. I sense a deal.

‘Can we afford it?’ Asks the man artfully. You mean can her ex-husband? I think.

‘Will they take an offer?’ Asks the lady, smiling at me for the first time.

The ex-owner won’t return my calls, but his bickering children seem keen to get the cash.

‘I’ve got two more viewings tomorrow.’ I answer obliquely. The smile vanishes faster than cake at a Weight Watchers’ Christmas party.

‘You would say that wouldn’t you.’ Sneers the man-boy.

‘We’ll take it.’ Says the decision maker.

Week saved - back from the dead.

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Eat To The Beat - Thursday

I spot him heading my way through a throng of lunchtime escapees. The sort of office workers who are either in the private sector, like me, and are taking five minutes to grab a sandwich to eat at their desk in between calls, or are working for the public sector and engaged in exercising their body, mind and rights by taking their full sixty minutes entitlement - no matter how may times the phone rings unanswered in their absence.

I consider dodging to the other side of the pavement, as I reach the pedestrianised area with slightly fewer empty shop units, not so many charity outlets and a healthier footfall, but I’m almost as lame as him now. Instead I paste on the increasingly hard to muster, glad to see you face. He looks genuinely pleased to meet me again – unless…

‘How’s tricks?’ Begins the hobbling banker breezily, as if greeting some sort of worn-out hooker whose overdraft facility he’s thinking of extending. The analogy has some merit, I think, as we both labour to a halt causing two jogging-bottomed, large-arsed young mothers, with more tattoos than what’s left of the Royal Navy can muster, to swerve their pushchairs past us without cracking into our ankles. The pair are engaged in some sort of harsh-vowelled rant about not getting their money on time and I wonder if they’ll be in shortly to ask B, our loose lettings lush, if she rents to DSS tenants – or if she’s coming out on the pull later? I realise, my autopilot has taken over and I’ve answered with a default platitude along the lines of: ‘Not too bad. You?’

The banker frowns and I notice, with a little churlish pleasure that he’s greyer and thinner on top than me now.

‘Seriously?’ he quizzes, shaking his head a bit like Bomber our destructive local surveyor when he down-values another home and destroys a much-needed sale with the words: ‘Price seems a bit full. Got any comparables?’

I admit, a bit sheepishly, that I haven’t thought the answer through and I’ve had better weeks, better months, better years and probably better career opportunities.

‘Thank God,’ he says brightening. ‘I thought it was just me.’

‘Thing is. I feel like a bloody dinosaur.’ Continues the shot-to-pieces in the hip and hair department moneylender, as I find myself perching on a pigeon-shit-stained bench half listening to his depressing monologue and half hearing the increasingly plaintive cries from the Big Issue seller everyone with a job, or not retired, is studiously avoiding.

‘Your business has changed a lot.’ I concede, trying to look at my watch without him spotting the movement. All the low-calorie meal deals with any non-horsemeat filling will be gone at this rate and I vaguely imagine I can hear phones ringing in my office, unless it’s that ear infection back again.

‘Tell me about it.’ Answers the man morosely, as I think ring the Samaritans pal. They volunteer for this sort of thing and don’t have to sit on a chilly bench a wino slept on a few hours earlier, feigning an interest rate I can’t sustain. The tarnished and gum-splattered pavement at my feet looks suspiciously like night-time emissions have been vented, making me wonder if I’ll have any, shoes of at the door before you come in to our house, oddballs later today. But then again, maybe they aren’t so weird?

‘The world is run by bloody bean counters.’ Rails the banker, seemingly without irony. Should I ask him about my endowment mortgage? Probably not. I’ve already seen one grown man cry today and there’s still that repossession to attend later.

‘Do you know, I’m one of the oldest in my branch now.’ Continues the man semi-rhetorically. ‘I have to report to some snot-nosed kid who talks in marketing sound-bites and questions my sales figures every Thursday.’

‘Not good.’ I concede, wondering if I can stomach another reduced-fat cheese and pickle, with those taste-free baked crisps and a bottle of flavoured water resembling piss?

‘Burger and chips?’ Asks assistant manager T, as I return.

‘Comfort food.’ I tell him - feeling a bit sick.

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