Accidental Landlord - Monday

Loose lettings lush B, has a grumpy-looking middle-aged couple sat at her desk. It’s fairly obvious the expensive German saloon car with personalised plates illegally parked outside the office window, is their car. The latent socialist insider me, wants to despise them, but I’ve learned the hard way not to be too quick to judge. There are two sides to every story.

‘First thing you need to know.’ Says the man to B, assertively. ‘Is I won’t entertain any tenants on benefits.’

‘I get that one-hundred percent.’ replies B, with feeling. ‘They are the bane of my life.’

‘We’re on the same page then.’ Responds the man. ‘I’ve spent too much on lawyers and court fees to have another single mother with a sob story and three kids by three different men, spend the rent money on alcohol and tattoos and not pay me.’

Now I hate stereotyping and there are plenty of decent people who have fallen on hard times, who need help. The trouble is there are too many for the taxpayer to cope and an awkward minority turn private landlords away from renting to them, by trashing their properties and spending the state-paid rent money on anything but the rent.

‘We will only consider proper couples, in decent jobs with cast-iron references.’ Says the woman, leaning in towards B, as if she doesn’t want anyone else to hear. I am, of course, listening fervently. For a moment I thought she was going to say they wanted to exclude potential tenants on racial grounds. We’ve come a long way since landladies put signs in their front windows stating, No Blacks or Irish, and thank goodness for that. Although her undertones tend to suggest they might want us to profile people on their sexuality. It’s illegal and won’t be happening on my watch.

I really want to dislike this couple, but then they may have become accidental landlords like thousands of others when past chancellor, Gordon Brown, ransacked their pension pots, by moving the tax goalposts. And if I could afford any savings, money that didn’t make any tangible interest, maybe I too would want a sensible return by buying a second property. I certainly wouldn’t want some irresponsible scumbag, who trashed the decor, alienated the neighbours and didn’t pay the rent in there. And, I suspect, neither would you.

‘Is that your car?’ Says assists manager T, pointing at the Mercedes with the blinking hazard lights, as he hurries through the door.

‘Yes.’ Says the landlord warily.

‘Only the traffic warden is on his way up the high street, with a glint in his eye.’

‘Blimey,’ says T with a chuckle as the door rattlers in its frame and the disturbed air swishes around the office. ‘Didn’t think old people could move that fast.’

‘They weren’t that old.’ I counter defensively, as the car disappears from view, just as the trainee nazi traffic warden skulks past. He looks in threateningly. God, it’s no wonder there are so many empty commercial shop units in town.

‘I’m glad they are gone.’ Says negotiator S, with an attractive pout. She’s magnificent when angry.

‘Thanks a bunch.’ Snarls B, as she watches a potential client drive away.

‘They were pair of bigoted old bastards.’ Snaps back S. ‘There are laws about people like that.’

‘Would you like some drunken-slapper in your house, not paying the rent.’ Asks B, without a hint of irony. She freeloaded at the last boyfriend’s flat for six months, drinking his sauvignon in return for sex, until he changed the locks. 

If the last ten UK Housing Ministers had the hint of a strategy and had stayed in place long enough for the sign-writer to put their name on the Westminster door, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. Reliant on a pressurised private sector of landlords to plug the gaps. For years this country has had too few properties, over-inflated prices for the average worker and no sustainable social homes building policy.

Given half an hour and a box of bird feed I could train a budgie to do a better job - but I’ve got to fly.

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Little By Little - Thursday

Back in the supermarket on another unwanted errand. This time it’s the German lot that are growing faster then Japanese knotweed. Funny, you win a couple of wars and the losers destroy your car industry, then your high street.

Not that I don’t shop there, obviously, or drive a foreign car. I gave British Leyland enough chances. I finally realised that breaking down at the side of the road in a dated car, poorly bolted together by some bolshie Brummies - while some smug bastard in a cheaper, better, Datsun drove past - had to stop. Like the Austin Allegro, as it happens…

‘See what’s in the middle at Lidl.’ Said my wife gleefully, over the phone. When I first started in this profession I couldn’t be reached, by office or spouse. Still not sure smartphone is the right term, for being on call 24/7/. Seems pretty dumb to me. Now I can get instructions to pick up some item I don’t need, any time.

‘Can’t beat the Germans can you?’ Says a hirsute bloke next to me in the centre aisle. Well you can actually beardy, I think, just not since 1945 - and that one time when Michael Owen scored a hat-trick in Munich. 

‘Pretty good value.’ I admit grudgingly as I rummage through cycling tops that appear to be a quarter of the price of one I bought a few weeks ago, and just as thermally efficient, with the same wicking properties. Bloody Krauts. 

‘I reckon before long our towns will be full of German discount supermarkets.’ Says the man, chuckling.

‘And coffee shops.’ I add, with jocularity.

‘Or f•••ing estate agents shops.’  Says the man laughing. I frown at him and he looks, as if for the first time, at my business suit.

‘Err, you’re not…..’

Yep I am you whiskery twat and they are offices not shops. A2 planning use for an office, A3 for a restaurant and A1 for retail, you shaggy-haired track-suit bottomed-wearing, ignoramus. 

Opportunity to make another friend I don’t want spurned, I move on to collect the items I was told to get. My phone throbs twice in my suit jacket  but I ignore it. Do something old school, like leave a message - or write a postcard.

‘Oh no.’ I mutter when I head for the tills and realise only one is manned. This is where the cost-cutting is. Of course they have the dreaded self-scan tills, my personal bete noire. I look in desperation for a staff member who might open one of the other tills, all with a red lane light illuminated. Nothing. And the three women ahead of me in the queue for green-lit lane two all have vast trollies overspilling with enough goods to support a Calais migrant camp for a fortnight. No wonder they are so fat they need to wear voluminous sports wear. Not that they’ll be jogging anywhere. 

‘Unexpected item in bagging area.’ Trills the automated voice, as I can’t decide which side are the scales and which side you put your pre-scanned shopping. Then the two items I’ve been send to collect - of course - refuse to have their barcodes read. Now I’m getting flustered and angry. And needless to say the PA system announces lane two will shortly be opening, just as the red mist descends.

The spotty oik I finally manage to attract, comes across and puts in an over-ride key. Then smugly taps in the barcode manually, the numbers are so small I can’t even read them. Then pleasingly, in a perverse way, he too fails to get the items recognised.

‘I’ll get something else to the same value.’ Says the lad. disappearing. ‘Leave them in the trolley and scan the other items.’

‘There you go.’ Says the employee, having fooled the machine with a citrus-flavoured toilet cleaning product. ‘Just hand this back to me when you go.’ He instructs, leaving me with an oversize lime and lemon polo mint on a backing card, before going to rescue someone else. Flustered I do as instructed as I exit the shop.

It’s only when I get back to the office, that I realise with horror, I walked out without paying.

I’m thinking Aldi, next time.

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Frosty The Groanman - Thursday

‘Are you going to need to defrost the car this morning?’ Asks my wife as she arrives in her dressing gown. The kitchen lights are blazing, it’s still dark outside and I can’t really blame her for still being in nightwear. I’m just pissed off I’m in a suit, with trousers a little snugger than I remember, with a cold day ahead of me - and that’s before I try and speak to that frosty solicitor in the chain of seven, I’ve been chasing.

‘Already on it.’ I tell my wife, looking in the cupboard and wondering where she’s hidden all the sugary cereal options? She’s noticed the waistband issue too and the only Frosties now to be found seem to be hanging off my car door mirrors.

‘Do you mean you’ve been out on the drive in your pyjamas again?’ She quizzes. ‘’No, that was only once,’ I reply sniffily. ‘And nobody saw me.’

‘Just as well, or the house values would plummet faster than the temperature.’ 

Great, everybody is a property expert - except, curiously, the ones you'd hope would be. But enough about on-line call-centres masquerading as the real thing.

‘So you’ve left the car running, outside?’ Continues my wife, as I vainly shift three boxes of morning repast, herbivore food. Still nothing with any more processing than a hippy shovelling bran droppings and nuts into an eco-friendly box a four year old could have constructed, with leftover packaging from an Amazon delivery..

‘I’m hoping someone might steal it.’ I reply, giving up on the dusty scraping from a stable floor and heading to the bread bin.

‘Wasn’t there a memo about that, warning it would be a disciplinary offence?’ She asks. Nothing much gets past her.

‘It’s the only way I’ll get a new company car before this one is a collector’s item.’ I grumble, as I realise there’s no white bread in sight, just a seedy, uncut offering, that will probably shatter another filling if I munch down on it.

My rival manager, the vertically challenged H, is awaiting another new German car after hitting his year end target with three months to spare. I’m stuck with the poorly bolted together effort from what remains of Britain’s car industry. It seems even opportunist thieves round my way can’t be arsed to steal a base model Vauxhall with less extras than a sixth-former’s film project. Either that, or they are still in bed on such a chilly morning.

‘I’m not sure it’s good for the environment.’ Says my wife as I pick at the toasted granary off-cut I’ve opted for. Needless to say it’s burnt down one side and still cold on the other. I can’t cut a slice of bread straight to safe my life and my toaster purchases run in to double figures, yet I’ve still to find one that is fit for purpose. I’ve a good mind to write to James Dyson, or perhaps take a couple of slices to the local motorway services and thrust them in one of those air-blade machines - although pubic hairs on your breakfast isn’t too appetising either…

‘Not sure no longer warming my car up on the drive, so I can see where I’m going is going to, will make much difference to the ozone layer while China’s factories pour out unchecked emissions.’ I respond prissily.

‘That’s not a good attitude.’ She tells me officiously, stabbing at her smartphone to see if either of our sons wants to talk to her. I could point out the irony here - her hand-held communication device was almost certainly soldered together by a small, dark-haired,oval-eyed individual, with a persistent cough and a lung complaint.

Her words ringing in my ears, the exact words I heard when I spoke to the bean counter boss last and moaned about our unachievable office targets,I slip-slide on to the drive. The car screen has cleared and the exhaust plume isn’t quite so voluminous. 

‘Lucky nobody stole that.’ Says the anally-retentive car washer next door, as he pulls his pristine motor from a garage that can actually accommodate a car.

I give him the cold shoulder.

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