Glad Tidings We Bring - Monday

I pull up outside an identikit  ‘executive’ detached house on the sort of soulless estate you’ll find anywhere in Britain, the only difference being prices each area can sustain. You have to laugh, because the architects who design these developments invariably live in a Grade Two listen ex-vicarage somewhere semi-rural, with at least half an acre of garden.

I notice the house I’m visiting is the only one without Christmas lights twinkling in the window, or draped across the bargeboards like LED stalactites. At least I won’t be tripping over a tacky Santa Please Stop Here sign when I walk up the meagre front garden. The bloke I’m seeing is in the middle of a matrimonial dispute, the wife and kids have gone and he’s left with four bedrooms and a mortgage he can’t sustain.

I ring the bell, already feeling gloomy. Separations are poisonous at the best of time and I’m not about to make this guy’s Christmas by telling him he won’t have enough equity left to buy an airing cupboard, once everyone else has had their cut. When families split up at Christmas you never forget it – even after nearly forty years…

Three more rings and I’m about to give up and push a business card through the door, then a light comes on in the hall and I hear ponderous footsteps. At least he’s still alive, that poor girl who found a dead vendor on a viewing a few years back never got over it, plus the beneficiaries instructed another firm to sell the flat. A dead loss.

‘Sorry the place is a bit of a mess.’ Says the man as I follow him into the kitchen, surfaces strewn with the remains of several nights’ takeaway meals. He’s sporting an embryonic beard and dressed in jeans and a stained t-shirt. After half a lifetime of shaving everyday I long to sport designer stubble, but by the time I’ve paid off my own mortgage I’ll be producing the sort of beard only acceptable in a Father Christmas grotto.

‘Fancy a beer?’ Asks the soon to be ex-owner. He has several spent cans alongside the smeared tin foil containers and by the look of his red eyes is either half-pissed or has been crying. I decline. I never drink at work, I’m driven to drink but not until the closed sign is in the window.

A quick tour of the echoing house, kids’ rooms stripped of stuffed toys and Play Stations, we’re back on the stools, sat at the grubby worktop. Too dark to look at the garden and not much need, the plots here are parsimonious. I can see the house behind through the fast-growing Leylandi and I know which way we’re facing from experience.

‘You married?’ Asks the man as I prepare to hit him with the price. It’s better than it might have been twelve months ago, but it still isn’t what he’ll want to hear. I answer in the affirmative.

‘Too bad.’ He continues. ‘I was going to warn you off.’ Then with a wry smile he tells me the old adage about a woman being like a hurricane. They spin you round, f**k you up and when they leave, take half your house with them. I’ve heard it before, of course, but if you want someone’s business you’ll laugh at their jokes, coo at their children, pat their dogs and even…. actually in this case I don’t need to screw his wife, someone else is already doing that.

‘You having a laugh?’ Challenges the man, almost spitting out his lager, when I tell him what he’d need to ask for a reasonably quick sale. And again I curse a certain tabloid newspaper that runs House Price Rise stories almost daily. You don’t get much variety as a journalist with that outfit.

‘Well I’m just going to have to stay put.’ Concludes the man with a hint of satisfaction as we part. I want to keep him sweet – although he doesn’t know I’m back here tomorrow to meet his wife.

After all it’s the season of goodwill to all men – and women if they’re the decision maker.

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Have a peaceful Christmas and thanks for reading.

S.A.

Village Idiot - Friday

Bunch of pirates.’ I say, as I sit in the back of a car for a change and we wind through ever-smaller communities.

‘Is he always like this?’ Asks the lady driver, my wife’s friend.

‘Pretty much.’ My beloved concedes.

‘What about them?’ Asks the other husband, who is sat alongside me, indicating another for sale board.

‘Shitesters and fee cutters.’ I pronounce decisively.

‘He can never switch off.’ Informs my wife as I glance through the steamy car window at another board, one I don’t recognise. I should keep a record book like those bird-watchers, then start again every January – or maybe not.

‘Local independent.’ I say to the other man. We’ve decided to back female equality with all the vigour of a brace of blokes who can now drink at lunchtimes without having to drive afterwards.

‘Are they better then?’ Quizzes my companion, beery breath in my face.

‘Not necessarily.’ I tell him enigmatically, thinking, buy the book if you want tips on the property game. But then writing anonymously isn’t the best marketing strategy I could have adopted. Didn’t really think that through.

‘You won’t find any estate agents where we’re staying anyway.’ Says my wife as we thump across a cattle grid and move into the sort of desolate moor land where most summers, there will be a wild animal on the loose tale circulating, mainly for the amusement of any American werewolves nowhere near London.

She’s right. We have a long weekend in a converted pigpen where the rental is enough to make me squeal. The small community can just about sustain a weathered pub and the sort of shop-cum-post office that is more endangered than the big cat supposedly roaming after dark, stealing sheep. I’m figuring a couple of swarthy Eastern Europeans with a four-by-four and rudimentary butchering skills are more likely to be the farm animal killers, than an escaped tiger. But what do I know?

‘What do you reckon this place is worth?’ Asks the husband as we unpack enough food and drink to sustain a fortnight snowed in. I give him my best estimate and he whistles.

‘Crikey how do the locals afford that sort of money?’ He asks aghast, as I try to open the firkin of real ale we’ve picked up en-route. Not sure how many pints in the poly-container but I’m intent on finding out.

‘They can’t afford it.’ I tell him. ‘This is second homeowner land. I bet most of the lights will be off when we walk to the pub later - unless it’s another power cut.’

I come across similar dilemmas every day just more densely packed. If you are already on the property ladder and selling, it doesn’t matter how leftwing your ideals are they soon go out the - recently refurbished in keeping with the Grade Two listed elevation yet still featuring discrete double glazed thermal efficient panels - sash windows, once the asking price is floated: “We’re not giving it away Rupert, not after all we’ve done to it”.

‘You were right.’ Agrees my drinking buddy as we make our way through the darkened hamlet, strange braying noises to both sides. He seems a nice bloke. As an estate agent you choose your friends wisely. Invariably I’m a plus one with my wife. The ladies are now two-steps behind us, natural order briefly returned now there’s no driving do be done. They’ll be lagging back at the bar too.

‘Watch where you’re treading.’ I call back, torch flickering ominously. I meant to change the batteries but a last minute survey problem and my list of jobs for the team to remember distracted me. We step round a pile of freshly deposited shit that would take a JCB to scoop and bag, then see the meagre pub lights.

‘They have dead animals on the wall.’ Hisses my wife as we sit in one corner, locals watching us suspiciously. If they find out I’m responsible for their in-bred children not being able to afford to live here, I’m fearing a Wicker Man moment. I couldn’t light the log burner, but I’m guessing I’d combust quite well.

‘It’s a fox.’ I tell my wife witheringly. ‘Why would they mount a camel’s head?’

She got the hump.

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Refreshment in a property desert here:

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