Help The Aged - Tuesday

‘Is that Mr and Mrs Lattimer looking in the window?’ Asks negotiator S softly.

I look up from the jammed again colour printer - having narrowly resisted thrashing the wretched machine, like Basil Fawlty, primarily due to the lack of convenient shrubbery.

I spot the elderly couple, I recognise the elderly couple, only without S’s wonderful memory - and mammaries now I come to mention it - I’d never have recalled the name.

‘Yep, it’s them,’ I whisper like a poor-quality ventriloquist, all the while grinning inanely towards the ancient pair. ‘Only what the hell do they want this time?’

‘Perhaps they just want to pop in for a chat?’ Suggests S, half-heatedly. She knows it’s unlikely. If people want camaraderie and a sympathetic ear it’s the pub before the property man, or failing that a phone call to the Samaritans.

Now sales trainers - the folk who can tell but not sell - will have you mining that invisible seam of repeat business everyone searches for. It can work in lettings, where relationships build, develop and might prosper, but according to recent research the average British homeowner only moves every 21 years. Looking at the Lattimers they haven’t got that long.

They were good clients when they sold with me - please don’t call vendors customers, any more than my office is a shop - but if there is another move in them it will be straight out the door on the undertakers gurney, or a squeeze into a sheltered retirement home. Not much difference square footage-wise, except for the brass handles on the box.

The Lattimers are all smiles as they greet me, so they obviously want something for free. They also remember my name and use it. I’d tell you, but it would mean the end of a beautiful friendship and a contract that would definitely complete.

‘We wanted your advice.’ Gushes Mrs Lattimer with a lipstick-smeared-teeth smile. She looks like a wrinkly velociraptor in drag and compounds my distaste by keeping hold of my outstretched hand and leaning in to plant a slippery smacker on my cheek. Yuck.  Not even close family get a kiss on the cheek unless I’ve been drinking heavily, and don’t even start me on those vapid city types who think they are part-Parisian and need to air-kiss on both bloody sides.

With the elderly pair ensconced in my office, somewhere I prefer more and more to avoid, particularly after the intranet server blocked the more entertaining websites, I ask how I can help?

Before they can answer there’s a tap at the door and S appears with a tray and three steaming mugs of something hot and tasty. Take away the decrepit Lattimers and lose the drinks and I’d be happy to accommodate S, but that’s another story…

‘Well we’re in a bit of a dilemma.’ Begins Mr Lattimer, as I think welcome to the club, while still silently cursing S for bringing in unrequested drinks. If this pair are wasting my time I’ll need an asbestos-lined gullet to drink the tea as quickly as I’d like and even then they’d still be sipping and pontificating. The retired have no real concept of time when they’re stealing it from you, yet never stop moaning how quickly it hastens them to the grave. I’ll be different, of course.

‘We’re thinking of an equity release scheme on our house.’ Reveals Mr Lattimer, after unsolicited news of their offspring and an imminent grandchild.

Don’t do it. I yearn to say abruptly, while mentally holding the door for them. But it’s complicated. It’s always complicated.

They explain, as if I’ve never heard it, how they are worried how long they’ll live and if their funds will last and how long they can stay in their home without help and a stairlift. Then they reveal their children are tapping them up for a bank of Mum and Dad handout.

With UK house prices often defying gravity it’s a relatively new way of kids getting cash without waiting for their parents to croak. 

What was my advice?

Well you can book a free, no obligation, consultation - if you can find me.

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Sun Damage - Wednesday

‘Who’s that wizened old crone staring in the window?’ I hiss to negotiator, S as I try not to make eye contact with the elderly lady staring past the property pictures.

S look up from her screen surreptitiously, as I walk obliquely across the office racking my brain for recognition. The woman looks familiar, but then I see an awful lot of faces and to be honest I tend to remember the brick elevations more readily than the flesh and blood ones - particularly if the wearer has more sun damage than the pyramids and is about as ancient. 

‘Isn’t that Mrs….’ Falters S. She’s struggling and she’s brilliant with names. I can barely remember my own some days.

‘Could you give me a clue?’ I whisper desperately, as I see the woman peering even more avidly through the glass. She’s going to come in. I know she is.

‘Oh you know….’ Continues S

I don’t.

‘The couple from Waterside Gardens who moved to Spain a few years ago.’

‘The Greens?’ I ask hurriedly, as the woman outside moves hesitantly towards the door.

‘Close.’

‘Browns?’

‘Almost.’ Teases S.

‘For f•••s sake tell me.’ I growl as the mottled hand reaches for the door. The swear box is going to take another hit, but it’s worth it.

‘Black.’ Says S softly. ‘Mr and Mrs Black.’

The old lady comes in slowly. She looks like I do every quarterly award’s ceremony when that little shit H, my vertically-challenged rival branch manager, gets up on stage and waves the performance cup in my direction. Beaten.

‘Mrs Black.’ I exclaim effusively, moving over hand outstretched. ‘How lovely to see you.’

It’s not. I sold her house in Waterside Gardens against my better judgement. I wanted the commission but knew - like many - she’d tire of sunshine and sangria after a few months and want to buy her old home back for the same money she sold it for. Just rent it and get the folly out of your system old people. At least you’d have a fall back position when you become ill and realise the much-maligned NHS does have some merits - and a few more people with English as a first language. A few…

‘I wasn’t sure you’d recognise me.’ Says the old duck, falteringly.

‘Of course, I did.’ I lie, sensing S’s disapproval but not daring to catch her eye.

I’m hoping against hope Mrs Black is on a brief visit and not wanting to wind back the clock. They lose tens of thousand on ill-researched Spanish properties with dodgy drains and title, then can’t understand why the UK’s under-supplied market has moved on.

‘Mr Black not joining us today?’ I enquire jauntily and as soon as I say it, I regret it.

The old woman’s face crumbles. Shit he’s dead, I think, mind racing. Still, at least he doesn’t have to hear their old home would cost £75,000 more now. And that his widow could never afford it.

‘That was awkward wasn’t it?’ I say to S, after I’ve resorted to the communal box of tissues kept for when sales fall-through, and done my best Samaritans’ counselling session with poor old Mrs Black, before ushering her out the door.

Seems the locals didn’t speak much English, the rats were as big as cats and the plumbing wasn’t all they were used to. Oh, and of course Mr Black inconveniently died.

‘Will she be able to afford to buy here again?’ Asks S concernedly.

‘Half the size for more money.’ I predict glumly. ‘And that’s if she can ever shift a damp Costa Del Sol town house with crippling service charges and a pongy pool.’

‘Why do they do it?’ Muses S as I pass her a mug of tea I’ve made. I’m nothing if not democratic - except when it comes to leaflet drops on rainy days.

‘Grass is always greener.’ I tell S.

‘Not in Spain surely?’ She replies, with a twinkle in her eye.

‘Metaphorically speaking.’ I bat back, pleased she’s as sharp as she is - and still not pregnant.

‘Anything happening?’ Asks assistant manger T, breezing back from lunch.

Same old, same old.

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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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