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.

Adverse Conditions - Monday

‘For crying out loud, is it ever going to stop raining?’ Asks assistant manger T, as he stumbles through the office door, hair unusually ruffled, designer glasses steamed up, sang-froid a little soggy.

‘I’m not doing outside appointments if I can help it.’ States loose lettings lush B to a mixture of bemusement and resignation – unfortunately not hers.

‘You can’t just stay in the office because it’s a bit damp outside.’ Chides negotiator S, a step ahead of me as usual.

‘You don’t have to go out there and meet the weirdo tenants and cheapskate landlords I have to deal with.’ Snaps back B. ‘They dampen my spirits enough as it is without ruining my outfits and making my mascara run unnecessarily.’

I’m spoilt for choice. A torrent of lines featuring B spending most of her time indoors, studying more ceilings than inventories and having damp clothes and tear-flushed make-up even on sunny days, washes around my head. But the desire for no more hysterical sobbing and the dawning realisation B is becoming a bit like me- just with more alcohol and casual sex – makes me keep my powder dry.

‘I reckon those new homes they built near the river will be getting a bit twitchy.’ I state, with more than a little relish. It still rankles the slimy local developer didn’t give me the business.

‘Do you think they’ll flood?’ Asks T shaking his raincoat and sending water droplets onto the window display with a hint of electrical arcing. If I have to replace another low-voltage lighting transformer at exorbitant cost I’ll hot wire into the mains and just take the consequences, however shocking...

‘You build on a flood plain what do you expect?’ I tell T sagely.

‘Think I flogged some home and contents insurance to one of those buyers.’ Muses fat finance man M while munching on a slice of microwave pizza. I’ve told him about eating in the office and I’ve told him about the smell, but I might as well be King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

‘Will it pay out?’ Asks trainee F.

‘The thing about insurance.’ Says M between mouthfuls. ‘Is they like to take premiums but are not to keen on settling claims. Kind of mucks up their business model.’

‘That’s wrong.’ States F naively.

‘You don’t get commission clawbacks when some dickhead dies in the first few years of life cover.’ Retorts M witheringly.

I don’t know why we have such a bad reputation.

‘I suppose that leaflet drop is out of the question now?’ I muse semi-rhetorically, as the rain cascades down the window later.

‘You are kidding right?’ Questions T warily. His umbrella is still propped-up by the door, a small pool of water around it accelerating the warping of the cheap laminate fake-wood flooring the corporate cowboy builders fitted, on the last botched refurbishment.

I’m only half in jest. The leaflets have been printed-off. The mystery couple that urgently want to buy in your road obliquely sourced from the mailing list. The target areas identified. It’s just the shoe leather and desire that needs to be furnished.

‘In my day.’ I begin to a chorus of groans. ‘I went out rain, snow or cyclone.’

‘Aren’t they only found in tropical areas?’ Snipes M.

‘You can get them in the UK too.’ I tell him with more conviction than I feel. I don’t have a smart enough phone to Google and check, like those spotty students who keep winning the pub quiz by on-line cheating.

‘Not sure you can.’ Carps M as F looks on in bovine bemusement. I’m still not sure if I could use a bolt gun on F, with those big Friesian eyes.

‘Don’t you remember the great storm of 1987?’ I snap to instant regret.

‘I wasn’t born then.’ Says F after a long hesitation, presumably while he tried to recall his date of birth.

‘You must remember.’ I tell M but he shakes his fat head.

‘You then?’ I say towards B as she files her nails aggressively.

‘Not really.’ She answers disinterestedly.

‘Michael Fish.’ I continue almost pleadingly. ‘Said it wasn’t going to be windy.’

Blown out again.

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