Start Again - Thursday

‘Oh for f**ks sake.' I exclaim angrily, hurling the phone handset down.

‘Problem?’ Asks idiot trainee F gormlessly. 

No, I always shout expletives in the open office and incur another office swear-box fine, you numpty.

I dislike January more than most months. The extra weight I’m carrying after the Christmas excesses, the dull, damp weather, the pressure to partake in Dry January and foreswear all alcohol, when all I want to do is drink - and swear.

‘The Patels buyer has pulled out.’ I finally tell F, head slowly shaking like a nodding toy dog, losing kinetic energy.

‘Why? They seemed so keen before Christmas.’ Asks F.

‘Worried about Brexit, think they may have overpaid, their buyer is stalling and being awkward on proposed completion dates, not sure if they can raise the deposit any longer……’ I tail off.

‘Which one?’ Probes F.

‘All of them.’

Property purchase has always been fraught with problems, if it’s not the legal mechanics with delays and incompetence, it’s the human component multiplied by however many people are in the transaction chain. That familiar old statistic - I’ve quoted before - that one in three sales founders, still holds true after three decades in the industry, two property crashes, and more booms than a Queen's birthday salute. It’s why the pay up-front, internet “agents”, are starting to unravel without ever really grasping the business.

‘I don’t know how you keep doing it year after year, with the constant setbacks and the targets just going up and up.’ States F, with unaccustomed insight. ‘ You must be so sick.’

‘Stoic?’ You mean, I ask frowning.

‘No, sick.’ Repeats F beginning to look unsure.

Is he insulting me or praising?

‘The good sick?’ I ask. ‘The way the youngsters use it, or the just not very well and in need of treatment variety?’ F looks worried.

‘It’s alright you can say.’ I urge, just wanting to know.

‘Bit of both.’ F finally says haltingly. ‘ Cup of tea?’

Yes please.

‘It’s really quiet isn’t it.’ States F, once he’s made the cuppa.

‘Nature abhors a vacuum.’ I tell him staring at the grease globules floating on the surface of my beverage.

‘What does that mean?’Asks F cautiously. I still wonder what he did in private school for seven years, this level of stupidity usually leads to a career in politics, not property.

‘I mean, everybody is waiting to see what happens with Europe, trade deals, the economy, interest rates, the whole nine yards.’

‘Nine yards?’

’It’s a sporting expression.’

‘Football?’

‘American.’

‘They don’t really play it that much,’ opines F before adding brightly ‘Although they have had Beckham and Rooney.’

See what I’m up against?

The door opens and in shuffles one of our elderly regulars. Time-wasters are the bane of an estate agent’s life. Advisors and so-called property experts will tell you every enquiry is a potential fee-earner and on paper, they are. But with only so many hours in the day, days in the week, months in the year, years in a decade, you have to make decisions to drop people who will only leave their home, feet-first, on an undertaker’s gurney.  

‘We’ll get plenty of valuations this time of year.’ I tell F. ‘ People wanting to split-up after spending too much time with each other over the holidays, but half of them will stay together when they realise what they’ll have to live in, once they paid expenses and moved to something half the size.’

F looks at me soppily. What’s the fool going to say now, I wonder?

‘You know so much.’ He says smiling. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever build-up that sort of knowledge.’

You won’t. Even if you had an IQ upgrade. Your generation don’t stay in a career, or company, for long enough. I wouldn’t say they are even wrong, it’s a different employment marketplace out there now. You can stay too long. I’m a living example.

‘I sometimes think of you as a bit of a father-figure.’ Muses F, unsettlingly. 

I was going for a more gifted, elder bother. But I’m used to disappointment.

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Another Brave New World - Wednesday

The tie is new but everything else is the same – although the suit trousers seem a little snugger. Still not sure about the pattern if I’m honest, there was a time when I thought I’d never succumb to the tyranny of the tie, aside from a brief dalliance with some skinny versions when punk softened to new wave and I bought the first two Jam albums on the spin. But you junk ideology as rapidly as you take on mortgage and overdrafts.

‘You don’t like it do you?’ Asks my wife softly. For a moment I think it’s a general observation, predicated mainly on the mother of all Mondays – the first day back at the start of a fiscal year, when the clocks have yet to change but the targets are all re-set, and a statistical mountain looms ominously. But she’s talking about the tightly knotted present.

‘It’s fine.’ I lie, as I look in the mirror and see someone vaguely familiar, just older and greyer, staring back at me.

‘I have the receipt.’ Says my wife flatly. She knows. She always knows.

The road looks the same, washed in that orange streetlight glow which makes the scene resemble something from Blade Runner, only with high mileage Fords rather than Harrison Ford. The fastidious car cleaner is just leaving for work, his motor gleaming irritatingly. He catches my eye.

‘Happy New Year.’ He trills in a singsong voice. He doesn’t mean it, I don’t want to return it, but we both engage in the meaningless ritual. He’s something in figure-fiddling so probably has the same handshake as my bean counter boss - and he knows what I do, so he can’t really be wishing me well for the next twelve months of property market mayhem. We get blamed when prices go up, chastised when they go down.

I wave him on, as both cars look to leave at the same time. His headlights battle with his paintwork in trying to dazzle me. It’s as bright a start as I’m expecting, judging by previous years. A salesman needs resilience and a hide like a Rhino, but it’s a finite resource. I may have the right skin now; with the wrinkles and furrows deep enough to plant seedlings in, but my patience is wearing thin.

The drive is familiar - and contemptible. Fewer four-by-fours are out and about, as the school run has yet to recommence, but the usual collection of blank-eyed representatives are queuing nose-to-tail and that bastard in the JCB seems to be somewhere up ahead, judging by the orange flashing light moving at five miles an hour above all the exhaust-belching saloons.

‘Happy fortieth Shane.’ I mimic, as the car crawls under a hand-written banner, flapping mournfully from an overhead footbridge. ‘It’s all downhill from here Shaney-boy.’ I pronounce, wondering just when someone named Shane started to reach his fourth decade? Time marches on, I guess. The probate sales tend to be peopled by Arthur, Anthony, Mary and Margaret, so Shane is halfway there.

The car park is filling rapidly and the park itself still littered with takeaway boxes and a couple of early-rising winos. I take a wide route round both sets of detritus and spot the office window. A light has failed over the holiday period and I toy with just leaving it to see how quickly another member of staff spies the, less-than glaring error – but Easter is a long way off. I’ll be on the Diazepam by then if it remains that gloomy.

The answer phone is flashing insistently. I’m not expecting too many more Happy New Year greeting on this tape. I’m not disappointed – but then of course I am.

‘Happy New Year.’ Offers assistant manager T as he becomes the first to arrive, thirty-three seconds before start time. He knows too.

‘How many fall-throughs over the holiday?’ Asks T shrugging off his coat nonchalantly. It doesn’t seem to wound him as deeply as me – but then he’s not on 10%. I tell him.

‘So we’re on a minus figure before we start.’ He concludes accurately.

‘Ah-ha.’ I reply. ‘Everything is less than zero.’

T looks at me quizzically.

‘Elvis Costello.’ I tell him.

‘The dead Elvis?’

Not yet.

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Bean Counter Blues - Friday

Apart from the thrum of the central heating pump – it’s on the way out I just can’t face another plumber’s bill – the house is as silent as the night before Christmas. Both boys are home for the holidays as the rapidly emptying fridge and the array of unwashed plates and glasses in their rooms will testify, but they’ll be asleep until my third cup of office coffee.

‘You off in a minute?’ Murmurs my wife as I lurch from leg to leg trying to pull on socks in the dark without fully waking her.

‘Go back to sleep.’ I instruct her. ‘I’ll be gone in fifteen.’ At least I will if I can get my suit trousers to do up, I think glumly, as I hop to the bathroom.

I read somewhere the average calorie intake on Christmas day is 6,000 and I’ve been eating and drinking enough for a week’s worth of Christ’s birthdays. I’ll need to diet until Easter before these trousers will resurrect into something resembling a decent fit.

The belt is an old one, as witnesses by the worn holes I’ve been letting out annually. I look at the last available setting and try to tug back to the early December notch, but it’s a losing battle. My stomach feels like a fermenting vessel. There’s decidedly more gas in there than the office air conditioning units manage to retain. And as I look down gloomily I notice I have unmatched socks on.

‘Morning boss.’ Chimes trainee F as he hurries through the door with seconds to spare. I’ve been watching the clock and gently deflating for fifteen minutes. It’s just him and me with the short straw slot between Christmas and New Year. What you might term a skeleton staff if it wasn’t for my resemblance to that fat laughing policeman – only without the joviality.

‘God what’s that smell?’ Asks F as he takes of his coat to reveal the sort of ‘comedy’ tie I’ve warned against countless times.

‘I think the bins haven’t been collected.’ I fib, feeling another home brew bubbling up like those horrendous beer making kits people used to buy in the eighties. It only costs 15p a pint and the specific gravity is almost the same as Bass Special…

I reach into my drawer and select one of the spare neckwear items I keep for these occasions. The movement makes an audible sloshing sound and I feel as if I might actually burst. Even my shoes feel tight. Can your feet put on weight?

‘Oh come on, it’s a present.’ Moans F as he sees the paisley offering I’m going to insist upon, just so he learns a lesson.

‘Homer Simpson isn’t appropriate for the property market, no matter how laughable it’s going to be next year.’ I tell him churlishly, as I multi-task and reluctantly open an e-mail from the bean counter boss. It’s the final edition of my much argued over targets for the next twelve months.

‘For f**ks sake.’ I say angrily.

‘Ok I’ll wear it.’ Says F, hurriedly removing the offending item.

‘I meant this, not a fat man drinking Duff beer,’ I say, vaguely aware of the irony but still distracted by the latest inflationary figures. I push print and nearly fracture the keyboard.

The figures are more comedic than F’s tie and I watch as the laser printer churns out three pages of statistics. I didn’t need to physically manifest the nonsense on to A4 but there’s more warped satisfaction in actually ripping up something tangible in anger, than ranting at a 1920x1200 pixel-enriched screen.

‘He’s having a laugh isn’t he?’ Suggests F once he too has perused the office targets and the absurdly optimistic assumptions on average price and average fee, driving the whole work of fiction. One, even the Grimm brothers would have balked at.

‘It’s the same every year.’ I tell F regretting it instantly. It took a while to explain, but then I had plenty of time. The pavements might be teeming but the only units in the high street not promoting sales and big discounts are the estate agents.

Limited offer. Must end soon.

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