Fascist Regime - Sunday

I don’t know half these people.’ I tell my wife, as we turn up at the Jubilee street party to celebrate 60 years of the Queen’s reign. In 1977 I bought The Sex Pistols, God Save The Queen, convinced anarchy would be a good thing for the UK. Now a load of royalists in 1950’s frocks they bought from one of countless charity shops in the blighted High Street, are singing rather engaging patriotic songs. Time and bags of equity in your home can soften the angriest of left-wingers.

I’m expecting some wag to buttonhole me and complain about property prices after a few glasses of punch. The old feisty attitude I wore, along with numerous lapel badges when punk rock was at its height, has been submerged for much of my working life. Hidden behind a sales’ smile and the slow leeching of establishment values into a philosophy that looks more and more flawed the farther into mortgages, pensions and savings you get sucked. I haven’t gobbed at anyone for thirty years.

Several drinks in and after three plays of a Vera Lynn compilation on the PA system, I start to loosen up. ‘This isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.’ I slur to my wife when she detaches herself from a gaggle of middle-aged women with dyed hair and vein-lined legs.

‘See,’ she admonishes gently. ‘These are really nice people. They’re the same as you.’

And the uncomfortable realisation I normally get in the shaving mirror, washes over me and replaces the light-headed rush of alcohol. With unwelcome clarity, I see I’m not the idealist with a full head of hair and a 32-inch waist any longer. I’m the same as them – just with better legs.

‘You’re the estate agent right?’ Questions the bloke from several doors up who washes his Audi TT as if it’s his penis. I don’t know his name and have decided he’s a knob, at least until he wants a valuation. I give a cautious affirmative and paste on the smile that used to be a snarl when I played Neat Neat Neat by The Damned, at full volume. I’m expecting some one-sided diatribe about prices and parasites, but he surprises me just as the Glen Miller album replaces Vera.

‘So what do you reckon on these solar roof panels then?’ The man asks eagerly, gleaming eyes of a zealot as bright as his motor’s metallic blue paintwork.

Now I have a tricky decision to make. One not helped by several glasses of disarmingly fruity punch and the bouncy beat of a big band I used to hate with a passion. I have to quickly remember if his roof has succumbed to the ugly panels, I’m convinced will turn out to be as big a miss-selling scandal as Endowments and Payment Protection Insurance, in time. It hasn’t. So I tell him what I think, in an uncharacteristic – in public – rush of honesty. There’s an uncomfortable silence then he laughs and says.

‘Yep, me too, I reckon they’re a bloody eyesore. Bunch of Polar Bear loving Greens with more money than sense buy them just to sop their conscience. It’ll take decades to get the money back and I’m betting the panels won’t still be working.’

‘Some nice people here.’ I slur to my wife as I start to feel semi-detached. Then the royalist versus republican argument breaks out from nowhere, as someone plays the National Anthem. While the temperature rises and storm clouds gather, a lairy bloke - who must be renting - starts to bad-mouth the Queen and I find myself reluctantly defending her. Obviously I can’t do the same for Charles, his tree hugging and his hangers on. It’s only thirty-five years since the bondage trousers and The Buzzcocks, after all.

‘That wasn’t helpful.’ Hisses my wife as the party disperses and the rain starts to fall. She has a point. I thought I’d defuse the situation by posing the Diana v Camilla question and asking who would shag Camilla?

But it got ugly.

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Blame Game - Wednesday

‘Of course you lot are to blame for prices being all out of kilter.’ Announces the beardy bloke sitting in front of me, with the sort of zealot’s certainty, only someone unable to get on the housing ladder can muster. I’ve made the mistake of sitting at trainee F’s desk while he’s out at lunch. It’s the sort of team building, down with the troops gesture that would escape my bean counter boss as he’s never sold anything other than his soul, but I’m beginning to regret it.

‘You just want more commission so you shove prices higher and higher.’ Continues the failed radical, who if I was a betting man probably has some worthless degree in a touchy-feely social sciences subject, where you don’t actually start work until you’ve done several spurious post-grad postings and passed your thirtieth birthday.

 I could tell the man that an extra ten grand on a house sale at 1.5% commission means just £150 to me and is not worth the hassle, but I’d be wasting my breath, plus with remedial maths I can never be sure - even on simple sums - if I’ve got it right. Not without the digital comfort blanket of my metric converter calculator. It does have a solar powered battery though, which might please this polar bear apologist who is really starting to piss me off.

‘Big business milking the little guy, you’re all in it together.’ He rails, sweeping his hand towards our internal property panels where we display the old dogs that have been on the market before this man did his first protest march. ‘I mean look at these,’ he continues speck of spittle in his beard. ‘How can ordinary people expect to buy even a broom cupboard?’

I’m not big business you shaggy-haired wastrel, I think angrily, as I try to keep the neutral expression pasted on my face, something I struggle more an more with as time and tossers wear me down. I’m just trying to keep a roof over my head like anyone else. A roof I’ve bothered to get without whining about it in agents’ offices, or on some self-aggrandising web forum peopled by jobless men in their pyjamas bitching about prices. Men – and it’s usually men - who should just look at some porn instead of pursuing lengthy threads arguing with other bed-sit dwellers all sporting chipped shoulders and erections.

If he’s looking for blame to apportion, I think, as his nasally voice continues like a persistent mosquito, try greedy vendors. Try years off irresponsible lending by banks and building societies led by anal accountants like my boss. Try flawed government housing policies. I could go on, but he’s doing it for me. I start to wonder when F will be back, but he’s probably in some car park with his dippy girlfriend. The headlining on the company motor has some unexplained markings and there’s always an odd smell inside after F’s been for a ride…

‘I need three bedrooms as my girlfriend’s got a daughter and we’re expecting our own child.’ He buzzes. ‘I mean what are we expected to do?’ Try contraception? I ache to say, and an internal rant that would shame a Daily Mail copywriter spools through my brain like radio static.

I’d sympathise with this guy if he weren’t so irritating. In a different life, if I’d learnt to play the guitar, or pursued a destructive desire to be another penniless writer, it could be me the other side of the desk. Homeless, or locked into poor quality rented accommodation feeling alienated by society – only with better dress sense and a decent haircut.

‘Do you know how much my salary will allow me to buy at?’ Asks the man, hint of despair replacing the anger in his voice. I do, which is why I’ve not bothered referring him to fat financial advisor M, who is in his office feeding off something more substantial and far sweeter.

‘And where am I expected to get a £40,000 deposit from?’ Spouts my tormentor. ‘Do you have any cheap homes at all?’

Curiously, not many owners want their homes to be a bargain.

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