OFF THE WIRE, WOOD BATTLE AND INCONTINENT RABBIT

Wednesday 13 January

Sporadic rain and feeling chilly 8 degrees

Some people take to the Internet like birds take off from a wire but some people are back on the wire and have trouble getting their feet unknotted.  One of my first calls today was to a prospect who has enquired about a town house with shop.  The agency advertises on a portal website, on which you can find the properties of many agencies.  Each agency has properties in a limited number of towns but the portal website shows properties from all over Aquitaine.  Hence, the man's confusion.  

I explained the above to the prospect and then suggested he looked at some of my properties directly, and I gave him the short link.  He did not seem to be making any headway and it became apparent after twenty long, long minutes, that he was putting the link into the portal site search bar and not the Google bar.  

I emailed the link to him and he then could access my properties and he then started asking about houses in areas I have never heard of.  In the Dordogne and the Limousin.  In the Lot and the Tarn and the Gers.  Town houses and coach houses and campsites and hotel restaurants.  I don't know if he had spent some time recently in a Tardis, but nothing he was talking about has been available for 150k for about 15 years.

How long have you been looking for?  I ask.  Oh YEARS he replied.  He is the sort of client who makes me feel desperate.  Desperate that he doesn't show up in my town and make me spend days showing him properties before he vanishes into the ether.  He said he would send me links to the properties he does like - he couldn't find them during our conversation, despite much thumping of the keyboard - and I hung up and hoped he didn't get back to me.

The lady who made the offer on the flat sent me a message to say her friend who was supposed to be helping her out with a loan, now says he won't fund her.  She also said she may have a huge tax bill and that she would see about getting a loan independently.  Oh God I hope she doesnt back out.  The owner has ordered, at considerable expense, the diagnostic reports.  I dread telling owners that people have retracted.  Their disappointment is dreadful to bear for everyone involved.  And some of them get mad and nasty and the agent is always first in line.

OH comes back from the rental unit, where he has spent most of day light hours this week, following an ultimatum on my part to get on with it or I was putting in some artisans to finish it off.  He has given himself conjunctivitis from working in a very dusty environment, not opening the windows, and not wearing safety glasses.  Apparently I have to go to the chemist with him, in case the chemist has never seen a red eye before and is incapable of diagnosing it.  We go and are given some cream and I then get to walk the dog in between showers.  My phone rings and I am talking and when I look up, the dog has shot off along the path and is a good 200 metres away and receding.  I bellow and shout and he continues to go.  He is now deaf as a post and his eyesight is not brilliant.  Consequently running is required.  I am not built for running and it nearly kills me.  Fortunately he stops for a protracted sniff at the bridge before the road and I am haring up the track, shouting in a low register in the hope that he can hear this, when I am passed by some amused bikers who restrain the dog until I arrive, shout at him at lot, and put him on the lead.

Back home and bath time and then to the gyneocologist to see if my bits are in working order.  It is not a job I would fancy, spending my time looking at lady's interior workings and squeezing their boobs, even at 28 euros every 15 minutes.  Emerge with stomach ache and have to go and buy wood.  The wood is 2 metres long and I manage to lever it into a badly behaved trolley and get it to the check out where it refuses to go through the gap.  Bump into my female colleague who is cradling a box containing an incontinent rabbit.  Yellow liquid is dribbling out onto the floor.  Her daughter is enchanted, her previous rabbit went to heaven and she has a new one.  She does not have pee running down her arm, as does her unfortunate mother.  A most angelic looking child but an alleged fiend.

A vendeur comes along and says he will help me get the wood into the car - he has a technique - he nearly takes off the side of the counter and bashes up the glass awning at the exit of the shop but it goes into the car and I go home and OH has lit a fire and we both have a little sleep before supper.  Poor love.  He is not used to being upright for so many hours a day.

space oddity played on Utrecht church bells