IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES

Monday 18 January 2016

Cold and wet with torrential showers 5 degrees

The rain was battering the shutters and the rattle of the hinges woke me up to the gloom of the morning.  My pillow was cold to the touch and I could hear the dog and OH snoring in the other room.

I lay and was thinking of how to create my button empire when it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to do the VAT return - normally due on the 16th of each month.  20% VAT is included on all of my sales but I can also deduct it from relevant purchases.  Consequently, I hoard every little scrap of paper which is possibly deductible.  Rifled through my handbag and the pile of post and junk and extracted a wad of receipts and quickly entered them up and filed the return.

OH got up and we had breakfast - me some delicious Lidl Mastercrumble and OH a banana.  His middle has grown to alarming proportions and, instead of cutting down on meals later in the day, or wine, or both, he has started to eat a banana for breakfast and be in a bad mood by lunchtime.

Out to meet a client from Paris.  The sun came out and the fields were clear, apart from the village where we were meeting.  When the air is colder than the water, mist forms.  There is a large river near the village and puffs of fog had completely obscured both the road and houses and the church.  The lady had managed to find the Mairie so we set off and found the house.  The owners had opened up.  I could tell, on meeting her, that the property would not be a match.  She was very young, Chinese, with beautiful dark almond eyes and sleek coal black hair.  She liked the decorative concrete flagged floors.  She was entranced by the red squirrel on the larch.  She didn't like the rest of it at all and said she preferred the Dordogne so she went one way and I went home to collect dog and meet OH at the rental units.  

The oven slotted into the space very nicely but it became immediately apparent that the shelf on which it was sitting was not square.  Out came the oven and OH inserted some wooden pegs and we put back in the shelf and the oven and it was now tipping the other way.  I was instructed to unscrew the pegs and apparently I am useless and was stripping the threads (sounds like a Folk Dance - come people, let's Strip the Threads') and was dismissed.  Decided to walk the dog up a little hill in the middle of town.  Nearly sodding killed me.  I am so unfit.  Dog thrilled and kept on trying to run off.

Back home and new button moulds have arrived - yay!!  Gritted my teeth and rang EDF.  The last three times I have rung them, they insist the electric meter in the new flat does not exist.  This time, the phone was answered by a young guy who, miraculously, found the meter - registered to a different address and we set up an appointment for Friday to get the electric meter opened.  That is what I call a result and is something off the long term To Do List.

Dried off the dog and scraped the mud off myself and plastered on some makeup and went to reshow the big chateau.  The lane was horrifically muddy with big potholes and the clients were already there.  The man looked excited and the woman looked cold but, thank God, they are not French or otherwise they would not have got up the driveway.  They would have been sitting back at the entrance, waving their arms like sea anemones and saying 'c'est impassable'.  French are total wimps.  The owner was late, by which time we were all very muddy, and the clients disappeared into the vastness of the building and I went into the biblioteque and thought of the first time I had come here, just over a year earlier.

It had been the week before Christmas and the owner, a lady in her mid 80's, had welcomed me in and we had drunk coffee from delicate Dresden porcelain and eaten Bavarian Christmas biscuits - golden brown and shaped like little donuts.  The fire had roared in the grate and, incongruously, a Star Wars chess set lay on the coffee table, a game half played.  Today, the room was dark and chilled.  A beady eyed ancestor watched me from his perch above the massive mantlepiece.  I sat on a chaise longue and looked at a copy of A Tale of Two Cities. 

 " It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way

The clock ticked and the owner reappeared and made coffee and somehow, we got onto the subject of the War (he is German).  I dont know quite how it happened and I found myself asking how a people as rational as the Germans could have followed Hitler.  What was his appeal?  The treaty of Versailles was the answer, and austerity, and the desire for change.  I repeated this to OH later and he said if the Germans didnt like the Versailles Treaty then they shouldnt have taken us into two World Wars.  The owner also said that the French actually always regarded the British as the real enemy and I thought, I bet that was not what the French were thinking when they were overrun and occupied.  He then swerved onto the topic of Top Gear, which we both love.

The clients reappeared and said they had to go and would be in touch next week.

Back home and my Whatsapp app on the phone binged and oh bloody, sodding hell, the buyer for the flat has backed out.  Remember the one where I worked New Year's Day and the day when I was throwing up?  Fan bloody tastic.  She doesnt want to pay the bank loan rate and her mate wont lend her the money (after saying he would).  Owner majorly hacked off.

Went to bed early.  Very tired.

TIME TO REGROUP....

Monday 4 January 2016

Very wet - non stop rain

The thing about being an estate agent is that the show isn't over until the lady (fat or otherwise) has bought something with the opposition....  After the disappointment over the flat which she absolutely loved and which the owner forgot to tell me is actually, and properly, sold - I regroup and show some more houses which belong to my colleague's portfolio and they are similarly rejected so I organise a visit on a private sale and it is the apartment underneath the one she loves.  As backup, I have two town houses with shops.  

Because the client tells me she is going Monday, I have to ring up the clients on Friday which is New Year's Day but no one seems to mind.  We are in the low period for sales and sellers sit at home, looking at the rain, and wonder is this going to be the year when they can move on.  A UK estate agent estimates that a property is starting to hang about if it is on sale for six months.  Here, if something sells in less than three months, it is nothing short of a miracle.  The town houses with shops have been on sale for at least three years.  There is demand but the locals are broke and difficult to please and the foreign nationals can choose to live anywhere.  It is a fiendish problem and, as a seller myself, I am only too aware of the stresses.  We bought an apartment block in town and the top flat, with its 42 stairs, took SEVEN years to sell.

We trek around the town houses with shops and the lady is very excited about the one in town, until she gets through the front door.  The odour of dog is still, alas, very strong even though the owners have moved out.  It looks dark and sad and as if they just upped sticks and ran South to a drier clime.  Dishes on the table, shoes in the hall, a dried up bowl of dog food.  The client starts reversing towards the door and we go and see the other town house which is charming but strangely arranged and this one is not a goer either.

The client is naturally effervescent but I can sense she is fading so I whip her around the flat underneath the one she initially wanted to buy and her fizz comes right back and she says she loves it.  On goes the happy hat again and I can hear the reindeer bells faintly jingling.  She says I need to come back to the house where she is staying and we can discuss the purchase process.

We get back to the house, bought by her friend through me just last year, and still knee deep in wires, cables and paint pots.  Her friend persuades some paint off her hands and opens a bottle of rosé (it is 6 pm) and we have nuts and paté and drink.  I listen to their phone messages and one of them says that the house owner needs to go into the maternity unit for 9 am tomorrow morning and to make sure she has a shower first.  As the lady in question is in her mid 50s and has only ever associated with other ladies, this is quite a surprise and we fall about laughing.  My client says she wants to take her friend to see the flat tomorrow, and will stay over a couple of days more, and I go home and OH has made delicious seafood ragout and opened a bottle of Cava.  Fall asleep whilst trying to watch Charade with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn...

A DISNEY MOMENT AND MORE ROPE THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT

Saturday 2 January 2016

Raining a lot at home 12 degrees

Nine o'clock and it was still dark and grey and the rain lashing down on the gravel in the courtyard.  Some soggy birds were lurking in the upstairs window of the barn.  RJ had been up for two and a half hours and wandering around, fully dressed.  He is used to running a large kitchen and has forgotten how to relax.  He had not used the time to put away the dishes or clean the fire or sort out his mess in the hallway....  OH, on the other hand, has no problem in relaxing.  He is relaxed to the point of being comatose.  I dig him out of bed and suggest we go to the coast.  If, for nothing else, to stock up on beer and loo paper.  How on earth do men get through SO much loo roll?????  

We head towards the coast and the sky is blue on one side and slate black on the other.  A massive rainbow arches over the sky, thick and brilliant with colour.  And, miraculously, the cars on the auto route have their own little rainbows, glowing ephemerally around their chassis.  We drive through a rainbow thrown off by a lorry.  A Disney moment...

On the coast, there isn't a cloud in sight and town is heaving with well wrapped up people, enjoying the ozone and stiff breeze, and periodically shrieking and running away from the spray which makes it over the prom wall.  We park, eventually, and go for a quick drink before hitting the shops.  The coffee comes in large bowl like cups, its froth shaped into a leaf and accompanied by glossy cream and yellow potato and cheese tortilla, full of butter and salt. 

The shops are in full sale mode but still shockingly expensive.  The joy of coming to this particular town is that, each time, I discover curious shops which on subsequent occasions, disappear and are never to be refound.  This time, we come across a shop which sells braided items.  Stacked from floor to ceiling, there are ropes as thick as your arm, there are hessian ropes and jute ropes and synthetic fibre ropes in every dimension down to fine finger width.  There are, to my joy, many ribbons and cords and I am torn between deep mulberry, golden, silver or three tone brown, green and white cord.  I end up with five metres of the latter and make sure I have their business card.  I should have bought some of the gold.....  

The men are now hungry so we go to the Oquendo bar which has photos of all the stars who have come to the Film Festival over the years.  We eat rabillitos which are deep fried balls of ham and cheese and more coffee and try and spot who is who...

Then to the big centre commercial where the car park is SO full that there are men with batons directing the traffic.  The supermarket itself is relatively quiet so we are back on the road by 4 pm but alas the traffic is appalling so we don't get home until nearly 7.  

Shark steak and spinach salad with crisp white wine for supper.  Wonderful.