Smelling of roses, almost...

Friday 10 April 2015

Cloudy 19 degrees

Woke early and rang agency boss to ask her how to play it with the owner of the house where I had received the full price offer but who had transparently cocked up over the detail of what he wanted to be included in the sales contract.  She says to keep it light, not talk legal obligations, and see if we can emerge out of this with a deal and smelling of roses rather than crap.

The owner is sitting at his dining table when I arrive and the new girlfriend serves coffee in translucent china cups.  I take a lump of brown sugar and stir it slowly and put the offer on the table.  We look at one another warily.  It does not feel like the OK Corrall but even so, the owner has got out all of the other sales contracts signed with other agencies and none of them have the flats included in the price.  He says he did not read the document properly when I sent it to him and he also says he has a written offer dated Wednesday (ie preceding mine) which is 60000 euros higher and he cannot afford to lose that much money.  He is also having further revisits later on in the day.  He has not signed the Wednesday offer document, but neither does he have any intention of signing mine.  He says if my ladies match the Wednesday offer, bearing in mind that the amount they would have to loan is significantly less, he would accept.  I get back out to the car and discover someone has smashed the wing mirror to bits by driving too closely and then driving off.  Go home slowly, hanging onto the wildly waving mirror part which is now only attached by a thread.  OH tapes it back together.  I drop a line to the potential buyers and they are, understandably, really hacked off.  Feel depressed.  Eat pizza.

OH has been busy during my time out and it transpires that he has organised a visit on our house for Sunday.  The clients are known to me and have been running around with another agency all week, now are feeling desperate because they have found nothing, and if I had accepted the visit from the agency (refused because house is a hovel), it would have been them who would have come!  OH has talked them through various properties and when the lady rings back, I organise to see one other and ours on Sunday.  Feel rather horrified.  Ms Noddi says to shove things in cupboards.  I cant put dust and dog smells in cupboards.  OH goes into town to have front tyres changed on car and book car in for new wing mirror. Insurance says there is no excess so that is good news.

Spend afternoon completing and loading up various documents for the offer which was accepted, organise the diagnostic reports and set a date with the notary for next Friday. Ideally, we will get the buyers signed up before they head back to the UK and speed things up by at least a month. 

Speak to youngest, WF, and he is going for an interview with a call centre car company. We tend to be of the opinion that if you can do a hard crappy job at the start, it is good experience for the future.  He has driving test at the end of the month.  Speak to eldest, RJ, who is fed up and looking for another job.  OH offers to come over at the end of May and drive him around to interviews.  He is very isolated where he works and, at 25, is not having an exciting life.  Restauration is so poorly paid too.  I think WF is earning more and working significantly fewer hours.  RJ needs a woman with a good financial head and a thick skin and they could open up a little resto together.

Catch up with the ladies who made the full price offer.  They are in Paris and lounging on a bed under a picture of the phases of construction of the Eiffel Tower.  They are significantly less hacked off and philosophical.  They love our town and are happy to have found it.  They may offer on the other property that we showed them providing I can get an idea of how much the renovation would cost.  Otherwise, I am mandated to go out and find them something lovely.  They want a Belle Epoque house at a reasonable price.  Somewhat of a challenge.  The excellent thing is that our relationship is still good and we still have their trust.  The best outcome in the situation.

Phone rings towards 9.30 and I dont get to it in time.  It is client for Sundays visit and she says that she is going to see all the houses OH suggested with the other agent but would still really LOVE to come and see our house.  OH gets extremely wound up at this point and essentially tells her to fuck off.  Oh well, at least I dont have all that cleaning to do.

Market day, treats and progress

Thursday 15 January 2015 or 15 01 20 15  pleasing balance to the numbers

6 degrees rising to 14 degrees
Very windy later on in the day

OH (other half in case you were wondering) is 56 today.  He is in remarkably good condition - fine teeth, still quite a lot of hair and youthful skin.  Has does have bad feet and legs but I won't be shooting him just yet.  The Armagnac and chocolates are very well received and we have lazy breakfast before going down town to the market.   The sunny weather has brought out a lot of people and the stalls are bursting with good things.  As we walk around, gorgeous smells waft on the air - from the Indian stall, the dense aroma of onion bahjis and chickpea curry, the sharp spice of olives from the Provence stall, the sickly sweetness of fried batter balls from the Algerian stall.   

I am drawn to the coffee shop and we have café gourmand with a selection of tiny treats, surrounding a foaming mug of coffee - chocolate mousse, beaten to a sharp peak, a piquant apple crumble, a pale pink macarron, a white chocolate square.  Totally delicious.  We are joined by one of my sellers called TT and a lady whose house we rented when we first came over here.  She is a tiny lady and in her late 60's and her favourite word is fuck.   Her house has been for sale for five years now.  For five years I have been telling them that they need to put in a fabby kitchen instead of the small cupboard that they have at the moment. Again, it falls on deaf ears.  'I should never have let T (her husband) buy that effing house. We have spent an effing fortune on it.  We had some effing people over to view last week and they bought a small modern house near effing Orthez'.  (TT's house is over 200 years old with a massive plot of land)  Alas, I know who these people are and it transpires that the offer they made was 100k under the asking price.  Did that not give them a clue that the area is unsellable?

TT is with another lady who says that she is looking to rent over the summer so I take the pair of them and show them the rental units - all of them - just in case they express a sudden and irresistible urge to buy one of them.  TT's friend says she will have a word with her husband.  About renting.

Get phone call from partner agent who tells me that the visit today went really well and that his clients want lot more information.  My seller has gone off to sodding exotic island for three months.  Email him and spent three hours pulling weeds out of the stone flags of the patio.  Weather warm with a spirited wind.

The money transferred supposedly to my bank account from this week's sale has not been credited.  The notification that my bank had received it arrived at 12.30.  At 4.30 I ring the bank and the lady tells me that it should be there within 48 hours.  48 hours!!! I squeak (temporarily forgetting to be zen) How on earth can it be 48 hours - it is electronic!  It should be immediate! Where is the money now?  The woman gets rather het up and says I cant expect it immediately because it has to go via three computer systems.  I tell her that is ludicrous.   OH is outside, suppressing molehills, with a venom normally reserved for Billy Connolly or non peripatetic gypsies (he is not keen on peripatetic ones either).  He channels his inner TT and says fuck too.

The bank obviously hangs onto the money and, somewhere, someone will be earning interest on it.   I was once told by a notary that the funds from sales used to be kept by the receiving notaries for up to six months before they were released to the sellers.  The notary would then lend the money out, at huge rates of interest, which they would then keep for themselves.   I was stupefied.  The notary then had to reassure my sellers - whose eyes were at that point bulging out on stalks - that this no longer happened.  How on earth did people accept this practice?  I ask of the notary.  Ah, we were Gods back then, he said ruefully.

Listen to Alan Bennett's play about the lady who came to stay in a caravan in his garden for three months and ended up being there for 15 years.  Lady played, gloriously, by Maggie Smith.  What a treasure she is.  A real treat to listen to.

The bliss of hotel bedrooms

Sunday 11 January 2015

6 degrees cold and clear

Wake up in a fog and don't know what time it is.  The sky is clearing over the church tower and the streets are deserted.  Turn up the air con as it now feels chilly in the room. Back to sleep for another two hours.

There is something blissful about a hotel bedroom.  The crisp,white linen, the long bolster pillows so typical of Spanish hotels, the fact that nothing sticks to or in your feet when you walk around the room.  Central heating.  Long, deep baths full of piping hot water and a selection of scented bubbles.  The luxury of lazing in bed, reading a magazine whilst catching up on the news of the day and listening to people down in the street.  The news is that over two million people turned out onto the streets of Paris to voice their support for the right to free speech and to say they are not afraid.  The newspapers are afraid.  Not a one of them has published any Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Spanish people start to emerge and move around at about 10 am.  I usually go out and wander the streets for a couple of hours, taking picture and drinking coffee when I find the occasional bar open at 8 am onwards.   Spanish is coffee is wonderful - fresh ground beans and heated milk shot with steam into the silky black café solo.   We find a bar with some life and sit by the window and order cafés con leche, croissants à la plancha con mermelada and zumo de naranja.  

The museum and art gallery is open and OH is delighted to find, free entry on Sundays. Stupendous Roman floor mosaics taken from Roman villas.  Retablos (back altar pieces) dating from early to late medieval and the colours as fresh and bright as if painted today. On peering closely at a little triptych, I note the choristers have very bored expressions on their faces and sense the ennui of the person who painted it 450 years ago.

Leave at 1.30 and drive home leisurely.

Paris sieges and prospection

Friday 9 January 2015

Crisp and clear

6 degrees

Off into the sparkling morning to see most exquisite country cottage with Pyrenees dark and jagged on the horizon.  Exposed stone, original tommette flooring, beams, fireplaces, nick knacks everywhere and full central heating.  Price 80k too much but has been taken on by partner agent who holds the mandate so will have to present at current mandate price.

The owner shows us everything, at length, and gives me a plantlet of Catalpa Bignoides.  Thrilled!  Plantaholic in me loves nothing better than free stuff and also have a huge pod full of seeds.

Back home to watch unfolding sieges in Paris - one in a small printing works north east of Paris (weather really crap) where the brothers who committed the atrocity chez Charlie Hebdo are holed up with one hostage and another in a Kosher supermarket in Porte des Vincennes.  Unfortunately four hostages were later killed and policemen injured - the hostage from the printing works was unharmed and all three terrorists were killed.  What a dreadful week for freedom and democracy.

Rang lots of potential buyers and no one was in.  Emailed them all.   Made chops with onion gravy and added maizena (corn flour) to thicken the gravy and it promptly congealed into solid lumps so I had to sieve it.   Even my normal Fanny Craddock method of whisking the hell out of it hadn't managed to get rid of them.  Maizena is excellent for coating before frying and now I know why.  As soon as it hits the heat, it forms a protective crispy coat.

Watched Homes by the Sea based in Kent and Sussex.  That is where I will be living this year, seaside town with fabby cliffs and waves.  Universe; please listen and take note.