Improving gradually...

Friday 3 April 2015

Warm and sunny 18 degrees

Awoke 8 am with vicious headache and queasy stomach.  I was not however wheezing as badly as yesterday.  OH got up early, excited about fishing, and banged about downstairs before bringing me a cup of tea and then banging about some more.  Curses and breakages ensued.  I staggered downstairs, holding my head with one hand and my stomach with another.  OH in state of wild agitation, fortunately leaving soon after, bristling with gear and leaving a confetti of mud all over the kitchen floor.

 

Threw up the contents of the cup of tea, ate some muesli and took the antibiotics and steroids and told rebellious stomach that these contents would have to stay down.  The sun was shining and the internet was still off so drove unsteadily to the top of the hill and walked the dog.  Because I had the big walking stick, he was very well behaved.

Surprised to see that the town house, subject of much wrangling, has still not been signed due to the fact that the sellers’ advocate is now in touch with my buyers’ advocate and they are trying to find a way of getting the sellers out of the agreement with the other agency, in a way that the other buyers don’t ask for an assignation and the whole thing gets blocked for months in the queue for the Tribunal.  Texted everyone and told them of my internet and phone problems and said I could only get mobile reception by going out and up to the top of the hill.  The joys of living in rurality…

Back home, feeling slightly better and the queasiness had gone and the headache was starting to lift.  Dropped off the dog and drove to my appointment.  The people were on time and were waiting in a massive SUV with Swiss number plates.  We waved at one another and then went straight to the house.  The owner’s cat was lolling on the terrace and my clients cooed and the owner came out and the cat went into attack mode and ran straight up the man’s leg, which he found very amusing.  I detached the cat and we started inside.

The house is 18^th century and constructed of stones from the river, pounded and rounded out of all their sharp edges into large egg shapes and then pressed into cement.  The inside is cool and modern, with large kitchen and stomach height wood burning fire.  On the whole, it went rather well.  We got outside and had a chat and they said, actually, they had 100 grand more to spend and had I got anything else.  I promised to send over some details and we parted and I quickly found a nearby bar and some refreshing coffee and tried to look at houses on the web and my stupid forfait is all used up.

Back home and OH is still out fishing so I eat some bananas and then go down town to meet a partner agent and see a little house for the client on Monday.  It is a peach.  I then go into our nearest large town and hang around in SFR for what seems an age before I am finally seen and lent a 3g key to use whilst they get around to coming and fixing my internet, which will now be Tuesday (if I am lucky).  I take the opportunity to say how very unhappy I am with their internet and phone services and the woman takes the opportunity to ask me how much am I paying for my mobile over with Orange.  I am currently paying 25 euros for two hours calls and 500Mo internet, both of which are insufficient.  She offers me a cheaper price for unlimited calls and ten times more internet, because I am such a loyal client.  I am not loyal, there are only two main phone suppliers out here who are prepared to try and supply me with broadband at home and one of them (Orange) denied that they were actually doing so, when I went in to ask if they could improve the service.  I swapped to SFR a while ago for landline and internet, mainly because they could offer an all-in deal for landlines in most countries plus French mobiles, but didn’t realise at the time that when the internet would go off, so would the telephone.  As I am currently saving in excess of 100 euros a month, I am putting up with the inconvenience of being periodically incommunicado, which can be pleasant and does mean I get around to doing other stuff.  It is frustrating however, when I have the newsletter to get out to all the people who have signed up, and I am awake at 6 am and can’t do any work on it because there is no pestilent internet.

Spring flowers and notes

Friday 13 March 2015

Didnt get through the door much today

14 degrees and mizzling

Spent most of the day ringing people up, loading properties and cleaning.  Here are some photos of the gorgeous outbreak of Spring in my round and abouts

Friday

Euphorbia

Old man's beard

Pulmonaria 'lung wort'

Wood anemones

Furry trunk with ivy

Moss highway

Green hellebore

Gorgeous cowslips

More cowslip loveliness

Snakes head fritillary

Old man of the woods

The perfidy of human nature (or how low will you go)

Saturday 7 March 2015

Huge blue skies - ground frost warming to 13 degrees

The morning's entertainment consisted of wire brushing about a hundred years of petrified soot from the chimney breast in the new rental unit.  Previously concealed under a Barry Bucknell type plasterboard facing, from which OH had been trying to prise out a nail,  and instead the whole wall came away to reveal a whole hidden part of the room.  After I had taken off the loose material, and was standing back and thinking I had finished, OH handed me a long file to rasp down the lumps. Rasping takes a very long time.  I don't know how people ever manage to conceal rasps in cakes and it is not surprising that prisoners took so long to file their way out of their shackles.  Random, yes, I know.  Count of Monte Cristo was on the radio not long ago.

Soot has a very individual odour and is produced by incomplete combustion of the articles burned.  Its particles are really, really teeny and it gets everywhere.   OH, not the most observant of men, suggested I might want to go and wash my face before going to buy some bread.  I looked like a bad study in charcoal.



Back home and go for a walk to get the soot out of my lungs.  This is the first day in weeks when there is some warmth in the sun.  The trees are full of birds and immense skeins of cranes are heading back north and the air is full of their loud 'crew crew' calls.

Out for a walk

Mistletoe didn't get where it is today by being easily accessible

Silvery birches

Later on in the day, and despite my best zen intentions, I am still brooding on the would be buyer who has tried to cut me out and purchase directly with the seller.  

http://leavingmynormal.blogspot.fr/2015/03/a-day-of-surprises-and-some-knots-untie.html

I think of all the points I would make, and exactly how the conversation would go.   I chop onions in a vigorous manner whilst I ruminate.  The phone rings and who should it be but the would be buyer so I channel my French estate agent and he gets the full contents.  What particularly stupefies me (but not for very long) is that in his opening sentence, he says he is ringing me out of honesty.  He says he has negotiated the sale himself so therefore he doesn't really owe the agency anything but he is prepared, out of generosity, to offer an amount as damages.  Would he treat another professional in this way?  I put the phone down and feel rather satisfied that I had actually expressed myself clearly and fully.  And right between his eyes.

I have been fortunate to encounter his type of honesty only twice whilst working in real estate.   In my experience as an agent in a national French estate agency chain, you are more likely to be shafted by your colleagues than by the clients.  This is where I learned to stand up and defend myself as it is a case of she who shouts loudest, doesn't get her commission split with people who are trying it on.

Over the eight years, there were a lot of people who came and went.  Estate agency is one of the few jobs in France for which you need no formal qualification.  We had air hostesses and engineers, artists and hygienists, lorry drivers, taxi drivers, hairdressers and drain cleaning specialists.  Some lasted a year or two, some a couple of weeks.  If you are thinking of trying the job and you haven't the tenacity of a terrier with a rat and the hide of a rhino, I have a word of advice - actually two - don't.  One guy cracked relatively quickly and confided to me that he would really like to sell up and leave the area and forget all about real estate.  I went to see his house to give him an estimation.  He said he liked to paint and showed me his latest tableaux.  They were tonal oeuvres - mostly in grey but some of them were very dark and had deep lateral slashes.  I thought of the Fast Show.  I thought, I really really mustn't laugh.  I was actually scared - and tend to burst out laughing at completely inopportune moments.  He sold his house privately to a couple who were driven mad by the bells of the local church.  I had a second bite at the cherry when they came back to the agency in order to sell and I found a lovely English couple who are still living there.

The phone then rings again and it is the guy I have been trying to track down to show the big rental unit.  I blabber on about going to the Chinese restaurant to try and find him and he says he is from Vietnam and I think I had better stop jabbering before I create a cultural incident.  We arrange to meet tomorrow morning.

OH discovers something has been eating his ground bait and so heaves out everything from the laundry room, spreading much ground bait all over the kitchen and bathroom.  I am required to examine the droppings and say what it is.  It is obviously something big. An hour later and the laundry room is looking more tidy than it has in months.  Just as well, as I get an email saying we have a visit on Saturday.