Monday March 31, 2008
“We made it through March, then,” I said. Just for something to say, you understand.
“Yup. What are you going to do today?”
“Shopping and a stroll along the riverbank.”
“Good. I need you out of the way so I can do a deep clean.”
So off I toddled and, when I got home, the house smelled all nice and clean. Not of air fresheners. Not of furniture polish. Not of anything, particularly. Just clean.
“You’ve done a great job here,” I said.
“Thanks. You see anything interesting?”
“Might have done but I didn’t notice.”
“Why’s that, then?”
“I was busy thinking.”
“Oh.”
It was a day for thinking. Like poetry, thinking is cheap:
Taylor Street
The small porch of imitation
marble is never sunny, but
outside the front door he
sits on his kitchen chair facing
the street. In the bent yellowish
face, from under the brim
of a floppy brown hat,
his small eyes watch what
he is not living. But he
lives what he can:
watches without a smile, with
a certain strain, the warmth
of his big crumpled
body anxiously cupped
by himself in himself, as
he leans over himself not
over the cold railings, un-
moving but carefully getting
a little strength from the sight of the
passers-by. He has it
all planned: he will live
here morning by morning.
–Thom Gunn
Sunday March 30, 2008
Woke to a lovely sunny morning and that’s astonishing when, yesterday, I felt that winter had made an unwelcome return after all. I really ought to know better.
Not a peep from the agents again yesterday. They are running out of time.
Graham spent an age online looking at properties in the Neath, South Glamorgan area, turning up one perfectly suitable bungalow after another and all at prices we could easily afford. When faced with such a choice I confess a temptation to set up a short list, drop our selling price to cover the asking price plus expenses, and get cracking on moving house. Any real cash profit we could make on the deal would be limited by the power of my bargaining powers. It’s only Monopoly money, after all.
Hey ho. I’m bored with this obsession. Houses, places and moving between them are things I’d rather not have on my planet.
I think that once we’ve got settled with the new agent I shall shove the whole question on the back burner and turn my eyes back to poetry. Poetry is certainly on my planet.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more”;
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”
from The Lotus Eaters; Tennyson
Saturday March 29, 2008
I phoned the agent yesterday. He wasn’t there. I phoned him again shortly after the time at which I’d been told he’d call me back. He wasn’t there again. I expressed my disappointment and he called me back about half an hour later.
“I’m not impressed,” I said after being blitzed with a list of facts and figures as he tried to prove how well our property was doing. ”Statistics are all very well but it’s punters I want to see. And punters are exactly what I haven’t seen.”
The outcome was that Graham and I are to meet him in his Bridgwater office on Wednesday morning. He could rescue the situation before then. I certainly would.
We shall see. If the meeting is not successful I shall sack ‘em, drop the price a tad, and shove the house back on the market a fortnight later with our second choice. You know, the one who’d have been first choice if we’d had the benefit of hindsight. Then we’ll turn on the patience filter and settle down to wait the thing through, no matter how long it takes.
The sacking is of their own making. They insisted on a fixed fee based on our present asking price. It will not be reduced no matter how low the figure at which we eventually sell.
It’s a strange thing, and I’d have to collect more information before proclaiming it a Law of Estate Agents. When you criticise them for poor performance it’s always blamed on staff sickness and absence. This is the third agency at least where I’ve been obliged to point out that their difficulties are not my problem and that they are remiss in attempting to make it so.
Friday March 28, 2008
I’m feeling all craggy and far-eyed today. You know, the kind of feeling that makes you think perhaps it’d be a good idea to shave, throw away all those shrunken t-shirts and dig out the good old Vyella ones instead. Oh, and wear strange trousers with pockets in places that are beyond dignified reach unless you’re a long-armed multi-tentacled being from the planet Tatami.
The far-eyed bit? Just an urge to sit in the sun and gaze into the distance to a point just beyond human ken. And suck a straw, like as not. Sucking a straw is good when you’re no longer allowed to smoke a pipe.
Just as well I got my sitting in the sun done yesterday, for today it’s all dark clouds and sneaky chill winds. I could do the shirt and strange trousers act, though.
Thursday March 27, 2008
Sometimes I wake raring to go. Sometimes I don’t. Most times it’s something in between.
It ought to be a raring to go day today. I slept well enough and long enough and woke with so little pain it might as well have been no pain at all. I could be all energetic and bouncy, quite easily, but I fear that Graham would take it amiss–he’s not feeling entirely chipper today.
So I shall sit in my kitchen corner with Dolly, we’ll have a nice little bit of breakfast, and then we’ll see what the rest of the day brings.
I’ve been reading through old journals. Really old journals. Ye gods and little fishes but what a whingeing little shit I used to be. Age hasn’t treated me too kindly on the physical side but at least it’s taught me not to whinge, to take what comes, and, when nothing much comes, to wait patiently until it does.
I’m not too convinced about these old journals of mine. Can’t shred ‘em, of course, but I think I shall try to remember not to read through them again. I suppose I ought to have gone through them to pull out an extract of interesting bits some years back while I still had the energy and urges for such heavy work. Now, well, I don’t think I shall bother. I’d rather go sit in my kitchen corner. Or in the sun, if it shines.
The author, webmaster, and minder of the cat