Where Did a Week Go?

It says at the top of my last post that I made it on the 22nd June, but that can’t be right. Oh, wait, it is. I’m just losing days!

There’s a nasty slippage of time that always occurs around the middle of the year - things speed up and the distance between *now* and New Years gets to look uncomfortably short. We’re on the downside of the slope, Winter looms and although it doesn’t look or feel it - Summer has of course barely begun in Britain - I know it’s coming. It also feels very much as though we’re on an actual slope down, sliding inexorably further towards the ruin of the year. Or maybe it’s just the poo leaking from the walls that is sending me insane!

Well, we take the keys for the new place tomorrow. I wish to slag off the Estate Agents here; a bunch of spotty, undereducated, sloppily-dressed, teenaged, slack-jawed morons who can’t count the days of the week on their hands because their fingers are webbed.

This sounds harsh, but as an ex Estate Agent myself, I can categorically state that if we’d treated any of our applicants in this shoddy way we’d have been sacked.

Disorganised, unhelpful and uncaring. Despite having the property on their books for long enough for the wintry pics they took to go out of date, and despite knowing we wanted the place for three and a half weeks now, they declined to let us have the keys on Friday last because they hadn’t done the inventory. They’d managed to produce a set of particulars, using the classic Estate Agency illiteracy ‘…comprising of’ which is a particular bug-bear of mine. These particulars listed every frikkin item in the place, but no. That wasn’t good enough. So they have to attend the property and list all the owners’ salad forks and cleaning materials as though it was important. And they couldn’t make good their own error. No. We had to cancel our removals and sit tight till they could be arsed.

This afternoon, at 3pm, we learn that we can’t have the keys tomorrow unless we undertake to insure all the vendor’s property. Luckily, my insurers (AA! - Gods of Insurance! Thank you to Gemma who saved my life today!) are pragmatic and organised and got the job done with little fuss.

I resent this sort of treatment. We’re doing their vendor a favour by taking the place on for three months. He’s abroad and wants to sell, but the market’s slumped and things are not moving. We’re providing some income and looking after the place, and we’ll end up showing people round it if they need viewings done. So we’re doing them a favour too! So far, I’ve had to provide them with as much information as any fraudster would need to effectively take over my life and shut me out. This is real identity theft. Three months bank statements. Bank account details. My date of birth, signature and personal details. My work contacts. We needed two references each. Proof of wages. The list is endless. You don’t need this sort of clobber for Security Clearance, you don’t need it for a mortgage, or a drivers license. Even if you did, you’d be providing it to trusted professionals. Looking at the dross in the office of this particular agent, you’d be worried. Believe me, I am. And the real inequity is, they tell us they need to keep it on file for seven years. Well, they can think again in my case. I’ll be seeing them after I move out.