As cold as the grave

Thursday 8 February 2018

3 degrees cloudy.  Feels bitterly cold.

Back to France and have left my diary back in the UK and also my boredom.  There is never nothing to do here.

It is market day and my first day driving since mid December.  It is bliss being behind the wheel and free again.  I pop into town and the market is in full flow, the traders wrapped up like babushki.  Their breath snakes into the air and the roasted chicken stall is attracting more than the usual number of optimistic dogs and cats.  I go and see the boulangere whose son committed suicide a couple of weeks ago, and give her a big hug.  What to say 'c'est la vie', she says, wrapping my baguette.  But it isnt, is it....

I then have coffee with the other lady whose son also committed suicide a couple of weeks ago.  She is in denial.  Her bridge dropped out and she thinks one of her dogs have eaten it.  There will be no quick fix as her dentist has also just died of cancer.  She has now been to four funerals in ten days.  The priest commented 'not you again'....

It is then time to go and do something which I have put off doing on the phone.  One of my sales is coming up to completion.  The owner works full time and has just lost her mother.  The buyers are obsessive compulsive cleaners.  They keep ringing me up and asking if the seller has cleaned up and emptied her house.  I broach the subject gingerly.  Alas, not gingerly enough.  She folds her arms and her eyes come out on stalks.  'What makes them think my house wont be clean?  That is such a horrible thing to say!!!  If they want to be difficult, I can be much more difficult than they can'.  She is also an estate agent but has been doing it less than a year.  At the start she was all smug because she had sold lots of houses.  This is a tough job.  It looks as if the gloss has worn off, big style.  I try and smooth things over.  'I lost my dog too', she adds.  I leave and think oh crap and I really hope they clean out the loft as the buyers will go nuts and are insisting on going round on the morning of the completion.

A quick quiche and then it is time to go and remind myself of what two huge gite complexes look like, ahead of Saturday's visits.  They are as cold as the grave.  Blast myself with the heater in the car.  Then onto see my German clients who, finally after seven months, have managed to get their loan approved.  We are also coming up to completion on this sale.  They are hovering in the driveway and there is another lady with them - the mother in law.  Her nose is very red.  I usher them inside where it is moderately less freezing.  They are ecstatic and the MIL is also very happy.

Back home and ring up lots of houses to get some appointments in the diary next week.  My seller who is an agent is in a building in the centre of town and people just walk in through the door and ask for their properties to be put on sale.  I have to go out and hunt them down.  Find a selection of houses and flats in my town under 200k and some wonderful ones further afield.  Leave a lot of messages.

OH makes seafood risotto which is divine.  After about an hour, I start feeling as if all parts of my body have returned to normal temperature.  Must wear more clothes tomorrow.  And my boots.  And thick socks.