Hanging about

Monday 4 May 2015

Overcast 25 degrees very sticky and humid

Appointment this morning with a colleague from the Lot et Garonne who has some clients who want to see a chateau I have for sale in a neighbouring department.  The owner is a feisty German lady well advanced in years who has a passion for politics.  She is a proud Prussian as is, apparently, Angela Merkel.  You risk losing easily an hour if you make the mistake of mentioning any form of politics.  Her tenuous grasp of both English and French does not hold her back from expressing her many and varied, and rather alarmingly right wing, opinions.

I get there early and wait in a bar and drink coffee and my colleague has got lost at the infernal intersection in the city an hour to the north which sends people east instead of south but he is en route.  There is wifi in the bar and I get an email from the Russian saying he cannot pay the deposit and is not sure when he will get the money, if at all.  This is as I feared.  I ring my notaire and she is very unhappy.  I text the owners and then email the other buyers who were gutted to have lost out and they are thrilled and say we must talk on Wednesday.  Alas they have come via an introducer who takes 30% which is extraordinary for someone who does nothing more than pass on a telephone number and email address.  I must go into that line of business in my next life. 

It transpires, when my colleague finally arrives, that he does not have a mobile number for the clients and they are very, very late.  He also has no signal at all on his phone.  Finally, the clients ring head office who ring me and give me a different mobile number and we get hold of the clients who are then two hours late.  I decide to show my colleague the property and then leave him to it.

Back home, starving and exhausted.   The internet and phone is still offline.  I really don’t know how I am supposed to work in these conditions.  Go down to the rental units and work there.  At seven, bored out of my skull, walk through town and am tempted to take an apero so have a kir and think how pleasant it must be just to sit with friends and drink in the early evening with the sun shining and some nibbles to nibble on.  Tear myself away after an hour and find OH frying up eggs and bacon and beans when I get back.  We really need to do a big shop.  There is nothing in the cupboard.