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August Newsletter Number Two So, here I am back home. The weather is mild instead of being fearfully hot. In fact we even had a few minutes light rain, not that you'd notice as it did nothing to lay the dust. So here I am up on the balcony looking out across the valley. It is peaceful. It is dark with a sky filled with stars, and no electricity pylons with street lamps attached. Odd. We usually have lamps strung from the pylons where the scattered houses line a dirt track. I've got so used to cursing them that it now seems odd without them. I put on my swimming trunks and go down for a swim. I crunch over the dried leaves beneath the alforaba tree, and walk up the steps to the pool. It has been constructed from an old water deposito, so it is quite large. Hold on! What's going on? I have an empty pool with a few inches of water covering a wodge of leaves! What's happened? The following morning when I do my rounds it looks as if we have been hit by some calamities. The great swathes of elephant grass along the river bank in the next field have suffered a fire, and it has ravaged across my lawn and burnt out the grasses and rock plants along the river wall, and toasted the fig trees. I have some black irrigation pipes laid across the lawn. They have melted into odd shapes. There is no serious damage. I harvest the black figs and lay them out to dry. Suddenly the penny drops. The lock on the gate has been smashed. The pool is empty. There has been a fire in the field. The bombeiros (fire fighters) were obviously called out the minute someone spotted the flames. They've obviously broken into my garden (the wrong side of the river, so that was a waste of time). And I bet the blighters pumped the water out of my pool to put out the fire. I dont begrudge the water, which was obviously used to the public benefit, but why the heck didn't my pool-man re-fill the pool? Now is prime pool time, and all I have to show for a year's maintenance is six inches of primieval sludge! Welcome home, dear boy! And my back is done in: delayed result from lugging bags of sand and cement, and steel girders and loads of 6x2 struts of wood to finish the house back in London. I need a crane to get me out of the car seat. It takes ten minutes of fiddling and re-adjusting, and nervously catching hold of things to lever myself out. For the ninety-ninth time I resolve to pack up heavy work. But here I am struggling to get a property ready for rental. "Why dont you get an agent" asks the new tenant as he watches fascinated as i do a strange balletic manouvre to pick up a screw-driver. Does an agent know where to get the fitted wardrobes when the one's I was going to buy are no longer made the right size? Is the agent prepared to pay for them? How about paying for the kitchen white goods? Someone needs to make a decision about how much to pay. What would an agent do when faced with an empty pool and no water in the deposito? Indeed, what would an agent do when the tenant turns on the hot water tap and nothing comes out? I'm the only one who knows who to call, and can hazard a guess as to what is wrong. The air conditioning hasn't been commissioned. There is a tank linked to solar panels on the roof. No-one filled it up, and the pipes leading down from the roof are not connected. A guy with a special license has to connect them and write out a certificate. The gardener cant get out, so how do you open the gates? Which magic switch let's them open again when someone (who knows who) accidentally shut them and cant remember how they did it? And who would get everything sorted out within four working days, with three sets of specialists all on-site by 10.30 monday morning? The property business: it's over-rated. It's hard work. Forget it. Go to work for the government, the pay's good, the hours are a doddle, and there is zero responsibility. With real estate you are at the sharp end, and when something goes wrong it takes everything down with it. And just look at how much it costs!!! All that money, and I still cant swim in my pool! Bah!!! Sorry, I'm having a bad day.... and another..... and..... best wishes john Best wishes john
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© John Clare and The Property Organisation 2008