I am getting to know Ella a little bit. I have been out to the rambling old cottage quite a few times now, showing folks round. She usually keeps out of the way, as though she doesn’t want to be involved in the process.
Today, she’s inside with her family, and we pass through the rooms as respectfully as we can, aware of her sensitivity towards the old house. With a cup of tea, her daughter and her grandchildren, she is confined to one small room while we have free range of her home.
After the first couple have left I go in and sit down to talk to her. They have made an offer of 500K and want to go for an immediate exchange of contracts, legals permitting, with a completion date set for September. This is a reasonable timescale. She looks worried, unhappy. “I don’t know.” She says.
She tells me she wants her original buyers to have the house although they are now unable to proceed because their own sale fell through. She says that she ‘clicked’ with them; that they fell in love with the house, and it’s important to her.
She is something of a family custodian. She is now the grandmother and matriarch as well as the keeper of all the family memory; photographs, furniture, birth and death certificates. She looks very sad and tells me that a second buyer who was proceeding with the purchase wanted to knock the whole place down and build something new on the site. The thought of this clearly causes her pain.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that this is exactly what the couple that have just made this offer are likely to do. It would be like an attack on her, on her body.
The old place is ramshackle, mis-shapen, awkward. The pipe work for the plumbing runs all over it in a labyrinthine, haphazard way. Wiring likewise. There is no heating. The hot water system has broken down. The rooms are tiny, the ceilings low. It’s dark and claustrophobic. Despite all this, it has heart.
I hover somewhere between wanting her to take the money and move on with her life, yet I share her reluctance to sell to anyone, just for the money. Her desire to vet the next owners of the place that has been central to the life of her and her family for over 50 years is a desire I share. It may be a vanity to want new owners to love your home as much as you do, but if you care about houses, you care about who becomes the next custodian.
I leave her to think, and take round the next party. This couple have brought their dad along. He’s a retired builder; big, bluff and rather aggressive. He barks at me. “Have they used up all their percentage of planning permission for extensions?” I answer that, as the extensions are around fifty years old, I can’t say as I don’t know anything about planning law. He’s not mollified. After we’ve been round the garden, he stops short and confronts me, “What are those two buttresses doing?” He fixes me with a gimlet eye. I want to say that they’re holding up the wall of course, stupid. Instead I look him right in the eye as clear as bold as a child and say that I have absolutely no idea. I suggest that he consults a structural surveyor to check over the house and establish what they’re doing. He almost laughs. He seems to have been testing me, as though he can’t stand estate agents and actually thinks I am one. He wanted to see if I’d spin him a yarn I suppose, I don’t know.
Happily, this couple with their old dad are a pair of sweeties, and the husband loves gardening so he’s enjoying poking around and checking out all the greenery. I’m a bit happier with these two. The wife in the first couple was very keen to let me know that they had twelve acres where they’re living now; that they practically knocked their last place down and have made it absolutely beautiful, wonderful, with an orangery, it’s just fabulous. Is she boasting or am I just really envious? Madly, they want to move to Truro to be near the hospital in their retirement.
I try not to gasp in horror. That would be the worst hospital in the country for MRSA announced on the day’s news as I’m driving around. But, surely with an orangery they will have private health insurance, or a private nurse to wipe their arses. I’m interested that Ella could sense that those first two were not to her liking, even though she only saw them go by. A minute only for them to not appeal to her sensibilities. The first thing the wife said to me was, "What's going on over there?" She jerked her head towards a new farmhouse up the lane.
I admit to being taken aback. I hadn't a clue what she meant and it took a few minutes to get her to make herself clear. There's nothing 'going on' and it looks as though nothing has been going on for some time. Had there been diggers or even vans I could have understood her rather violent nimby suspicions.
Anyway, my appointments are stacked up too close again so I have to run away to the next one, and I have to leave the second party, the little trio, behind. Monsieur is very sympathetique and, with his love of gardening, he may just win Ella round. I will keep my fingers crossed all weekend that he ‘clicks’ with her too and she can be persuaded to let go of her deep emotional attachment to the family home, break out and make a new life. He may even make a better offer.
But maybe she should stay there. It’s quite a role keeping the family home and history intact; something of an honour, like the old knight guarding the Holy Grail. Burning old papers, distributing keepsakes and furniture dissipates the meaning of the whole.
When I get back to the office and tell my colleague of the day’s happenings, she snaps, “I’ll ring Ella. She needs to make up her bloody mind. We want the money.”
Today, she’s inside with her family, and we pass through the rooms as respectfully as we can, aware of her sensitivity towards the old house. With a cup of tea, her daughter and her grandchildren, she is confined to one small room while we have free range of her home.
After the first couple have left I go in and sit down to talk to her. They have made an offer of 500K and want to go for an immediate exchange of contracts, legals permitting, with a completion date set for September. This is a reasonable timescale. She looks worried, unhappy. “I don’t know.” She says.
She tells me she wants her original buyers to have the house although they are now unable to proceed because their own sale fell through. She says that she ‘clicked’ with them; that they fell in love with the house, and it’s important to her.
She is something of a family custodian. She is now the grandmother and matriarch as well as the keeper of all the family memory; photographs, furniture, birth and death certificates. She looks very sad and tells me that a second buyer who was proceeding with the purchase wanted to knock the whole place down and build something new on the site. The thought of this clearly causes her pain.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that this is exactly what the couple that have just made this offer are likely to do. It would be like an attack on her, on her body.
The old place is ramshackle, mis-shapen, awkward. The pipe work for the plumbing runs all over it in a labyrinthine, haphazard way. Wiring likewise. There is no heating. The hot water system has broken down. The rooms are tiny, the ceilings low. It’s dark and claustrophobic. Despite all this, it has heart.
I hover somewhere between wanting her to take the money and move on with her life, yet I share her reluctance to sell to anyone, just for the money. Her desire to vet the next owners of the place that has been central to the life of her and her family for over 50 years is a desire I share. It may be a vanity to want new owners to love your home as much as you do, but if you care about houses, you care about who becomes the next custodian.
I leave her to think, and take round the next party. This couple have brought their dad along. He’s a retired builder; big, bluff and rather aggressive. He barks at me. “Have they used up all their percentage of planning permission for extensions?” I answer that, as the extensions are around fifty years old, I can’t say as I don’t know anything about planning law. He’s not mollified. After we’ve been round the garden, he stops short and confronts me, “What are those two buttresses doing?” He fixes me with a gimlet eye. I want to say that they’re holding up the wall of course, stupid. Instead I look him right in the eye as clear as bold as a child and say that I have absolutely no idea. I suggest that he consults a structural surveyor to check over the house and establish what they’re doing. He almost laughs. He seems to have been testing me, as though he can’t stand estate agents and actually thinks I am one. He wanted to see if I’d spin him a yarn I suppose, I don’t know.
Happily, this couple with their old dad are a pair of sweeties, and the husband loves gardening so he’s enjoying poking around and checking out all the greenery. I’m a bit happier with these two. The wife in the first couple was very keen to let me know that they had twelve acres where they’re living now; that they practically knocked their last place down and have made it absolutely beautiful, wonderful, with an orangery, it’s just fabulous. Is she boasting or am I just really envious? Madly, they want to move to Truro to be near the hospital in their retirement.
I try not to gasp in horror. That would be the worst hospital in the country for MRSA announced on the day’s news as I’m driving around. But, surely with an orangery they will have private health insurance, or a private nurse to wipe their arses. I’m interested that Ella could sense that those first two were not to her liking, even though she only saw them go by. A minute only for them to not appeal to her sensibilities. The first thing the wife said to me was, "What's going on over there?" She jerked her head towards a new farmhouse up the lane.
I admit to being taken aback. I hadn't a clue what she meant and it took a few minutes to get her to make herself clear. There's nothing 'going on' and it looks as though nothing has been going on for some time. Had there been diggers or even vans I could have understood her rather violent nimby suspicions.
Anyway, my appointments are stacked up too close again so I have to run away to the next one, and I have to leave the second party, the little trio, behind. Monsieur is very sympathetique and, with his love of gardening, he may just win Ella round. I will keep my fingers crossed all weekend that he ‘clicks’ with her too and she can be persuaded to let go of her deep emotional attachment to the family home, break out and make a new life. He may even make a better offer.
But maybe she should stay there. It’s quite a role keeping the family home and history intact; something of an honour, like the old knight guarding the Holy Grail. Burning old papers, distributing keepsakes and furniture dissipates the meaning of the whole.
When I get back to the office and tell my colleague of the day’s happenings, she snaps, “I’ll ring Ella. She needs to make up her bloody mind. We want the money.”
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