The Universe Delivers

If you’re into Signs From The Universe, you’ll be interested in my post-lockdown visit to Wagamama, with the intention of ordering the only dish I have ever ordered in Wagamama (Yasai Itame, if you care about such things). Shock: it’s no longer on the menu. Must be time to leave the city. On which subject…

In a remarkable “compare and contrast” moment, following the misery of having our London flat on the market for 10 months with zero offers, last Thursday we put the flat on the lettings market – and the first tenants to view it decided to rent. The whole process, including taking photos and measuring, had taken less than two days. Our lessees are three young women who work for charities, which it stands to reason must make them good tenants. They will be moving in on July 9^th, which will therefore the day we stop being Londoners and start talking in West Country accents.

Before that, of course, we have to start being Landlords, a new experience for both of us. In a moment of weakness we’ve let the flat furnished, which means that as our furniture leaves, replacements will have to fly in. We sat down to peruse online beds, sofas and dining tables. I observed that the tenants had been admiring our table and maybe we should get one similar. Mrs L, showing just what ten years of kowtowing to the tiger parents of West London has done for her customer service ethos, suggested they could bloody well have the cheapest one and be grateful.

The thing with offering properties furnished is just to offer the essentials

Before we get too cavalier about our wonderful never-make-a-fuss philanthropic tenants, It is worth remembering that whereas selling a flat is all subject to caveat emptor – the seller hides all the imperfections, and hightails it with impunity – when you let, you have to do everything possible to prevent angry calls from your tenants, wherein they demonstrate that working for charities means they are nice only to the poor and needy, not capitalist running dogs like us. So we have upgraded the electrics, fixed the lights on the roof terrace, replaced the (literally) moth eaten carpets, painted the walls and installed anti pigeon spikes on the window ledges. Yes, the tenants will be spared our daughter Sophie’s experience of poking at the pigeons with a coat hanger  through the window at one in the morning to try and shut them up. (I confess we had a moment of schadenfreude returning home the other day to see they had taken up residence on our neighbour’s window ledge instead.). 

So that’s a big box ticked and a load off our mind, as a platform of our financial model is complete. 

Friday was clearly That Sort Of Day, as barely an hour after the agent had revealed we had let the flat, the dog breeder rang to say her litter of puppies had arrived and one was reserved for us. Sadly for Helen, her regular cry of “just imagine his little face” had to be revised, as we learned there was only one boy and he had been promised to someone who’d been waiting for two years. It was not a deal breaker – though obviously I’d been planning to send him to Eton and then he could inherit the country estate – as girl puppies have equally cute faces, which really seems to be Helen’s only criterion for dog ownership. (Oh, and of course you’ll want to know, she’s a miniature schnauzer. The dog, not Helen.) All the months we’d spent choosing boy names (yes I know you’ll want to know: we had settled on Hardy, it being a West Country kind of name) were wasted. We’ve started a new list, which reveals that unless you want to call your female puppy something contemporary like Arya or Dua Lipa, all girl dog names have to end in an “ee” sound – as all the owners of Millies, Mollies, Flossies and Tillies can attest.  Maybe we should have a competition on this blog?

"They call me Khalisi, Scourge of Cats, Chewer of Cables and Maker of Inconvenient Puddles"

Back in the garden, it was a small scale That Kind of Day as a second crop peeped through the soil to join the radishes. Yes, it looks like we will soon be shelling our own peas. This means that of about 13 different vegetables I have sown, two have actually appeared. Maybe that’s not bad for a first attempt. And it is possible the runner beans are on their way, unless they’re weeds. What was rather more unexpected is that in the middle of my plot a whole load of vigorous plants came forcing their way up, dwarfing my seedlings. They appear to be potato plants, the one thing I hadn’t actually planted. Apart from the fact they’ve smashed their way through my cucumber seeds (another casualty) the question is Whence did they come? Did they fall from the tail of a comet? Did badgers bring them in on their fur? I’m not yet a gardening expert but I do know that for potatoes to grow, someone has to plant a seed potato. It could only be the dirty dentists. Maybe they left them as a present, to make me feel guilty about all the terrible things I’ve written about them. And then they went indoors to smear soil and compost over the toilet seat, cackling hysterically.

Well, there we are. Tenants: check. Puppy: check. Vegetable plot: cautious check. This weekend my mother comes to stay and will see for the first time the accommodation we chose for her without her involvement. If it all goes wotsits up I’ll just keep mentioning the puppy and get Helen to say “Just imagine her little face” on cue.