Pages

Friday 22 March 2013

'Madam, if you don't mind me saying...

you need to downsize!'
'You having a larff?' says I, settling my broad beam
 ever deeper into the clutches of the chaise.

'You need to free up some money in the house
for a pension.'
'Right on man!'
Mission Impossible was prepared for take-off.

Sitting across the kitchen table from my IFA, one Friday afternoon,
I spied the details of a 'quirky' cottage.
Now if there's one thing that makes me go weak at the knees it's
Quirky... in all its forms!

Reading it out to 'O sensible one wot does sums'
he said give them a ring.
'Not now, I've just cooked lunch for paying guests, we're out tonight 
and I've got more people with money, coming for dinner tomorrow night.'

In those dark days after Simon died, I plied my trade by a
little business run from home called
'Luncheon by Appointment'
Folk would come for lunch or dinner and pay good money.
That together with hundreds of talks was how I scraped
a living.
'Phone them up!'
'It's 5.20 p.m. they'll be no one there...
 and another thing it's a lot deeper into Kent;
I won't have time to get there and back and get the house and meal ready
 for my evening guests!'

'Do it!'

Lady Docker-like I phoned,
'I should like to come and see the quirky cottage
first thing in the morning, 
don't show it to anyone else before my arrival!'

9 a.m. the next morning I viewed
Rapunzel Towers.
Sleeping beauty could have been slumbering in the garden; 
brambles grew in profusion, completely covering the extent
of the plot.

By 10 a.m. it was mine...
'Be sure to take it off the market!'
 I cried as I climbed aboard my chariot.
Knives on the wheels flashed in the early morning sun, 
as I roared off down the hill and back
home to cook.

Rooms on top of rooms in this 300 year old oak timber framed
cottage... not at all practical and soon enough, I realised that
downsizing in your mind, is a completely different thing to
doing it for real.

My fertile mind soon came up with a cunning plan...
I'll extend!
Walking the course with the aforesaid IFA I explained
my vision of a cat-slide roof
(I'd left one behind, and missed it horribly... like you do!)
and magnificent oak extension.
The expression on his face was a picture; he gamely trod the ground
as if he'd got a walnut up his financials.

"Err... what about your pension pot Linda?'

Cottage before

Have digger, will destroy



The oak rook cometh



 Work in progress

I married the man... it
seemed the right thing to do!
I'd found him in the F.T. after all!











7 comments:

  1. What a lovely heartwarming story, all's well that ends well! Love the oak extension x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jayne, I had to kiss a lot of frogs, got there in the end though!

      LLX

      Delete
  2. What a clever IFA!
    (I have an IFA too - mine's an Infuriatingly Foolish Antiquarian.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. And what an absolutely lovely IFA he is too. xx

    ReplyDelete
  4. And what an absolutely lovely IFA he is too. xx

    ReplyDelete
  5. Does that mean you think he's doubly delish Debs?

    LLX

    ReplyDelete