Authors warning…this may turn into another rant.
Why is it that when you put women of a certain age, and class, in a position of assumed authority (their assumption), then all the worst parts of inbred English class warfare rise to the surface like curdled fat in a pint of green milk ?
We’ve been looking at new houses for the past few weeks, yes folks its that time again, time for another house move, “whats this” you cry, “why you only moved house just three years hence ?”, but three years is quite a long time for us and there are other causes this time, and some bargains to be had.
And we’re looking at houses in the North East as well (plan B)
So for nothing better to do yesterday afternoon we took a drive to a suburb near here where there are four new developments and strode confidently into the sales offices with not very much money to spend at all, heres how it all went down…
Housing site #1, Bellway Housing, a mix of low cost subsidised shared ownership homes (all sold) and some very desirable three storey monster pads the likes of which require a substantial wad of spondulaks and which feature only in dreams and wishes. Sales staff are very nice, approachable, she remembered us from our visit two weeks ago, welcomed us in, discussed a few more details with us, let us wander their dream home showhouse with our tongues hanging out – we browsed three Bellway sites in the North East last weekend and their staff were all the same, one of them even remembered my name just by seeing my phone number on caller display when I rang her again last Thursday – her site is the favourite at the moment.
And then we drove up the road to another new development which will remain nameless for reasons that may be rather obvious – “New four bed houses from £179,000″ proclaims a twenty foot banner across the site entrance, we’d been there before christmas and they didn’t have any at that price then, I wondered if they had any now, in the sales office it became clear that they didn’t, £240,000 was their starter price.
But thats OK, it just means that we smile, say “thank you” and walk out, if it wasn’t for the snotty bitch in the sales office thats exactly what I would have done, but you can’t let snotty bitches think that they are better than you so I didn’t walk out, I just stood my ground, rubbed my chin and pretended to be considering the deal, I may even have thrown in the odd “Hmm, very reasonable” for good measure, “Do you have a property to sell ?” she asked, peering down her nose at me, “Yes” I replied still deep in mock thought, “And is this within your price range” she spat with an arrogance that told me she’d already decided that the answer was no, “Oh yes” I lied, “Oh yes”
She was one of the women that I define as “Harrogate Ladies” and anyone who has ever been to Harrogate will know exactly what I speak of, an arrogance bred into them, a bitching middle class attitude that cannot remain hidden, a spiteful appraisal of anyone and everyone who crosses their path, an instant assessment of whether you are worthy of her attention or not, usually not, for Harrogate Ladies only speak to other Harrogate ladies, usually while taking tea at Bettys.
We ventured to a third site further up the road, this one the conversion of an old Victorian Lunatic Asylum (I kid you not), the old stone hospital buildings now being converted into rows of terraced houses that looked to be well within our price range, these were terraced houses after all, lunatics terraced houses at that.
As we walked in the show house my heart sank, another frikkin Harrogate Lady, this time espousing to a wealthy looking couple about how superior her development was to the one further up the development where David Wilson were building new blocks of apartments, she actually spat the word “new build” as though it were Satans very sputum.
In a break in conversation she glanced our way, assessed me in jeans, rugby shirt and a pair of old but comfortable brown shoes that should by rights now be relegated to the garage for “gardening work” and hardly disguising the scorn asked what price range we were looking for, no “Hello”, no introduction, just “And what price range are you looking for ?”
I thought I lied magnificently when I pondered for a while before confidently declaring “£300,000″.
The Harrogate Lady could barely conceal her delight, “Oh we have nothing in that price range” she declared to all and sundry, “our cheapest house is £340,000, you see we are refurbishing, this is not a new build” and there again she spat out the words.
There were three other parties in the room and they all looked a little uncomfortable, the Harrogate Lady declared that she was shortly going to do a tour of the show house with these other people if we wished to join them, like she was doing us all a big favour, I declined, we left, both my daughters declared outside that she was a stuck-up cow, I could not disagree and neither could the two other couples who quickly left the sales office behind us, I think they were just waiting for the excuse to leave.
Finally, we walked around the corner to the development that the Harrogate Lady had clearly despised as besmirching her own fine overpriced terraced houses to discover a David Wilson development of apartments.
Now I have never seen myself as an apartment dweller for here in the UK we don’t tend to “do” apartments quite like they do in Europe, but after nearly walking out of the busy sales office we were invited to wander around the show apartment – I have to say I was mightily impressed, it was huge, bigger square footage than any of the houses we had been around, more importantly our daughters were both of the opinion that we should just sign the papers and move right in there, right now, forget our own house and its contents (and presumably the dog), and just start living here, right now.
I was tempted, right price, right size, not enough bedrooms so eldest daughter would have to find somewhere else to live, what the hell, she’s a student, she shouldn’t be living at home anymore, hang on, so is the other one, this could be the moment that we throw them both to the wolves and go and live in a nice apartment until our twilight years start to dim …
And then while the daughters implore us to buy this wonderful “LA Living” (whatever that means) apartment, the wife starts with her damned practicalities…
“Where would you dry the washing ?” she starts,
“What if you have a car full of shopping to carry upstairs ?”
“You won’t be able to play your music full blast”
“Who cuts the grass outside ?”
“Where do you let the dog out onto ?”
…and she continued with these practical contributions all the way home.
No LA Living for us just yet then.
