the adlards

Witness the following events:

• The lead negotiator for one of St Albans’ premier agencies (which shall for the moment remain nameless), Connells, visits to perform and valuation, expresses great interest and enthusiasm and a willingness to visit us the following night to complete paperwork.
• The following afternoon when his staff are pressed he returns calls. He is unavailable to visit that evening and the day after is on holiday. He agrees to a reduction of both his commission and the period of his sole agency and assures us that a day’s delay will not stop his committed team arranging viewings for the weekend.
• He duly arrives to sign paperwork two days later having apparently forgotten the detail of the agreement he had struck on the phone. Fortunately Michelle and I do talk even if his ears and his brain don’t …
• Come the weekend our house isn’t listed on the websites promised, details are not available and, unsurprisingly, no viewings are arranged.
• Over the following three weeks of their four week contract Connells managed to arrange all of four viewings and provide precisely no feedback despite numerous calls
• On 10/04 we gave written notice of termination effective on 23/04. We had the presence of mind to hand the letter to a negotiator and get a signed receipt

I interrupt this broadcast here to point out the depths of Connells laziness. Did they call to renegotiate or perhaps ask why we’d given notice? Did they put in a flurry of activity to try to sell before the end of their contract? Well, it turns out – the property market being what it is – that they don’t have to actually work for a living. But back to the story …

• On Monday 24/4, having heard nothing I called to request removal of the sign and of our listings on the websites. Action was promised immediately. We called again on the 27th and again the following week.
• On Sunday 7/05 we got voicemail that Connells had arranged a viewing. Michelle was in town so dropped in to explain that any leads would go through our new sole agents. The girls working Sunday could apparently not see the legal logic of this statement and threatened to escalate to their boss, John, who started this all – an offer Michelle welcomed.
• When by 4.30 John hadn’t called I called him on his mobile (never delete a number someone’s let slip). I instructed him to remove us from sites immediately and asked him to call back next day to ensure he’d understood. He promised to call first thing. We removed the sign ourselves.
• I received no calls from Connells the next day
• I left a message on Wednesday for John to call back, which he again failed to do.
• On Thursday the Connells sign was.put.back.up. …

… now this is now not just annoying it’s illegal. And all the time Connells is taking leads from us: “Ummm. No, that one’s not avalable any more but could I interest you in …”

• I phoned John on his mobile and explained to him that if we weren’t removed from all Connells listings overnight I would write to the OEA, Waller, and Rightmove detailing in full their misconduct and breaches of the OEA code. I also let him know that if the sign wasn’t down the next day I would take it down myself, bring it into his offices on Saturday morning and explain in front of his customers exactly why I was doing so.

We were taken off the sites overnight. The sign was down by lunch.

I still dream occassionally about doing battle with estate agents. Should it have taken this much time and persuasion? I would have thought that being an unregulated industry places the onus on so-called reputable companies such as Connells to put in place the internal controls they require to at least ensure that their people don’t break the law, and perhaps to provide an acceptable level of customer service.

I considered listing all the laws and guidelines they’re in breach of, but that feels like far too much effort …

We had a great afternoon with emmaandjohnandphoebe … andpeteranddisaandbenandhelena … andpeterandjudyandmatthew … andvicandjessandamelie … andbevandtony. The rain stayed away until late in the evening – thanks, no doubt, to our having erected a rain shelter. Jess and Jo made real sandcastles in the sandpit and no-one figured out that waterpistols could be used for shooting each other. Sophie enjoyed the company. She’s between teeth at the moment and enjoyed playing on the swing and resting in the various laps on offer.

It was good to catch up with Emma and John during and after the party. Vic, Jessica and Amelie stayed over so we got to walk to the park with them this morning and feed the ducks. Josie loves her cousins; she took a photo of Jess and Amelie to bed with her when she took her afternoon nap.

Pics from the party are in the gallery.

It appears our weather order may have gone astray and it might storm this afternoon. Michelle, at the crack of sparrow-fart (as the saying goes) headed into town to get last-minute party bits and added a tarp to the list. We’ve never tried covering our pergola, but we’re not going to survive the party today without access to the deck, so covered it will be.

I was duly lashing tarp to pergola, with the girls playing quietly on the deck below me, when I realised Michelle was looking at me oddly. At first I thought she might be looking at me that way, but it was 11.30 on a Saturday morning and we have two young kids so I blinked and looked again. And then I heard it. Our neighbour’s current girlfriend is evidently rather vocal and, being summer, it’s far too warm to – ummm – sleep with the windows open. They were going at it hammer and tongs. Oh.my.goodness. Or at least she was, he’s apparently a little more reserved. If I’d been left any capacity for rational thought I would have recorded it on my phone and posted it here for you to marvel at.

Michelle had to rush inside lest her shrieks of laughter be heard by our good neighbour. I kept working on the tarp. The neighbour on the other side was working in her garden too and we spent a delightful fifteen minutes studiously avoiding eye contact and wearing facial expressions that related more to the task in hand than our humping neighbours.

They finished about the same time as I finished tying the tarp up. “You can come outside again, love, she’s come!”

I couldn’t resist … neighbourly relations could be strained. Perhaps he was watching porn on his new plasma wall.

Party time in an hour …

I rolled out of bed extra-early this morning to head up norf for a scintillating day of contract negotiations. Two things startled me immediately; I hastily replaced the covers then realised with a shock that not only had I leapt out of bed as my alarm went off, but it had got light while I was sleeping …

I couldn’t believe it! When did it start getting light without me? Who’s in control now? What a dastardly start to a Friday. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if my bottom falls off.

Saturday is the girls’ birthday party and preparations are well underway. Shopping is ordered, an arsenal of water pistols cached out of sight (if not out of mind), good weather booked to allow us to use the deck, birthday cake plans made.

Critically, today, Josie finally received her Monkey Card. She’d chosen a card with a monkey on for Michelle on her birthday and has since been under the impression that a birthday – to be done right – requires a Monkey Card. Pretty much every day since her birthday last week we’ve heard, “But I haven’t got a monkey card.”

This morning a monkey card appeared through the door as if by magic. It was a brilliant one with a collection of funny monkey faces on the front – not at all like Michelle’s somewhat disturbing picture of a sock monkey.

After the initial excitement of opening it up she stood still, holding it up to the light, and looked studiously from her card to Michelle’s on the mantlepiece and back again.
“But this isn’t a monkey card …”

The Thames paths were heaving. I know, I was there along with everyone else in London who’d spotted a sunny day.

Josie was up until 10-ish: my mouth is sore and my nose is sore and both of my arms are sore and my toe is sore and I like to eat soup; and porridge (enumerating on her fingers); and salad; and fruits; and bread with butter on it; and salad; and fruits-but-I’ve-said-that-already; and see – that’s what I like.

She hadn’t eaten much all day, with even yoghurt causing screams of pain. That and a certain chipmunkishness suggest tonsilitis … off to the doc today.

Still, I was well impressed that she’s got her head around “nose is … arms are”. Agreement of verbs at 3 and 2 days while either horribly ill or horribly stubborn.
Possibly both.

This camera was the star of the show. My cheeks are aching from saying “cheese” while Josie clicks through pictures of animals. What the picture doesn’t show is Josie’s skates that she has refused to take off for most of the afternoon. She did a lot of skating on the deck this morning before the rain started. It took three falls for her to figure out how to get up by herself (much hilarity), and by lunchtime she’d stopped falling. When the rain stops we’ll hit the road …
Pics of Jo fully kitted up in crash pads and skates in the gallery.

Josie read all her birthday cards to us as she opened them. Here’s the one from Mark, Sarah, Elspeth and Jemima:
 Josie reads her card from the Coxes

She also insisted on reading us her new Flower Fairies book cover-to-cover. In the midst of present-opening that’s quite an achievement for any book!

We viewed a very nice house earlier this afternoon. Not sure it’s the one for us, but it’s nice to see something good out there.

We’ve had a good day – next weekend’s the party …

You will know, if you’ve been around this little corner of the blogosphere for any length of time, that we’re selling our house. We fired agent 1 and are with agent 2, and must conclude that like thing 1 and thing 2 they’re pretty much just full of sound and fury. There are other words for what they’re full of but today I prefer the literary allusion.

We are finding this move more difficult than any we’ve begun before. Perhaps it’s because we have the girls now and they’re suffering through limited access to their stuff while the house is on the market; perhaps it’s that our last six house moves were pretty much all made out of necessity; perhaps it’s that we don’t yet have anywhere lined up to go to; perhaps we haven’t really decided what we want.

Perhaps that last one would be a good place to start. On bright spring mornings like today with the sun shining on the beech trees and the deck looking very inviting – particularly compared with 40 minutes on a train – it seems a pity we have to move at all. Which is a stupid thing to seem, because in reality this house is not especially beautiful and is certainly too small for us. It feels like the fun’s just beginning on this one and we’re already tired … but very excited to see where the game will take us.

Phil and Mel did a fantastic job setting up Ben & Anna’s princess and pirates party. That’s Ben & Anna in Oxfordshire, not NC. We had planned to spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday (day of the party) with them, but having left on Sunday and got one junction down the M40 we decided to turn around and spend another night visiting. Lucky them …

I think they had about a thousand people through their house on Saturday and Sunday. You could tell it had been that many by the number of magnolia petals trampled into the new carpets. We met or re-met lots of friends – people we’d been at school, or bits of school, or university with – and at least five families stayed over on Saturday night, giving us ample opportunity to eat and drink and chat.

The party on Sunday was an object lesson in how to entertain more-very-small-kids-than-one-person-can-count-unless-they’re-sleeping. Josie loved it, having got over any shyness on the Saturday, and led the charge in the treasure hunt, helped Anna blow out the candle on her cake, and helped Phil open presents (for which he was, of course, very grateful).

In the afternoon (following our turnaround) we got to spend some time catching up with Phil and Mel and seeing the school – including a very nice climbing wall which could see us visiting far more often … Josie and Ben did some climbing on Sunday. They played beautifully together on Sunday and Monday; both were quite upset when we left the first time on Sunday. It went better today because they’ve made arrangements to visit each other in the holidays.

We’ve had a great weekend. I ate a lot of Saffershire Rusks, which I can’t recommend highly enough.

Pics in the gallery.