After being inundated with literally ones of people asking where my blog posts have gone in recent weeks, I am glad…no, I am actually delighted, to announce that I am not dead yet and that my eclectic blend of razor sharp untamed wit, satire, and comments on current affairs will be once again appearing on your screens as you salivate in anticipation over your keyboards like DLT on a 70’s edition of Top of the Pops.

I have been moving around Hampshire like a nomad in the last two years and it is something of a relief to be settled again (down on the edge of Andover) and free from my idiotic dalliance with lunacy that sent my blood pressure to record levels of intolerance; having long-term residence once again is something of a dream that might seem quite bizarre to my friends who have not suffered the cataclysmic errors of judgement I bestowed on myself a couple of years back so you will just have to take my word for it.

There are a lot of people to thank who, in a time of minor crisis (I am not a refugee or an Ebola victim after all) put me up temporarily in their homes or guided me through my woes. They know who they are and they will read this, but being the type of people they are, they don’t need their names put on a blog page as they are not seeking some sort of personal glory; they were just doing what friends do.

So as much as I liked my little flat, it is nice to have a homely place again but getting there took many hurdles and I really don’t want to deal with estate agents again in a hurry. Why do they have to make you want to idolise them for selling you a house? Do they have signs up in their office saying “You don’t have to be a cretin to work here but it helps.”

The estate agent I dealt with didn’t even sell me the house really; I saw it on Right Move, went and looked at it and decided to buy it if the chap who owned it accepted my offer, which he did with enough reluctance to make at least think I had got a decent deal. The agent did nothing, there wasn’t anything he did that made me buy that house, except upload pictures on the internet and let me walk around the place.

It didn’t stop him thinking he was a hero when he rang me up though.

“Hello Mr Lethaby, it’s Dean from  AH.”

“Hello.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“No…why?”

“You sir are the proud owner of 79 Berry Way.”

“I know, I got an email from the solicitor last week saying it had exchanged and would complete today.”

I felt a tinge of guilt firing a metaphoric water cannon on his flames of self-promotion but the narcissistic tendencies of estate agents need dealing with. People say that surgeons are narcissists, wondering around hospitals in a haughty manner, acting like they own the place but who cares, at least they do something useful.

The surgeon who removed the cyst from the base of my spine a couple of years ago was worth every penny of my national insurance and if he had said; “Are you sitting down Mr Lethaby…I have successfully removed the cyst from the crack of bottom” I would have happily shook his hand and congratulated him on a job well done.

However, I never saw him again, perhaps because of the nature of the operation, it wasn’t possible for him to ring me up and say, “Are you sitting down?” but more likely because it was just another job completed in a profession where he is well paid.

Estate agents aren’t every day heroes like paramedics, fire-fighters, nurses or surgeons, but they have a strange way thinking that they are. Where I first lived, in Tadley, Hampshire, there was a woman who worked in Poulters who behaved like she was some sort community hero; it really is quite bizarre and I can only conclude there is some deep seated psychological inferiority complex going on with these people.

To put this attitude to selling to the test, I tried the estate agent sale on one of my clients, just in case I was missing a trick.

“Morning Mike, are you sitting down?” 

“No, why, what’s happened?”

“I have found you a controls engineer in Bracknell!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Of course, I explained straight away my reasons for doing it and he also agreed that property agents like to believe that they are pillars of the community who are in a state of terminal regret that the AA beat them to announce themselves with the strap line, The 4th Emergency Service.

I don’t begrudge salesman, I am one after all, but I struggle to understand their need for gushing gratitude after they have made money off you. Is it not enough to just pay them and put and end to it an perhaps receive a thank you from them for sticking a few thousand quid their way?

In no other profession are customers expected to show such gratitude to the supplier.

“Hello Mrs Timpkins are you sitting down?”

“Why what is it?”

“Congratulations, I have just re-wired your house!”

Maybe it is a case of the public getting what the public wants, after all, on a recent trip to Greece, I was subjected to people wildly applauding a pilot who did his job by carrying out the task of landing the plane.

I almost wanted it to clip the terminal so I could boo and shout,“YOU’RE SHIT, AAAAAAAAAH!”

It’s good to be back.