The Daily Novel

Last night I went to bed a happy man. In a whirlwind day of activity in real estate dealing I had accepted an offer for our house and put firm offers on a house in Charmouth and a flat in the next street here. I had agreed a moving date which suited all three parties. Janet and I had started planning the next phase of our life over dinner, then retired to bed and slept soundly. I slept til 10 AM and was singing in the shower when Janet shouted the news that our buyer had withdrawn.

 So now we have to start all over again. But at least I can make a blog of the disappointment, which is a classic example of the volatile state of the house market.

 Our house went on the market last Monday, and by Thursday we had three firm offers at the guide price. James, our estate agent, was proposing to move to a sealed bid this week, and all before the advertisement had appeared in the Ham and High.

 So off we went again on Friday to look at houses on Lyme Bay. We had two prospects. One of them did not live up to the photos and we ruled it out immediately. The other was a characterful cedar shingles house with a magnificent 180 foot garden. I was keen but Janet thought it would be taking on too much. (After all, she, not me, does the gardening.)

 At breakfast in our B&B in Charmouth, where we staying for the third time, she told me that she wanted to buy the B&B. We had learnt it was up for sale on our first visit but had ruled it out because it then seemed beyond our means. Now we saw it in a new light. A family house with en-suite showers for us and our children. We spent the morning looking around it and agreeing the price with the owner.

 On the way back to London we stopped to see friends in Weymouth. My mobile rang and it was James the Estate Agent. He asked if I was sitting comfortably and prepared for a shock. We now had four firm offers at the guide price. And a fifth buyer, whom I will call James the Buyer, who was putting in  a shutout bid on the condition that we agreed the deal on Monday and went to an immediate exchange of contracts.

 The price was beyond my best expectations. Additionally I had liked the prospective buyer. He had told me how much he liked what we had done with our house, particularly the William Morris wallpaper, and asked me to be sure to phone him if anyone else was putting in a firm offer. I had written his name and telephone number in my diary.

 So it seemed the Gods were with us. Back in London on Monday I got on the phone to deal with the third leg in our property deal. We had found a flat in the next street last Thursday which was particularly well suited to our needs. I had to pay more than the offer price but by late afternoon the price and moving date were agreed.

 When I re-worked the figures on the back of my fortunately large envelope it seemed that we could not only afford it, but that we would have some spare. We would be almost rich.

 But James the Buyer has got cold feet. His dad, a wealthy manufacturer, had agreed to give him a chunk of the money, but he had redone the calculations on his envelope and found that this would still leave him with a mortgage too big for comfort.

 So I have to carry on property dealing for the moment and find a clean envelope to set down some new calculations on a figure I will not know for a few days yet. And hope that the next buyer will have done his calculations before he puts in the offer.

…….resumed soon, I hope.

The sun was shining in Lyme Bay this morning and we are hopeful of getting a house there we both like. The estate agent rang my mobile to tell me that he had had another firm offer for our house.

So please, keep your fingers crossed, or pray if you are a believer, that I shall soon be able to turn from real estate matters back to more appropriate matters for this blog.

Good night.

In the dream there had been a huge nuclear explosion in Rome and a mushroom cloud was moving over Italy. All I was concerned to know was whether a particular Italian had flown out before the bomb fell. No doubt the great Sigmund would have been able to connect this with my unconscious wish to kill my father and take possession of my mother. More likely, I thought, to do with the powerful emotions swirling around as the procession of would-be house buyers tramp through my house.

 Yesterday, there was an Italian woman who was quite keen. She is due to come back this morning with her husband who was flying back from Rome. I can well believe that my unconscious does not want to sell the house. But it seems a bit far-fetched that I have the urge to destroy the whole Italian nation in order to abort the sale.

 My dreams are mostly a mixture of sense and nonsense. Last night I was dreaming about writing a blog about the proper use of italics and parentheses, or brackets as we used to call them in my youth. This was probably triggered by something Adrian Monck wrote in his blog a day or two ago. But the subject does not stir me emotionally and I don’t think it matters too much, whether I use brackets or commas to break up sentences.

 Real life is currently something of a nightmare. I was rushing off to take my scooter for it’s overdue MoT, when the phone went, so I had to take off my helmet, to answer it. Then the door bell went and the first of today’s prospective purchasers came in. As I was trying to ride my bike out of the gate, a second purchaser came in. Then my next door neighbour was trying to tell me something about an ex-student of mine from Pakistan, with whom he had had dinner with last night, and who had some message for me, that I could not hear properly.

 But I had to drive on out because there was yet another couple trying to get in through the gate.

 I have not yet had time to open this morning’s papers, or even listen to the Today Programme. Blogging is likely to be spasmodic for a few days. Tomorrow we are off to Lyme Regis to look at another two houses there. But just now I have to go off and look at a small flat in the next street we might buy.

This article, despite the headline, is more about me, than estate agents. Because I am currently a quivering mess of emotions. That is not the fault of the estate agents. It is because I am selling the house in which I have lived for the past twenty-one years. But, if you read on to the end, you will find that it does connect back to estate agents eventually.

 In early 1976 I bought this house in something of a hurry. In the closing months of 1975 Janet and I had been spending much of our spare time, looking for a bigger house in the Gospel Oak neighbourhood, because our existing house in Oak Village was just not big enough to house our growing children and put up our foreign friends and our extended families. We had found a house twice as big over the road, at substantially less than the value of our house, but which needed a lot doing to it.

 There was a snag. It had a sitting tenant. But because we had been looking for some time, and were well-acquainted with the lady, we knew that she was on the verge of getting a council flat. So we put in our offer, which was about £18,000. And the deal was proceeding.

 Then, on Friday, the thirteenth of September, (I mention the date in case any of my readers are superstitious. I am, of course, a rational human being.) I was knocked off my motor bike in Pall Mall, on the way back to The Economist, for whom I was then working.

 In February, the Abbey National told me that they would not give me a mortgage on our preferred house. In those days, the building societies, were unprepared to lend on a house, which had an elderly tenant with legal rights inhabiting a bedsit on the first floor. Though we were quite happy to live with her, while she waited for the Council to give her, what she had wished for many years, a nice small mod cons council flat. Because, on our visits, we had become quite fond of her.

 But I was starting a new job, and facing a prospect of several months on crutches, during which I would be incapable of doing any of my amateur do-it-yourself. So we opted to buy a similar house in the same street for around £25,500, which was we could easily live in without doing anything immediately, because it had been well-maintained and modernised, but in 1950s, rather than Victorian style.

 Most of the work we did, and the money we spent, on that house was ripping out the plaster board partitions, and installing replicas of two of the original fireplaces. So what we now have is something which combines the elegance of the Victorian structure, with central heating, discreet big French windows facing the garden, etc, etc.

 But even before we had done anything, I remember sitting at my desk, then in the front ground floor ‘dining room’ which was designated my study, the first study I had ever had in my life, and feeling totally happy. This was a house in which I was quite happy to spend the rest of my life

But I have lived longer than I expected to. And I am now looking forward to a change, when I will divide my time between a flat near here and a small house by the seaside.

 And so is all my family. But we are all in a mess of emotions, because so much of our life together has been lived in this heap of bricks and mortar which has suited us. So today while were discussing all the practicalities of this change, little Dulcie upset a glass of wine over the documents I had brought over to show to Holly. And slightly bigger Joe had vanished to the sitting room to play on his parent’s laptop.

 Earlier in the day my wife had erupted, because, due to a misunderstanding, I had arranged for the first visits of the first prospective buyers at the wrong time. So she vanished and I dealt with them, carefully concealing the tears in my eyes.

 We were fearing the newly rich who were going to tear out what we had so carefully constructed. But in fact, it was not so bad. Two of the three lots who came round were obviously appreciative of what we had done. And although, one was a rising grocer and the other a banker, they both were not just buying their houses as ‘investments’.

 They were not behaving like ‘estate agents’. But, neither were most of the estate agents I have been dealing with. They have mostly shown quite a lot of sensitivity to the emotional upheavals that are an intricate part of selling and buying houses. (Though, they are, I think, overpaid in relation to postmen, milkmen and small shopkeepers, who also spend a lot of their time dealing with the emotional needs of the people they encounter while earning their daily bread.)

 My headline was provoked by the comment of Phil on the previous blog I wrote in which I referred to the estate agents who were dominating my life. He wrote that those I had encountered must have been young. Because even estate agents die of shame. Good joke.

 But that rather misses the point I was making. Which will be clear to anyone who has read my last three blogs. Estate agents and small shopkeepers are doing just exactly what they have been doing for generations.

 What is different today is that university teachers are being encouraged to behave like estate agents, and university vice chancellors are going along with it. The students are not our customers. Our job is not to sell them the knowledge and experience we have. It is to challenge and provoke them. It is to make them dissatisfied.

 Our job is not to quench their thirst. It is to whet their appetites, to raise their aspirations, not to train them to fit in with the fashions of the times.

In the last two weeks I have spent a huge amount of my time talking to estate agents, in both Lyme Regis and London. Several of them I actually liked. Reason being, I think now, is that they are not very different from the average. Because in the world that has been created by Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, everyone is encouraged to behave like ‘estate agents’.

And today, in one of the houses I looked at, I had a long conversation with the vendor, whom I liked. As did my wife. And what’s more he actually knew John Fowles, although this fact is not mentioned in the estate agent’s publicity.

Moreover, he agreed with me that Fowles in his later work got rather carried away with the esoteric, starting with The Magus. Of course, such subjective feelirgs about the current owner, should not influence a decision about the bricks and mortar and location we are buying.

Or should it?

 The weather forecasting experts have got today entirely wrong. It was supposed to be a bit cloudy but dry. In fact, it has been drizzling and the skies have been so grey that the splendid coastal scenery has been invisible for most of the day.

I was going to write another sentance in the only pub I have found which has a wireless connection. But my wife says we must go. Now.

 Goodnight.

The landlady of our B&B rang to say that the weather forecast was pouring rain and did she want us to tear up the cheque and come another time? The lady from the estate agents left a message on the answer phone to warn us that a buyer had made an offer for the house we were interested in via a rival firm. Nevertheless we packed our rainwear and drove down to Dorset yesterday.

To University College London for a hustings to be addressed by all three candidates standing the job of the first General Secretary of the new University and College Union, formed last year by the merger of the AUT, which represented most academic staff in the pre-1992 universities, and NATFHE, which represents most academic staff in the former polytechnics and further education colleges.

Before I report on the main speakers, I should tell you about a passionate questioner from the floor, who got his chance to speak towards the end of the question and answer session. He urged the union activists filling the lecture theatre to forget about the ‘detail of union matters’ and to concentrate on the main issue, which how to stop the destruction of the British university system. The union should concentrate on forging alliances to fight this battle with the many distinguished and influential figures, who were equally critical of the current policies which are threatening academic standards, but were not interested in union matters. He instanced one, no less a figure than the President of the Royal Academy, who apparently is ready to march shoulder to shoulder with us, if not to the barricades, at least down Whitehall to lobby the Government. The questioner suggested us that university standards are being threatened by the policies of the present Government and the majority of the vice-chancellors, who are going along with the new managerialism. He ended with a dramatic call for immediate action to stop the rot: ‘It is our last chance’.

I have much sympathy with the sentiments expressed by the questioner. I think he is absolutely right that university standards have already been damaged and are being damaged even more as each year goes by. I think that it is also true that many of the general public are not aware of this deterioration of standards. And this is partly because so few vice chancellors are prepared to speak out against the fashions of the times.

Roger Kline, one of the three leadership candidates, had already demonstrated in his speech how the new ethos, with its obsession with monitoring performance and behaviour was threatening both academic standards, academic freedom and the autonomy of university teachers. He instanced one example, which might have been taken from the theatre of the absurd, except that is happening in real life at Leeds Metropolitan University. The Vice-Chancellor there has instructed his teachers that they must carry mobile phones with them at all times. He has also instructed his administrative staff to spy on the academic test and report how they rated in terms of their ‘customer relationships’ with the students.

One of the effects of treating the students as customers has been apparent for many years in my own discipline, journalism. We have now reached the situation, where the number of new journalism jobs is far exceeded by the output of students each year from journalism courses. In journalism this does not matter too much. Because, if students learn their discipline properly, the skills they acquire – the ability to research a subject quickly and thoroughly and transmit the results in plain language, expressed succinctly, help them to progress in many jobs, public relations, politics and many managerial jobs, where such skills are highly valued.

But Kline gave another example of this trend which is really worrying. Apparently television programmes like Silent Witness have led to a flood of customers for forensic science courses. So the new university managers keep starting new courses to satisfy customer demand. Soon we will have far more forensic scientists than the number of dead bodies that need examining.

My visit to UCL. I had hoped to see all three candidates in action, being challenged by the knowledgeable activists, which is near the top in terms of the number of UCU members on its books. In the event Peter Jones had to go into hospital for on undisclosed health problem which is ‘manageable’. Sally Hunt, former General Secretary of the AUT, who has being acting as joint general secretary of UCU, with Paul Mackney of NATFHE, who had to withdraw from the leadership battle before it started on his doctor’s advice.

As Kline himself said there is little difference in the policies advocated by the three candidates. Members will have to decide which of the three is the most likely to be able to fulfil the promises they have made to members. I hope to put some flesh on the human beings behind the manifestos, but that will have to wait for the moment.

Because my scooter is temporarily inactive and it took me over two hours to get to UCL and back, as against twenty minutes by scooter. And I do not have time to write more now because I have to leave for a dinner date. And I am off to Dorset tomorrow. But I will return to this subject long before the ballot closes.

Slept well and for just over six hours, which is about average for me. And got up in the mood to start writing before breakfast. Acutely aware that over the last two weeks my blog postings have taken a plunge in length and frequency. It is all to do with the possibility of selling our house in which we have lived for the past thirty-one years. And which we have gradually transformed into the as near as we can get to our Ideal Home.

The author of the Daily Novel has still not made up his mind whether he will be cheering for Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama, or some other candidate as yet undeclared, in the US presidential election less than two years hence. Which election will have an important effect on all who inhabit Planet Earth in the first decade of the 21st century.

Because the author is at present dominated by a few decisions in his own personal life, which are far removed from international or national politics, but which very important in terms of the unfolding personal biography of the manic depressive diarist. Because he is standing at a cross roads and examining the sign posts which point to several different roads which he might take from now on.

In plain language he is thinking of moving house. And he is at present inclined to take his cue from Robert Frost and do, what retired people are warned not to do, go and live somewhere entirely different. The road less travelled to the place never lived in before.

Unhappily, Robert Frost will not be a candidate in 2008, because he is dead, and because he was a poet not a politician. But when the daily novelist gets back to writing about American politics he will be casting his vote for the candidate who shows most evidence of having learnt from the wisdom of Robert Frost.

Blair is making some attempt to repair some of the havoc he has wreaked in the university system. Plans are to be unveiled later this week through which the government will donate £1 from the public purse for every £2 given by wealthy philanthropists or grateful ex-students. That should help to get some much needed extra funds into the university system. But it still leaves our university system at the whim of private donors, rather determinde by government policy. Which is the old Conservatism, rather than Labour, new or old.