The Landlady decides to take on a challenge
Happy New Year, dear reader, and welcome to the sparkling and exciting number that is 2012. I can now say ‘2012’ in Arabic, although it will probably be at least 2013 before I can string it together with any degree of aplomb or discernible accent.
“If anything makes me more determined it’s the red-flag waving of an arrogant man”
I am currently on a transatlantic flight to Cuba, which has given me a great deal of time to reflect on the year that was 2011. It was the year during which I went on holiday every single month – apart from November, when I had a much needed holiday from going on holiday. As much as I enjoy going on holiday, I can’t help feeling that I’m wasting time which could be readily employed doing something more useful. During my friend and I’s ‘Annual Review’, which means Christmas shopping followed by drinking bucket-loads of wine while discussing the ways of the world in what ultimately becomes a highly incendiary manner, Katy ended by saying that it was high time that I got back on the property wagon.
After I’d stopped laughing and in the cold light of day with a kilo of Berrocca, I began to take her comment on board and reasoned that it wasn’t such a bad idea. After all, my skills (well, the ones which pay any money) lie in the property market. And it is sometimes easy to forget that this column is called The Landlady. Curiously, in spite of all the doom-mongers, it feels like a good time to start investing again. Moreover, my mother recently left me some money, which would be a great starting point, that is if we ever manage to sell her house in Stoke-On-Trent, which might as well be Stoke-On-Mars, as far as the property market is concerned.
This has been something of an epiphany to me, during which Sarah Beeny might as well have appeared as a vision in white overalls, bathed in the soft light of a welding torch. I haven’t laid my hand on a box spanner for a good eight year, as flinging myself around the dance floors of Havana has been a more appetising option. But I will probably still be able to do that in five years time – with the underpinning of Spanx and wrinkle-cream – whereas contorting my ageing torso around the (always) ill-placed incline of a U-bend may be less of a pleasure once I’m over 50.
As you can tell, I’m mustard-keen on the idea and became even more so when I bumped into a fellow property-mogul at the supermarket, who dismissed my enthusiasm out of hand, then roared with laughter at the thought that I might make a profit. If anything makes me more determined it’s the red-flag waving of an arrogant man, so watch out estate agents, here I come. Just as soon as I can find my pipe-benders…
