Estate Agents...

I have to admit that I have loathed estate agents from the moment I first heard the words 'and then there's our fees...', but as time goes by, they do nothing to make me like them more.

The first time I rented through an agent, my little bedsit had only two radiators, one of which was recorded as non-functional on the inventory, and the other of which I, on my first day in the flat, discovered was also not working. The toilet, I also discovered while going through the inventory, had once been screwed to the floor but, by that time, had become so rusted by the water leaking from the soil pipe that the screws were now non-descript metal pegs which did nothing to hold the fixture in place.

I let them know of these issues within forty-eight hours of moving into the property, and yet when I moved out after just under a year, nothing had been done about them - or numerous other, smaller issues - at all.

So suck it, Bairstow Eves of Nottingham, Notts, UK (a subsidiary of Countrywide lettings...).

After the end of my degree course and that tenancy, I moved back in with family, and eventually took out a joint tenancy with two family members in a house found through - despite my doubts - another estate agent.

We were actually shown the house by one of the two owners, who - as it turns out - misinformed us. The estate agents were the unlucky messengers of the news that we would not, as we had been told, have any access to the garden shed - and so precisely where we were supposed to store any tools with which to keep the garden in order (as demanded by the tenancy agreement) were unclear.

It has to be noticed that this was not the estate agent's fault. Neither was it technically their fault that every unanswered question we had for the landlord took weeks to be answered - it was simply the result of having a middle man relaying questions and answers between tenants and landlords who hadn't really grasped that the estate agent cannot answer questions that the landlord hasn't prepared them for...

So all was more-or-less well - or at least understandable - on the estate agent front (although I still disliked them on the basis of extortionate fees). Until today.

Today - the twenty-ninth of May, 2013, we received a letter which should have politely reminded us that we have previously agreed to return to property at the end of July.

Written and signed by the estate agent, it was entitled 'Notice to Vacate' and worded in such a way that - until I turned over the page and saw the pre-agreed date - I thought we were being kicked out. It was a pre-agreed date. It shouldn't be hard to word a letter in a neutral, non threatening tone, but apparently this agency's approach to landlord/tenant relations is not to try to keep both happy but to play each party off against the other and therefore prevent either from realising that they are both being charged an unthinkable amount of money for a shoddy service delivered with bad attitude and too much make-up.

So Sims Williams can bite me.

The English Language and self loathing.

As a reasonably avid user of the internet, on most days I will click onto one or more sites where people from around the world are sharing knowledge.

Which is good.

A lot of people sharing information in entomology, which is one of the many areas I follow with some interest but little know-how, are from Europe or America, possibly because my site-sampling is biased that way, but probably because the history of modern zoology is European.

This point is irrelevant.

The real point is that a majority of authorities whose words I read and occasionally respond to are not first-language English speakers, and I feel like a British tourist abroad. I carry on as I am, and assume that if I do so with enough force an volume, it will continue to work.

I can only assume that the tower of Babel was actually built in Britain. All over the web, other people use a language they don't speak to help me understand, and at least once a week, I write to people whose first language I know not to be English, and yet the very idea of writing to them in their own language seems laughable as soon as I think it.

I use all the usual excuses, of course - English is so much more convenient for everyone, English is spoken worldwide, if you go anywhere in the world and speak dutch, and to the same places and speak English, you're more likely to get your idea across in English - but all of these basically come down to the fact that the UK in general - and England in particular - has forgotten that it doesn't rule the world any more. We English are like the racist old relative in the corner of the room, who offends every thirty seconds but is harmless and a little bit pathetic and so eventually you don't even try to point it out.

It gets worse.


I found myself wanting to write back to a professor in Poland the other day because his grammar was non-standard.

Auf wiedersehen, Au revoir, Arrivederci, Żegnaj, Vaarwel, ffarwel, na shledanou, Adios, hüvasti

And Smivel. 

Distinguishing between "like a douche" and "properly", where guitar is concerned.

I collect hobbies.

As such, it was natural that eventually music would become something I dabbled in.


It started with a thumb piano (or mbira) which wasn't far off being actually in tune. You could almost coax 'my heart will go on' out of it if you didn't mind the fact that it had to transposed to a completely different key.

It progressed to the piano. A friend at school was musically insane, and currently has at least three grade eights (piano, pipe organ and voice), and I thank a grade 5 in harp. After not-so-much coaxing at all, she agreed to teach me piano. For nothing, or perhaps the pleasure of my company (which amounts to significantly less than nothing, I might add. I'm obnoxious).

Another friend was soon manipulated in teaching me a little bit of cello. The piano is more-or-less ongoing - although because of various issue with family, housemates, and then family again disliking noise, the practice has been limited, and with my being about as talented as a dead mullet, I've not progressed far. The cello has been even less successful, and I cringe when I think of how long I saved for it before the friend - upon my introducing it to her - almost immediately stopped teaching. She's almost as fickle as me.

Anyway, beyond the occasional tinkle on the piano, I let the innocent field of music alone for some time, and then, one rainy Tuesday, I got completely soaked and decided that the only solution was to spend £25 on a small, blue Ukelele.


Which brings me to the point of this little post. 

Having taken this Ukelele into town with me a few weeks later, stopping at work to see what my upcoming hours would be, I inadvertently led one of the good ladies at my workplace to believe that I was carrying a violin or other such respectable instrument, and was therefore 'Musical'. Another co-worker - a music graduate who exudes Generation Y cool from her scuffed shoes to her split ends and plays the Hammond organ in a 70s revival rock band - heard that I was musical and, on an overlapping shift, asked me about it.

I was forced to admit that I played the Ukelele, and not a 'real' instrument. She asked whether I played 'like a douche' or 'properly', and from my inarticulate response (to the effect of 'There's more than one way to play the Ukelele???') she deduced that I played it like a douche. In discovering that I did not know how to play Follow the Yellow Brick Road (I still don't, as I really don't see the point), she rescinded this statement, but it troubled me for some time.

Anyway, a month or so later, as I have indicated elsewhere, I was given a guitar. My family had a) always had guitars lying around and b) probably couldn't stand the incessant, high-pitched twang of the Ukelele any longer, so it was an obvious choice.

And I love my guitar (Penelope) quite dearly, but am loathe to play it where anyone might hear, in case I am, unknowingly, playing it like a douche. Yes, the unanswered question daunts me still - do I play like a douche? How does a douche deduce that his dabbling is douche-ish?

Finally - about three hours ago, I had a breakthrough.

Do you wonder why guitars are predominantly designed for and by right handed people, yet leave all the hard work to the left hand? 

If the answer is yes, you play like a douche.

Smivel Out.