Why I admire Estate agents.

Estate agents always seem to get a negative press, but I am coming to admire them. They have so many admirable qualities after all, don't they? For instance, see the two statements below.

Number one: “Yes, this is a really great house and the market is really picking up at the moment. We won't have any trouble selling your house at an exorbitant price, don't worry.”

Number two: “Well, you know, it might not be the best price, but there's no saying you'll get another offer, the last people we had through are selling a really nice house and so they didn't really think this one was up to scratch. The market's not as good as it was three years ago, you know.”

How many people would be able to look you in the eye when making the second statement just a month after making the first?

But it's not just that. It is breaking my heart to sell this house. We designed it and had it built ourselves, just ten years ago. It is light and airy, has room for the grand piano and a wall on which we can project videos, pillars on which I spent many, many hours painting Moroccan wall tiles. As I work from home, I spend a lot of time here, emailing, practising, writing, sitting at the table looking out at the sprays of bright pink and purple bougainvillea that frame the view of the mountains beyond; chickens running in and out, demanding more cat food, cats running in and out demanding more cat food, dog stealing cat food whenever he's not lying, farting at my feet, or stealing chicken food. 
I love watching the birds – the bright white cockatoos that wheel screaming overhead and litter the grass looking for seed, the rainbow and scaly breasted lorikeets who squabble in the grevillea trees, the pale headed rosellas dipping and swooping and chattering, the swifts and the butcherbirds with their intelligent interest, the big green and red King parrots and the peewits, the silly, yellow masked lapwings - even the magpies with their throaty chuckle. Sometimes, a flock of black cockatoos shriek their pterodactylllian way over the garden and, very occasionally, high in the sky, a wedge tiled eagle soars, looking for chickens, I suspect, or maybe just a bowl full of cat food.

After having asked for a Jacaranda tree every year for the last ten, Rupert finally bought me a sapling last year and now I will never see it grow. Our mangoes, tiny little buds on the tree now, will be eaten by another family this year.

And here's the thing – to quote Bill Bryson as I so love doing. By the time this house is sold, I think I will be only too glad to go – we are only a month into this business and I am already sick to the back teeth of it all and I have the estate agents to thank for that.

But for now, I need to go and yell at the kids to get them out of bed before the open house this morning. After all, we wouldn't want people to think that we were selling teenagers with the house, would we? (Now there's a thought)