The House Viewing Incident

It was never going to warrant a feature in ’25 Spectacular Homes’ but it was nice enough and the owners had obviously gone to some lengths to hide any obvious deal-breakers.

I turned up five minutes’ late, pausing at the front door to regain some small level of composure, having marched the double buggy up a slight incline at a pace not conducive to remaining composed. An attempt to smooth down my hair and flap a bit of cool air under my heated armpits was interrupted by a glamorous estate agent swinging open the front door. She greeted me with that estate agent smile that does little to hide the fact that you’re being sized up to see if you’re:

a) Genuinely interested in the house, or just looking for something to do with the kids that doesn’t cost money.
b) Can afford the asking price.

The flicker of disappointment that crossed her face obviously meant she felt I failed on both counts but she did her best to hide it. She even offered to help me with the buggy despite only proffering one hand. This had been manicured to within an inch of usability and I decided it might be safer to leave the buggy outside.

The viewing was being shared with a heavily pregnant Italian woman and her stony-faced mother in standard issue black smock. As a rival potential purchaser I was given the once-over and we nodded to each other as the estate agent talked though the details.

I tried very hard to ignore Jess’s pleas that she needed a wee and told her to go and have look in the kitchen. She seems to enjoy the novelty value of trying out other people’s conveniences but it would appear that she was actually in need of bladder emptying, after all. She waddled back into the living room with her trousers and pants hanging around her ankles, asking where the toilet was. The estate agent gasped and the pregnant woman glanced nervously at her mother, her pained expression silently asking for reassurance that this wasn’t normal behaviour. Mother pursed her lips and shook her head; a defiant look that said this was definitely not normal and that her daughter’s prodigious offspring wouldn’t countenance the idea of acting like this.

Mother and daughter made a swift exit and the estate agent said she was sure the owner wouldn’t mind Jess using the toilet. Her furtive glance at the freshly laid cream carpet suggested she was more concerned by the alternative scenario and didn’t relish the prospect of trying to explain the lingering aroma of urine to the bemused vendors, on their return home.

I left Finn in the living room, spinning around on his tummy on the laminate flooring like a break-dancing tortoise and I scooped Jess up and plonked her on the loo. I was just about to drag her off again when a familiar odour set alarm bells ringing. Her gleeful shout confirmed my suspicions:

‘I need a poo as well!’

Unfortunately, the limited square footage of the house meant that the exclamation was not lost to the estate agent’s ears. A day of high-quantity and less than nutritionally balanced foodstuffs resulted in some rather noxious aromas permeating the downstairs rooms.

It’s strange; the estate agent never did call back with details of the other house that they’d just taken on…