The Shortlist - Fat Dogs and French Estates - page 27

It was suggested that, whilst not ruling out Provence entirely, we should broaden our
search westwards. This would take in the Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées re-
gions, which apparently 'have it all' in terms of the flora, fauna and weather we sought.
Interesting, but was this all 'estate-agent-speak'? I immediately plunged into more research
on those regions, which were certainly an unknown quantity.
Things were finally hotting-up, which was very exciting - for me at least. Predictably
Jack was unmoved by much of the detail I shared with him, grumbling that all he wanted
was a completed dossier in a concise form so he could route-plan without having to read
about the massacre at Béziers.
“And anyway,” he droned, “if you've applied your usual attention to detail, I'll prob-
ably have to re-do most of it myself.”
After so many years together I was accustomed to this type of reaction. It's true that an
occasional bout of rapid-reading on my part could result in the odd error or omission, par-
ticularly if it involved forms. But Jack could be equally frustrating with his obsession for
checking and then double-checking any work he tackled. I'm sure this stemmed from his
Engineering/DIY mantra of 'measure twice, cut once' or, in his case, measure five times,
make three scale drawings, sharpen the tools, then make a better drawing.
Setting aside these bizarre principles of unnecessary perfection, I managed a smile.
“Yes, of course you will, darling.”
I then collated my papers and arranged them very nicely in a large file entitled Re-
search for French Estates - there and back again - a wife's tale .
Our shortlist comprised an impressive fourteen locations, all of which seemed to be
ideal. It would simply be a question of choosing which one had the best 'feel-good' factor.
The next job was to arrange the travel dates. Dealing with independent operators had
made things wonderfully simple in this respect, but I still had a couple of visits to arrange
with non-English-speaking estate agents.
Unfortunately, whilst attempting to arrange a viewing with one such company I real-
ised I had made a slight mistake. As the gentleman was trying to give me travel instructions
to this particular domaine in that usual high-speed bellowing kind of a way, I had an eer-
ie feeling that I had come across the same directions before. I had . I was in the throes of
organising two visits to the same domaine , with two different companies. This came about
because the property photographs were completely different on each website, which caused
my mistake.
Okay , I thought, not a big deal . I just needed to explain this and terminate the call.
Sadly, the estate agent didn't appreciate the simplicity of my error at all. He completely
'lost it' and proceeded to castigate me (I think) for the next five minutes. He declared that
his company had gone to much, much trouble trying to help me (two emails), so they de-
served to have the sale and I should … correction, must cancel the appointment with the
other agency.