Reminds me of the time my wife and I, possessed by the spirit of morbid curiosity, and standing outside one of those bazillion pound filing cabinets of flats that push up like the bastard big brother of Japanese knotweed throughout London and not wanting to get any wetter than we already were, thought what the hell it's dry inside, let's find out what £3.5 million will buy us while casually dripping on the most expensive carpet possible (if you're going to drip you may as well do it in style). So we slip into role as swankbanking investors with our eye on another (yes, another, the saleswoman was practically up her ankles in a sea of drool when she heard that another, and she was already perched on heels so high that she'd probably take several seconds to hit the carpet if she tripped, and oh what a carpet, you could lose a lion in it, and it was very absorbent if you happen to be dripping wet). I work in sales so I roll big, unctuous fat lies out of my mouth all the time, giant pork buns of invention, corkers of porkers. I have no shame. I misplaced it in a bar somewhere. I think someone took it home and keeps it as a pet. It eats goldfish crackers and drinks Campari. Don't get it drunk after midnight.
So anyway, we're whisked up into a glossy elevator (not a lift, lifts are for council blocks, lifts are for pissing in, lifts are for old ladies with shopping bags) and deposited in what someone thinks is a contemporary lifestyle assembled from lateral spaces and words preceded by luxurious. A world of eye-slappingly bright white walls, everything edged with sharp chrome, every surface boasting tasteful displays of orchids that might have been plastic if plastic orchids were declared fashionable by an appropriate focus group. More lion-eating carpets. You could murder someone on those carpets with a chainsaw and not have to worry about the blood dripping on your downstairs neighbour and spoiling a dinner party. Which I find blood dripping from the ceiling always does. Every now and then they’d break up the endless polar white with a slab of black, an altar expanse of sacrificial granite worktop in the kitchen, a black (black!) toilet just like they have in merry Hell, and for some reason above the bed, a big slab of garish murder red splash back. Really, it was all very American Psycho.
Anyways, so many well-greased lies flew out of mouth (one of which wasn’t my phone number) meant that for weeks afterwards she kept calling me about my decision. In the end I told her it was a bit on the small side, and as a man I know how deflating that can be. You could hear her collapse inside and she scrunched up into a ball of a disappointment as her commision evaporated in a sudden puff of despondency. I broke her heart. Or she toppled off her heels and was falling evermore towards the carpet.
Thing was, it wasn’t actually that big. For £3.5 million I'd want to be able to drive a big car around my living room. And my balcony didn’t cost that much and rather than look at vagrants pissing up the back-end of the Tate Gallery I can watch gambolling squirrels pissing on my garage roof.
The best bit was when we were discussing my ‘summer house’ and she asked if it was in France. Yes, I nodded, it’s in France and we like to get away from the city, you know how it is, the city is so stiflingly busy in the summer. I had to do this while my wife kicked me once in the shin for each and every lie I gift wrapped and handed over. I do have a summer house, but it’s really just a small shed with a porch and it's at the top of my garden, oh about twenty five metres from my back door.