Now, if I owned a listed building...

 

.... Of course, there are many ways to become middle class, but one of the most effective and soul destroying is surely to buy a listed house in a conservation area. If your heart's desire is to become the proud and self-satisfied type of bastard who owns a listed building, the following tale should put you off.

It's several months now since we arrived in hell, and there are many stories to relate - non more exciting surely than the infamous debacle of the vermin and insect-infested living room, whose culminating orgasm of despair was the much-photographed, un-matching, shocking pink floorboard incident, courtesy of Odd Rod, the colour blind carpenter. But that is for another time, when, fortified by strong drink, I feel man enough to relate the saga. For now, at least, picture the scene as I and my beloved family sit huddled, sans radiator, sans hope, round our cold, empty hearth. I remember the telephone conversation which resulted in this unfortunate state of affairs very clearly, occurring as it did, one week before we moved in...
 

'Hello, Mrs Halls, it's Dwayne from Bellend and Cockwhiskers in the High Street'

'Hello Dwayne'

'Just a quick one Mrs Hays, the vendors want to know if you would like to buy their companion set?'

'Er, no thanks Dwayne, we already have one thank you.''

'OK Mrs Haines, it's just, well, it cost them £200 and they said you can have it for £75!'

'Yes, very generous, but as I said, we don't need it thank you, we have one already.'

'Right-ho Mrs Haymes, it's one of those things you poke fires with, you know?'

'Yes, I do know, thank you Dwayne, but we already have one, and so we don't need to buy another one.'

'Oh, OK Mrs Ayles. So, shall I tell them to just take it with them then?'

'Yes, I think that would be best Dwayne'

'Right-ho  then Mrs Aimes, thanks anyway, bye for now.'

'Goodbye Dwayne'

So you can imagine our surprise when we arrived at our new home seven days later during the worst floods Britain had seen since the last time it flooded, about a year earlier, and discovered not only that none of our furniture would fit up the staircase, but that the entire inner workings of the living room-fireplace had been removed. Obviously my first instinct was to tear open one of the 6,000 cardboard boxes labelled 'BOOKS- er- please put anywhere' in search of the Concise OED Vol I (A-M Markworthy) to look up the definition of the phrase 'companion set'. But common sense for once prevailed and I instead wandered about the freezing cold house weeping and clutching removal men by the lapels, screaming Oh 'God! - what have we done?'

 

 

 

Builders

 

 

If after this you don't immediately put the house back on the market and fill out an application form to buy a new flat off-plan on an exiting wharfeside development by award-winning architects, located near actual shops, you have to accept the inevitability of getting some work done to the house, so that it becomes habitable for something other than livestock.  At this point the world as you remember it changes and appears instead to divide into two types of workmen. There is a vague awareness that there used to be more to life than two types of workmen, but you soon learn to ignore this, roll up your sleeves and get on with categorising builders. And, as I said, there are two main groups.
 

Group One:

Builders whose advertisements appear in glossy publications like The Beautiful Buildings Owners Club, A life of Tweed, and Lime Wash: A history through the Ages. They have names like 'Woodcock and Daughters', 'Goodchilde and Spate', and 'Benjamin Beaufort, workers in oak'. Their ads are full colour and feature immense, fully restored, twelve-bedroom medieval manor houses with moats, gleaming in the Surrey sunshine. Lushly blonde children with very white teeth and wearing striped leggings in unvarying shades of taupe, gambol around the 50-acre gardens, clutching croquet mallets and organic carrot batons while smiling at their glittering parents in a way that only the public school-educated child can. These advertisements never refer to the cost of anything, apart from to hint at the social cost of owning a less than magnificent ancient home. They boast of years of adherence to traditional materials, endless and impressive qualifications in master-craftsmanship across all fields of expertise, and guarantee that their on-site employees will be dressed throughout in the garb of 11th century stonemasons, as featured in the Bayeux Tapestry.
 

Group Two:

Builders you can actually afford. Their adverts tend to appear in free newspapers like the Heartsink Gazette, next to the Star of Bengal's half-page Elvis Nite Special with unlimited poppadoms. To be fair, and in your defence, they do state that they have had 'experience of listed buildings'. It's only much later that you understand this means they've been to the King's Head in Great Wimsted for a carvery. The ensuing relationship is less than a symbiotic melding of vision and skill. These men do not take your dreams and gently mould them into the shape of a beautiful family home, filled with peace, laughter and bathed in the warm golden light of an open fire. They are called Trevor, have a large side-kick called Brian, and pretend to know the difference between oak and mdf, sharp sand and lime-mortar, but really they just like doing conservatories and their company motto is: 'Don't worry love - it's round the back so no-one will see it'. Conversations with them go like this:

'So, Trevor, you will be using traditional materials? I'd hate to get into trouble with English Heritage! (accompanied by nervous laugh - tra la!)

'Oh yeah, but you'll have to get them for us. I mean, we've used them a lot, and it's really easy, but I don't actually know where you'd buy them from.'

'Right. Ok. Well if perhaps if you could tell me what I need, I can get it online for you. We could have it delivered'

'Well now you're asking. I know it comes in a tub usually.'

One day I was hiding in the kitchen, pretending to wash up, but really listening for the reassuring sound of lovely big pieces of green oak being chiselled and planed by experienced craftsmen. Alas, I could only hear raucous laughter and the sounds of two middle-aged men arranging their social lives on their mobiles while dropping hammers on each other's feet. Suddenly the cry went up:

'Bleedin 'ell!' (we are, after all, in Essex.)

'Oh my God!, What's wrong?'

'Oh, Jesus I nearly ad an art attack there!'

'Why - what happened?'

'A bleeding great lorry wen parsst the winder an it went so dark in ere I fort I'd fucked the electrics!!'

Trevor, for all his cheery and relentless tea-drinking, never really got the hang of what to call me. As no workman ever has. In fact, the name 'Alison' to anyone outside my family is generally met with such blank incomprehension I may as well introduce myself as 'Queen Ethelburga, proud Abbess of Northumbria.' On his last morning Trevor excelled himself, as he came to look for me in the kitchen.

'Oh. There you are. Er, do you mind if I borrow your hoover, Alan?'

'Alan? My name is Alison!'

'Oh gawd, sorry - I knew it began wiv an L'